Stephen Burks

Stephen Burks in conversation with Amale Andraos

This past summer, Stephen Burks hosted the Friedman Benda Gallery web series Design in Dialogue. In Episode 43, he and Amale Andraos discuss Andraos’ origins in Beirut, Lebanon and work designed by her firm WORKac. This follow-up conversation focuses on the work of Stephen Burks Man Made.

Stephen Burks is one of the most recognized American industrial designers of his generation. He believes in a pluralistic vision of design that is inclusive of all cultural perspectives. His studio Stephen Burks Man Made has been commissioned by many of the world’s leading design-driven brands to develop collections that engage hand production as a strategy for innovation.

He studied architecture at Columbia GSAPP and Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), where he also studied product design. Burks is a recipient of the IIT Alumni Professional Achievement Award, the Brooklyn Museum Modernism Young Designer Award, the A&W, Architektur & Wohnen Audi Mentor Prize and the United States Artists Architecture & Design Target Fellowship Grant, as well as being the first African-American to win the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Product Design. In 2019, he became the first Harvard Loeb Fellow from the discipline of product design and is currently Design Critic in the Masters of Design Engineering program at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, as well as an Expert-in-Residence at the Harvard Innovation Lab.