Biography

Duncan Kramer was born in 1963, in Pembury hospital, Kent. Formative experiences were playing in quarries, eating fruit in other people’s orchards, the advent of punk rock, and a simultaneous love of British jazz-funk (which in turn, and time, turned into a deep love of soul music). The offer of a place at Cantebury Art College in 1980 consolidated an interest in ‘ways of seeing and doing’. He has worked with constructed things and the ideas for them ever since. Recently he undertook an MA in Design Futures (Goldsmiths College, University of London), achieving a distinction with work concerning colour-use in the work of 3-dimensional designers and architects. He has lived in the London Borough of Haringey since 1985.

Work

Material work in architecture, landscapes, and the arts with projects for public and private organisations. Dan Monck and Duncan Kramer are the two principals, but they collaborate readily and widely. A current collaboration includes public work with Maarten de Reus (Dutch public artist). Both principals have a background in the making and doing culture of design, their enquiry and experience showing in their detailing and assured handling of materials. Their work, and corresponding portfolio is disparate in projects undertaken, but a thread runs through all; the approach taken by Material is consistent. They consider it essential that design decisions are well-founded, and explicable – necessarily combining both intuition and rationality. Co-founders (with Robin Kinross and John Morgan) of Workplace Co-operative 115, they also designed the new building that is home to the co-op – 115 Bartholomew Road – “…a hymn to workshop practice in the tradition of Gerrit Rietveld and Jean Prouvé” (Tanya Harrod, Domus magazine).

‘honour the material’ Louis Kahn (1901–74)