Stephen Burks is one of the most recognized American industrial designers of his generation. He and his New York studio, Readymade Projects, have been responsible for creative design direction on projects ranging from retail interiors and events to packaging, consumer products, lighting, furniture and home accessories.
He has developed innovative concepts for renowned international brands including Artecnica, Audi, B&B Italia, Boffi, Calvin Klein, Cappellini, Coty Prestige, Estee Lauder and Missoni, as well as continuing his commitment to sustainable design in the developing world through his association with the American non-profits Aid To Artisans and the Nature Conservancy. As described in the New York Times style magazine T, he is the first African-American industrial designer to ever collaborate with these companies.
His work has been featured in numerous design publications and journals including & Fork, 1000 New Designs, 1000 New Eco Designs, Young Designers Americas, Furnish, Design Secrets: Furniture, Design in Steel, Designers On Design, New American Furniture Design, Limited Edition, and the International Design Yearbook, as well as the Phillips De Pury auction catalog Design 25th September 2008 London.
Stephen’s projects have been exhibited around the world at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York, the Salone del Mobile in Milan, the Stockholm Furniture Fair, Tokyo Design Week, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, the Knoxville Museum of Art, the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and the Vivid Gallery, Rotterdam, as well as Design Miami Basel and Design Miami.
He has hosted design workshops and been a visiting critic at design schools internationally including the Beckmans School of Design in Stockholm, Centro in Mexico City, the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, the ECAL in Lausanne, Ecole Des Beaux Arts de Saint Etienne, Beckmans & Konstfack in Stockholm, Parsons School of Design in New York, Pratt Institute in New York, the Rhode Island School of Design, the UNAM in Mexico City, the College For Creative Studies in Detroit and the Vitra Design Museum in Boisbuchet, France.
As a lecturer, Stephen has been an invited speaker at the 2006 South African Indaba Design Expo and the 2007 8th International Conference of Architecture and Design City x City in Mexico City, the 2007 C6 Symposium The Art World Is Flat: Globalism, Crisis and Opportunity in Chicago, the New York International Gift Fair, Designboost, Svenskform, the Stockholm Furniture Fair, as well as being a keynote speaker at the 2009 IIDEX fair in Toronto and the 2009 Design Indaba in Cape Town, South Africa.
He has also served on the IMM Trend Board of the Cologne Furniture Fair for four consecutive years and was honored to serve on the jury of the 2007 Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Institution’s National Design Awards in New York.
Stephen studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology and Product Design at IIT’S Institute of Design, as well as attending Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture.
He is a recipient of the Illinois Institute of Technology Alumni Professional Achievement Award, the Brooklyn Museum Young Modernist Award, the Architektur & Wohnen Audi Mentor Prize and the 2008 United States Artists Architecture & Design Target Fellowship Grant for his outstanding work in product design.
Stephen is currently working on a television documentary series of his work in the developing world entitled ‘Made On Earth’ with the Sundance Channel and will have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Art & Design in February 2011 to run concurrently with the MAD’s Global Africa Project exhibiton, which he is helping to curate.
