Richard Moss is the founder of London-based company Rogue projects, an experimental design studio that weaves artistic and engineering principles into eco-driven projects. Prior to this venture, Moss spent time in the United States receiving dual Bachelor’s degrees from Brown University in Engineering and Architecture, before pursuing a Master’s degree from Imperial College London in Engineering. He then proceeded to work on the World Trade Center Transportation hub in Manhattan, and with Google in California. Moss was inspired to found Rogue projects in 2014 in order to make products that promote environmental awareness through cutting-edge design. Learn more about Richard Moss and Rogue projects’ flagship product “HearO” in this week’s Maker Monday.
HearO is a portable speaker housed in a championship tennis ball. Imagined by the studio, the project reuses a tennis ball and binds its tactility into a smart sustainable object.
Andrew Joseph: Describe your design style as if you were explaining it to someone who cannot see.
Richard Moss: For me, design is less about style but rather about implementing our ethos and principles to tell authentic stories for ourselves and our clients. Our project scope is rather diverse, from a luxury watch boutique, to a futuristic dispensary jukebox machine, to repurposed tennis ball speakers. We listen intently at the start of each project in an aim to distill and crystalize a design brief – each is particular. Drawing and ideation lead us into our process. In every project, experimentation and imagination are core ingredients. And at all times, we have an eye towards sustainability – creating timeless, purpose driven works that will have a positive impact on their environments. Our work is informed by materials, where we aim to explore their inherent properties and textures, and how they might sync together into coherent forms and functions. So, good stories, a truth to materials, and sustainability help the studio walk a path of authenticity and purpose for each project.
AJ: What’s a guilty pleasure you have?
RM: Playing tennis. I know it sounds crazy, but it is an indulgence and treat to hop on a court in cities like New York and London. I have been a keen tennis player since the age of 5 and it led me to the varsity team at Brown University. In London, I joined the Queen’s Club – probably the most intimate racquet club enclave in the United Kingdom, the club holds its own professional tournament just before the Championships at Wimbledon each year. Although I was drafted into the club’s first team, there are no special privileges for anyone at Queen’s. If a retired Roger Federer rocked up to play, alas they’d likely usher him away if it wasn’t organized beforehand. Pompousness, opulence and remarkable courts make for a guilty pleasure whenever I don my whites and step on court.
The idea for HearO came from combining Richard’s twin passions: tennis and imaginative design.
AJ: If you weren’t a designer, you’d be a…?
RM: If I wasn’t a designer, I would be a painter. I tried to be a civil engineer once – failed miserably. The day-to-day grind of auditing buildings and designing parking lots crushed me creatively. Many of my heroes are artists and drawing has always been my means for expressing an idea. Further, my experience drawing and painting at the New York City Studio School when I lived in New York was both formative and illuminating.
AJ: What is your favorite cocktail?
RM: It fluctuates but at the moment it is a whisky sour. We are in the process of having a whisky sour dispense from a new machine we’re building. So there has been a steady sampling at venues across London to get the texture and ingredients just right for our machine!
AJ: What are three words to describe where you live?
RM: Art-maximalist, organized, leafy.
AJ: What was your first job?
RM: I worked alongside Santiago Calatrava in his New York studio. There is a nice backstory here, though. Moving into my senior year at Brown, I never had a job lined up. Over dinner with a professor & mentor, he encouraged a group of us students to describe what our dream job would be. I said it would be to work for Calatrava. He said go for it. So, I did. I sent in a resume and digital portfolio to his New York studio and the office responded quickly and definitively “no”. I appreciated the rapid response, perhaps due to the studio’s warmth or coolness for my own naivete. Then, two weeks before my college graduation, I received an email from the office saying something interesting has opened up, I booked my train to New York that evening. For the next two years I assisted Calatrava’s building workshop with a focus on his US projects and most notably the Transportation hub at the World Trade Center site.
It took Moss 3 years to make a fully functional product that met his standards.
AJ: What’s inspiring you in life (in the industry) right now?
RM: There are two fantastic exhibitions in London that opened early Fall. One is at the Royal Academy, for South African artist, William Kentridge. The other, at the Tate Modern, is a retrospective for painter, Paul Cezanne. I’ve stepped foot in both shows half-a-dozen times already. Much of my work begins with drawing. Kentridge is one of the finest draftsmen and storytellers of our time, while Cezanne is perhaps the greatest of all time. Art has always been a place for discovery and walking through spaces of these works fuels imagination.
AJ: A book that everyone should read?
RM: For me, it would be The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. The book is short and covers aspects of morality. Aurelius shares a kind of practical philosophy that is grounded in stoic principles. The book is reflective, honest and a joy to follow. You can pick up and open on any page and there will be some nuggets of wisdom.
About the Maker | Richard Moss founded Rogue projects in 2014. The studio’s interdisciplinary approach is dedicated to weaving artistic and engineering principles into projects that promote environmental awareness through cutting edge design. The approach is experimental and collaborative with a relentless commitment to discovery and ideas. The driving ethos behind the studio is to challenge and rethink consumption.
HearO is a culmination of a three-year journey from its early conception to the working prototypes. It combines Richard’s twin passions for tennis and design into one product. Richard’s history with tennis and balls is long. He played all through school, and then for Brown University. He noted that over the years he probably dispatched a hundred thousand balls. He began to think about the short life of a tennis ball. He started cutting them up and exploring the potential recycled uses for this sort of tactile object. He made study models in plaster, clay and plasticine searching for a way to repurpose these balls into the consumer space. One day, while working as an engineer, his mind and ear got snagged by music playing in his office space. The idea for hearO was born.
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