Handley House Works is a collaborative venture where design for people and place comes together. Its mission is to improve the world through creativity and innovation in design. Drawing on the broad knowledge and expertise from within the Handley House teams at Benoy, Holmes Wood and Uncommon Land, alongside external experts and clients, this initiative brings together business, research and design to facilitate leading-edge thinking and deliver change. To celebrate the newly launched creative network, there was a debut event, ‘ALPHA’ which explored how Generation Alpha will influence the design of physical spaces and shape our future towns and cities.
The event took place at the Violin Factory, London and saw 25 creative minds come together from the fields of food, design, education, media and the arts to share thoughts on the topic. ALPHA Lead Curator, Sophie Devonshire of The Caffeine Partnership held the proceedings while there were ALPHA Presentations by Professor Joe Nellis of Cranfield School of Management and Eleanor Winton, Foresightfully. The day also featured interactive workshops and curated conversations led by Jamie Webb on Masterplanning, Andy Piepenstock discussed Interiors and Deborah Nagan spoke on Environment.
Patrick Burgoyne was in attendance and wrote a piece on Gen A, featuring the HHW event.
Are we expecting too much from Gen A?
In the first edition of a regular column for CR, Patrick Burgoyne reflects on Generation Alpha, and the hopes, dreams and expectations that future-gazers and brands are already placing on their shoulders.
Move over Generation Z, there’s a new initial for us to ponder – Generation Alpha. Yes, we’ve run out of alphabet. It’s time to start the dodgy demographic definitions once more from the top.
Who is Generation Alpha? Anyone born between 2010 and 2025, apparently. According to the people who decide these things, they deserve their own letter because the iPad was launched that year, making Gen Alphas the first generation to be born into a fully-digital world (or at least those with sufficient wealth were). What these screen-obsessed, vitamin‑B deficient tykes might demand from those providing their products and services, their living and working environments and the stuff of their future lives has already become the concern of future-gazers.
An event organised by creative network Handley House last month brought together around 25 minds from sectors such as architecture, design, food, transport and tech to start to figure that out. There will be over two billion Generation Alphas in the world, we were told, so we ignore their needs at our peril. This generation will have unprecedented exposure to technology and will live in a world where everything is connected and where physical and digital environments merge into one.
Read the full article on Creative Review.
