Adrian Westaway Co-founder & Director of Technology and Magic at Special Projects Adrian is an inventor, engineer and experience designer on a mission to make the human-technology interaction meaningful and delightful. As co-founder of Special Projects he harnesses technology, inclusive research and magic thinking to devise design propositions that feel familiar yet wondrous. A self-taught magician since the age of 11 and full member of the Magic Circle, he relentlessly pursues his conviction that “designers should use magic thinking and try to introduce surprise, delight and fuzzy feeling in the things they create.” After becoming the first ever James Dyson Fellow in 2007, and a Fellow of the Royal Commission of 1851, in 2010, for his work on interactive lighting systems, Adrian built a playground in Peru, had whisky with Derren Brown as a student in Bristol, and tried to make his teachers disappear. His contagious passion for magic and engineering made him a beloved tutor and lecturer in Design & Innovation at Queen Mary University and the Royal College of Art, in London and a visiting faculty member at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design. There he teaches ‘Magic and Design’, a nomadic workshop where students are introduced to methods of using design and technology to create enchanted products and experiences.

Combining my love of flowers and nature, with my background in Fine Art - I produce playful floral designs. Conceived; on the whole, as works of art.

I’m funny

I was born in the mid 1980's and grow up in London. From always having a fascination with mechanical objects and relentlessly playing with lego as a child becoming a still life photographer seemed like a natural progression. There is something enormously rewarding about creating exactly whats in your head. I try and make my images on first glance look completely perfect but on closer inspection its revealed there are many imperfections, if you look closer at the 'Wrapping Paper Series' you can see all the joins and creases. I think this makes it look and feel like a photograph and not CGI.

Born in Kolkata, India I moved to the UK as a teenager and to London when I got into Central Saint Martins to study illustration. After 29 years in London I moved to Hastings on the south coast for more space, light and time.