Every fortnight at DKA we take it in turns to present something design based to the whole team and we’re calling it DKA presents.
Presenting to our peers means we get the opportunity to practice our presenting skills and share our passions with our colleagues. We get anonymous feedback from the audience to help us develop our presenting style and everyone gets to eat pizza! So all in all, everyone looks forward to every other Wednesday lunchtime!
We interviewed David Yeates to tell us about his recent presentation for the blog.
Tell us about your topic
My topic for this year was a short cultural and architectural tour of Copenhagen with an in-depth look at some more contemporary buildings.
I felt this would make a good presentation topic because I think seeing something about a personal journey is always more interesting, being able to convey the nature of a place and the experience is key. There is quite a large range of styles of architecture in the city including traditional and contemporary, plus the cultural aspects of Copenhagen and the aspects of city travel, the food, museums and artwork, hopefully something for everyone.
Inspired by a general admiration of Danish design and love of Nordic Noir TV, we visited the city for the first time this year. It was an intense 5 day visit, taking in as many buildings, museums, galleries and interesting places as possible. We visited in March 2016 so it was still a bit cold but generally fine and dry which made travel about the city much more enjoyable.
Den Bla Planet Aquarium
Was there a specific part of Copenhagen you focused on for the presentation?
I chose to focus my presentation on the Museet for Søfart – Maritime Museum of Denmark in Helsingor, about 40mins North of Copenhagen. Denmark has a very rich maritime history and the new building designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (opened in 2013) is a real piece of statement architecture. As an adaptive re-use of existing space, I love the way that the building has been executed and how it intersects the dry dock whilst paying respect to preserving the views of Kronenborg Castle.
Museet for Sofart
Superkilen Park
Was there anything about the design you’d like to replicate or inspired you?
The coordination between disciplines really inspired me to think outside the box and push the boundaries.
Would you go back to Copenhagen?
There is plenty to see and do in a city like Copenhagen and lots that we didn’t get the chance to experience, out of season the Tivoli gardens were closed for refurbishment and the amount of development means there will always be new things to see on a return visit. Perhaps next time we’ll link it with a visit across the bridge to Sweden.
Hopefully as a topic I covered some areas and buildings that most people haven’t already seen, but would now be inspired to go and see in the near future.
Louisiana MOMA
The Round Tower
How was it presenting to the DKA gang?
I find it much easier to present to people that I already know. I learnt that it’s not really necessary to rehearse a script, but just be familiar with the material/topic in a way that means you can talk fluently about it without having to refer to any notes.
Do you have any advice for the next presenter?
If I could pass on any pearls of wisdom to the next presenters it would be to be confident, easy to say but surprisingly not that difficult to achieve. Learn from my mistakes! Try to look at and engage everyone in the room, speak up and outwards, not towards the screen. Try and elicit some response from people, pose them a question? Interaction is good, I believe it’s easier to feel like you are a part of a discussion rather than just speaking to people. Enjoy it, if you can.
