Glass Hill was founded in January 2010 to provide clients with thoughtful and appropriate design and creative direction. During the time since they have produced interiors for Woodfinch Rare Books and the Royal College of Art, exhibition design and furniture design for Phillips de Pury and Company, and product design for the ICA London. Amongst other things Glass Hill are currently designing an art gallery interior, a fashion show in New York and bespoke furniture for a chain of restaurants. As well as client led projects Glass Hill are pursuing private research, specifically the Local Hero - a concept that hopes to reinstate a network of small, specific and affordable accommodation for people who travel. Markus and met at the Royal College of Art in 2005 on Ron Arad’s Design Products course. Originally from Sweden, Markus studied at Danish College of Design, Copenhagen, where he was frustrated with the college’s conventional view on consumer products, on graduation in 2003 moving to London via Stockholm. Meanwhile Joe was in High Wycombe, the home of English vernacular furniture, learing how to draw and measure and cut, mostly wood. At the end of his course he moved to London and was Tord Boontje’s first assistant, assisting on projects for luxury brands and fancy people. Slightly dissheartened by his experience of this world Joe went on to work for a refreshingly straight-forward bespoke furniture maker in east London before applying to the RCA MA. As part of his graduation piece from the Royal College Markus set about designing and building a vessel with which to charter the canals of London. The resulting canoe was a challenge in every sense and help as needed both practical and moral. Joe being a year junior and handy with a chisel offered his help. The subsequent month of very late nights, resin sanding and general woodwork, though dissmissed by tutors as being tactical work avoidance, was in fact a valuable lesson in making real things from basic stuff with a bit of reasearch and a lot of hardwork. The London Canoe Project left Regents park on the morning of the 22 of May and reached the Limehouse Basin that evening, and after surviving a night bike locked to a lamp post has become the artifact of the start of an ongoing collaboration that now finds itself, as of January 2010, called Glass Hill and resident in the eponymous street in Southwark.
