Liam Hopkins is Manchester-based designer maker who is passionate about combining established design with digital concepts. He demonstrates the same passion through work at his design studio Lazerian, where hand-craft and technology are compounded to create radical solutions in architectural decoration, exhibitions, lighting, furniture, jewellery and sculpture.
In combining traditional handcraft techniques with modern computer-based modelling and pattern cutting, Lazerian are able to explore new concepts in multi-dimensional design. The studio is especially interested in materials like paper, wood and carbon fibre, citing the inherent ‘strength and beauty’ that can be found ‘in the lightest and most ubiquitous of materials’.
Hopkins was commissioned for a project by the National Festival of Making in 2017 which resulted in the work Chromatogram – fifteen, 10ft tall, walk-in ‘pods’ fabricated entirely from precision-cut, individually printed cardboard modules.. The piece was about changing people’s perceptions of cardboard; Hopkins achieved this by omitting all right-angles typically associated with the material, and adding colour against the traditional brown kraft card. Chromatogram went on to have wide press and was featured on the cover of Interior Design Magazine.