Hackney designers – the best in the borough

The Olympic Torch was designed by Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby. Photograph: Dezeen

Hackney is a hotbed of talented designers and architects and deserves to be more widely noticed, according to Marcus Fairs, founder and editor of influential design website Dezeen.

That’s why this month, as the London 2012 Games approaches, they launched an online initiative to show off our creative borough.

‘Designed in Hackney’ will feature work from local people and studios every day until the Olympic Games this summer. The website welcomes nominations from the public and from designers themselves.

Marcus told the Hackney Citizen that he has felt for a long time that Hackney has “not really been recognised” as a creative centre.

“Of course, Shoreditch is well-known as a place where creative businesses cluster, but I don’t think anyone outside London is aware that Shoreditch is a part of Hackney,” he says, “but there are world-class designers in Stoke Newington, and others in places like London Fields and Hackney Wick.”

Dezeen has built up a large global audience since its launch in 2006, with 1.2 million visitors a month. The team are based in Stoke Newington and want to use their popular site as a platform to raise the profile of Hackney and its designers and architects.

Marcus and his team keep a close eye on local talent. He says: “We’re particularly proud of the fantastic young designers up here in N16, for example Okay Studio, Philippe Malouin, Roger Arquer and International. They’re all going to be big names in the future.”

He says that Hackney is home to “some of the most respected designers in the world”, including industrial designer Jasper Morrison, and Barber Osgerby, whose Olympic Torch will pass through the borough on Saturday 21 July.

Hackney is a magnet for creative people for a mixture of reasons, explains Marcus, and has advantages that have been lost in other parts of London: “It’s still possible to find studio space in former industrial buildings that have been converted into flats elsewhere in the capital.”

“It still has a lot of workshops and suppliers where designers can get things made. There’s still small-scale industry here,” he says.

For more go to Dezeen’s Designed in Hackney.