Roger Kemp
Dr. Roger Kemp is the Associate Dean of Interior Design at RMIT University, Melbourne Australia.
His background in commercial and hospitality design has informed his interest in the way in which interiors form a significant spatial and social contribution to the workings of a contemporary city.
He has extensive teaching experience in a range of settings in Interior Design. He has lead teaching workshops in several institutions including Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in Doha, Qatar, Konkuk University in Seoul, South Korea, and La Salle in Singapore.
Roger's active interdisciplinary design research practice, "Making Distance", in collaboration with Anthony Fryatt, utilises a range of media including film, installation, exhibition, drawings, models, montage, and text to explore interiors beyond the restrictive parameter of interior space as a condition of enclosure. His work has been shown at Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI); Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha; Brighton University, UK; Form Gallery, State of Design Festival, Victoria; Bus Projects; Federation Square; Channel 31 and Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS). It has also been shortlisted for the Australian Interior Design Awards.
Address: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
His background in commercial and hospitality design has informed his interest in the way in which interiors form a significant spatial and social contribution to the workings of a contemporary city.
He has extensive teaching experience in a range of settings in Interior Design. He has lead teaching workshops in several institutions including Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in Doha, Qatar, Konkuk University in Seoul, South Korea, and La Salle in Singapore.
Roger's active interdisciplinary design research practice, "Making Distance", in collaboration with Anthony Fryatt, utilises a range of media including film, installation, exhibition, drawings, models, montage, and text to explore interiors beyond the restrictive parameter of interior space as a condition of enclosure. His work has been shown at Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI); Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha; Brighton University, UK; Form Gallery, State of Design Festival, Victoria; Bus Projects; Federation Square; Channel 31 and Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS). It has also been shortlisted for the Australian Interior Design Awards.
Address: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
less
Related Authors
InterestsView All (6)
Uploads
Papers by Roger Kemp
and interior designers. This raised work substantial questions in relation to the role of ‘interior’ within each of
the films made through the collaboration. Where and how was interior defined and located? What sort of interior
relations existed within each of the screenplays? And how might these be represented relative to the various filmic
instruments of camera, set, lighting, sound, etc?’
The paper describes and critiques the film-based operations and processes used by the three writer/directors, two
interior designers, sound team and cinematographer in the production of interiors within the recent triptych of short
films titled Motel.
Scholar/practitioners in the fields of creative arts and design are increasingly looking to locate their creative practice within a research context that leads to the development of new insights, processes and approaches. Motel was a trans- disciplinary practice-based research collaboration between a group of scholar/practitioners: three filmmakers and two interior designers from RMIT University. The project aimed to explore the innovative potential the academy affords to situate filmmaking and interior design practices outside usual industrial/commercial contexts so as to create what Geuens (2007) calls a ‘differential space’ of film production.
The Motel research group used techniques of reflective practice—reflection-in- action and reflection-on-action (Schön 1983)—to analyse shifts in practice and conceptual frameworks brought about by the constraints applied to the collaborative project. These constraints came from a set of collaborative 'rules' applied to the production process which, among other things, altered the usual hierarchical relationship between design and film, which privileges the director and his/her vision. In Motel the interior designers called a halt to the machinery of production, demanding an examination of established practices. The traditional A4 film scripts were tilted sideways and exploded, laid out alongside each other like patients in a ward, and new intimate relationships were formed. Exactly what was interior and what was exterior came into question. The space of an Australian motel room, and the space of filmmaking itself was interrogated, dissected, made new. The resulting triptych of short films is only one of the media objects to have resulted from this innovative collaboration.
Creative Works by Roger Kemp
In this research project we consider retail as a medium of space that we move through and inhabit as part of our dayto-
day activities. Retail space, although having a very specific intent — that of consumption — is a complex and full
experience. It actively uses spatial experience, personal interaction, still and moving image, text and other devices to
engage and activate its occupants.
Within this complex medium, the act of ‘display’ plays a pivotal role in the early seduction and subsequent desire
that fuels the social and monetary exchanges upon which commerce ultimately relies. Understood in the broadest
sense, display becomes an arresting spatial tactic and site of encounter that is complex and multi-layered in nature. At
the heart of reciprocal exchange between people lie the twin drives of desire and sacrifice: one person’s desire for an
object, and another’s willingness to give up (sacrifice) the object for that desire or its representation (another object
or token).2
This research identifies the active condition of ‘display’ not only as conveyer of information or conspicuous
presentation but also as a significant moment in the access to and engagement in an interior that is in constant
production through a process of exchange: a state of becoming. The work examines the production of interiors
that is brought about through an engagement by the occupant with implied narratives and settings. These spatial
scenarios are manifest via the layering and arrangement of scenic devices, including constructed sets, props, and
image. Suspension of disbelief and an acceptance of the ‘unreal’ is often a necessary participatory condition in this
work. The assembly of fragments, objects and actions intentionally seek to activate the role of the participant as
author of their own experience.
The exhibited model is a site from which a series of artefacts and images are produced using techniques including
photography, projection, diagramming and storyboarding. These images and artefacts are then worked back into
the model, which in turn increasingly becomes more complex and multi-layered in nature. The model and artefacts
are brought together offering up an arrangement of abstracted scenes; becoming an interior that is simultaneously
reflective and propositional. This installation-based project follows on from a series of built works including models,
film and public interventions that are part of an ongoing research enquiry into the production of interiors through the
use of scenic strategies.
1. Judy Chung Chuihua, Inaba Jefffrey, Rem Koolhaas, Sze Tsung Leong, Harvard Design School guide to Shopping, Cologne, Taschen, 2001.
2. Neil Cummings, Marysia Lewandowska, The Value of Things, Basel, Birkhauser, 2000, p.66.
Studios by Roger Kemp
Conference Presentations by Roger Kemp
This paper discusses the way in which an interior design practice has adopted the indeterminacy of interiority - a condition of constant production, assembled and affected by the built environment, objects, information, media, and personal interactions that we encounter.
By adopting a certain level of ‘incompleteness’ of material and form, the practice developed a series of diagrammatic and scenographic tools that allow a specific engagement with complexity and flux. The openness of the diagram is a generative tool within the design process, a maker of new convergences and knowledge, rather than simply a communicator of prior understanding. It provides a conversational space in which collaborative ideas can interplay and intersect..." not only an abstract model of the way things behave in the world but a map of possible worlds" (Allen, 1998, pp.16).
Layered upon these diagrams is an assembly of scenic fragments that draw people into the work, a mise-en-scène of objects and actions that intentionally seeks to activate the role of the participant in a scenographic negotiation of space. It becomes a performative encounter through the assemblage of scenes, providing a critical space for collaboration and the opportunity to externalise an otherwise internal subject. The interior produced simultaneously becomes both real and fictional, a mediator between the self and others.
and interior designers. This raised work substantial questions in relation to the role of ‘interior’ within each of
the films made through the collaboration. Where and how was interior defined and located? What sort of interior
relations existed within each of the screenplays? And how might these be represented relative to the various filmic
instruments of camera, set, lighting, sound, etc?’
The paper describes and critiques the film-based operations and processes used by the three writer/directors, two
interior designers, sound team and cinematographer in the production of interiors within the recent triptych of short
films titled Motel.
Scholar/practitioners in the fields of creative arts and design are increasingly looking to locate their creative practice within a research context that leads to the development of new insights, processes and approaches. Motel was a trans- disciplinary practice-based research collaboration between a group of scholar/practitioners: three filmmakers and two interior designers from RMIT University. The project aimed to explore the innovative potential the academy affords to situate filmmaking and interior design practices outside usual industrial/commercial contexts so as to create what Geuens (2007) calls a ‘differential space’ of film production.
The Motel research group used techniques of reflective practice—reflection-in- action and reflection-on-action (Schön 1983)—to analyse shifts in practice and conceptual frameworks brought about by the constraints applied to the collaborative project. These constraints came from a set of collaborative 'rules' applied to the production process which, among other things, altered the usual hierarchical relationship between design and film, which privileges the director and his/her vision. In Motel the interior designers called a halt to the machinery of production, demanding an examination of established practices. The traditional A4 film scripts were tilted sideways and exploded, laid out alongside each other like patients in a ward, and new intimate relationships were formed. Exactly what was interior and what was exterior came into question. The space of an Australian motel room, and the space of filmmaking itself was interrogated, dissected, made new. The resulting triptych of short films is only one of the media objects to have resulted from this innovative collaboration.
In this research project we consider retail as a medium of space that we move through and inhabit as part of our dayto-
day activities. Retail space, although having a very specific intent — that of consumption — is a complex and full
experience. It actively uses spatial experience, personal interaction, still and moving image, text and other devices to
engage and activate its occupants.
Within this complex medium, the act of ‘display’ plays a pivotal role in the early seduction and subsequent desire
that fuels the social and monetary exchanges upon which commerce ultimately relies. Understood in the broadest
sense, display becomes an arresting spatial tactic and site of encounter that is complex and multi-layered in nature. At
the heart of reciprocal exchange between people lie the twin drives of desire and sacrifice: one person’s desire for an
object, and another’s willingness to give up (sacrifice) the object for that desire or its representation (another object
or token).2
This research identifies the active condition of ‘display’ not only as conveyer of information or conspicuous
presentation but also as a significant moment in the access to and engagement in an interior that is in constant
production through a process of exchange: a state of becoming. The work examines the production of interiors
that is brought about through an engagement by the occupant with implied narratives and settings. These spatial
scenarios are manifest via the layering and arrangement of scenic devices, including constructed sets, props, and
image. Suspension of disbelief and an acceptance of the ‘unreal’ is often a necessary participatory condition in this
work. The assembly of fragments, objects and actions intentionally seek to activate the role of the participant as
author of their own experience.
The exhibited model is a site from which a series of artefacts and images are produced using techniques including
photography, projection, diagramming and storyboarding. These images and artefacts are then worked back into
the model, which in turn increasingly becomes more complex and multi-layered in nature. The model and artefacts
are brought together offering up an arrangement of abstracted scenes; becoming an interior that is simultaneously
reflective and propositional. This installation-based project follows on from a series of built works including models,
film and public interventions that are part of an ongoing research enquiry into the production of interiors through the
use of scenic strategies.
1. Judy Chung Chuihua, Inaba Jefffrey, Rem Koolhaas, Sze Tsung Leong, Harvard Design School guide to Shopping, Cologne, Taschen, 2001.
2. Neil Cummings, Marysia Lewandowska, The Value of Things, Basel, Birkhauser, 2000, p.66.
This paper discusses the way in which an interior design practice has adopted the indeterminacy of interiority - a condition of constant production, assembled and affected by the built environment, objects, information, media, and personal interactions that we encounter.
By adopting a certain level of ‘incompleteness’ of material and form, the practice developed a series of diagrammatic and scenographic tools that allow a specific engagement with complexity and flux. The openness of the diagram is a generative tool within the design process, a maker of new convergences and knowledge, rather than simply a communicator of prior understanding. It provides a conversational space in which collaborative ideas can interplay and intersect..." not only an abstract model of the way things behave in the world but a map of possible worlds" (Allen, 1998, pp.16).
Layered upon these diagrams is an assembly of scenic fragments that draw people into the work, a mise-en-scène of objects and actions that intentionally seeks to activate the role of the participant in a scenographic negotiation of space. It becomes a performative encounter through the assemblage of scenes, providing a critical space for collaboration and the opportunity to externalise an otherwise internal subject. The interior produced simultaneously becomes both real and fictional, a mediator between the self and others.