Stephen Bayley

Stephen Bayley Hon FRIBA, Chairman of The Royal Fine Art Commission Trust, is the person for whom the term “design guru” was coined. This he accepted with self-deprecating irony. He was plucked by Terence Conran from the tedium of provincial academe to create The Boilerhouse Project in the V&A, an exhibition space devoted to design which became London’s most successful gallery of the eighties. Then, the two of them created London’s influential Design Museum. He was – briefly and hilariously – Creative Director of The Millennium Dome before a spectacular falling-out with the Government which he wrote about in his book Labour Camp (1998).

Over the past forty years his writing has changed the popular perception of “design”. His many books include Sex, Drink and Fast Cars (1986), Taste (1991), Design: intelligence made visible (2007), Cars (2008), Ugly: the aesthetics of everything (2012) and Value – what money can’t buy (2021). He has been art critic of The Listener, architecture critic of The Observer and design critic of The Spectator, as well as a columnist on The Independent and The Times. He is a Honorary Visiting Professor at Liverpool University School of Architecture.

Paul Finch

Paul Finch OBE HonFRIBA is programme director of the World Architecture Festival, deputy chairman of the Royal Fine Art Commission Trust and the Design Council and former editor of the Architectural Review and Architects’ Journal. He chaired the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment 2009-2011, having been a commissioner and deputy chairman 1999-2005, and also chaired Cabe’s Olympic Design Review panel from 2006-2012. He was deputy chairman of the Design Council from 2011 to 2014. He was awarded an OBE for services to architecture in 2002.

Mike Stiff

Mike Stiff founded Stiff + Trevillion Architects in the early 1980s, later running the studio’s Berlin office. He has overview of design across the studio and works primarily on central London commercial projects, including Pavilion Road off Sloane Square for the Cadogan Estate and the comprehensive retrofit of the Arding & Hobbs building in Clapham Junction. Over the years he has taught at Westminster, Brighton and Sheffield Universities. He is a member of the Hounslow and Westminster Design Review panels and chairman of Octavia Housing’s New Homes Quality panel.

David Jenkins

David Jenkins is the founder and publisher of Circa Press, where he combines a passion for subject matter with a willingness to challenge conventions and explore new ideas. He began his career as an architect before transferring his skills to writing and publishing. In 1991 he joined Phaidon Press, where he assumed responsibility for Phaidon’s entire editorial team, helping to refocus the company’s publishing activity across the spectrum. At the invitation of Norman Foster, he left Phaidon to set up an independent publishing unit within the Foster studio, where he created an unprecedented range of books on one of the world’s most respected contemporary architects. He is a Trustee of the Norman Foster Foundation in London and a former Vice-President of the Architectural Association.

Emma Duncan

Emma Duncan writes a weekly column on economic and social policy at The Times, along with notebooks, essays and book reviews. She was formerly deputy editor of The Economist and is a visiting fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford.