Online Lecture by Edward Hollis, Professor of Interior Design

This presentation will reflect upon the practice of building stories by building two stories.

The first concerns a deserted, decaying, glass room, in a castle in Rajasthan. Having surveyed the room through measurement, photography, archival research, and interview, Hollis is building a story-object – a drawing interwoven with narrative writing – as a gift for the owners of the room, designed to help them to consider how the room might be remembered – that is, either put together again, or imagined, once it has gone.

The second situates this story in a developing repertoire of the creative practices that gave rise to it. These include architectural practice, the construction of literary non-fiction, activism, and drawing. This story will reflect on ways in which we do, and could, use storytelling in producing and re-producing the heritage that surrounds us.

Edward Hollis studied Architecture at Cambridge and Edinburgh Universities; and practiced as an architect for six years, first in Sri Lanka, in the practice of Geoffrey Bawa; and then in the practice of Richard Murphy, well known for his radical alterations to ancient and historic buildings in and around Edinburgh.

In 1999, Edward Hollis began lecturing in Interior Architecture at Napier University, Edinburgh, working with students both in the design studio, and in more theoretical disciplines. In 2004, he moved to Edinburgh College of Art, where until 2012, he ran undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in Interior Design. In 2012, Hollis became Deputy Director of Research across Edinburgh College of Art, coordinating the submission to the Research Excellence Framework 2014 in Art, Design and History of Art. He was Director of Research ECA 2015-18, and since 2019 deputy dean of research across the college of Arts, Humanities and Social sciences.