Andy is a passionate advocate for interior education, research and art school culture. He is a highly experienced spatial arts educator who has taught across art and design in Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh and leads Interior & Environmental Design at Dundee. He has been a visiting lecturer in the Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Portugal, Slovenia and the US, and an external examiner in Singapore, Greece and at numerous UK universities.

His research frames the interior as an expanded practice through sculpture, drawing and installation and has exhibited in galleries in China, USA, UK, Finland, Germany, Czech Rep and Canada. Collectively, this expanded spatial practice informs his research-led teaching and compliments his interests in our altered domestic, technological and utopian experiences in a term “domestechtopias” which he first formulated in a talk in the US and which later emerged as an installation as an allegorical architecture and a place-based-prototype. He is a PhD and ProfDOC first supervisor, is an academic mentor, and has supported MRes students.

He has brought a spatial dimension to UK funded interdisciplinary research on diverse topics including pro-environmental workplace behaviour change, on urban green spaces, and on future dwelling scenarios for the AHRC and EPSRC. He led industry funded projects with The Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland, as part of their ‘Festival of Architecture’ initiatives, and provided a design perspective on the ‘Developing Practice in Participatory Settings’ Artworks Trigger project..

Community engagement activity includes artist talks for ‘Sticks’, an installation in partnership with FLAX Fest 2024 and Journeys in Design linked to the ‘Saintly Progress, a linen pilgrimage, St Andrews’ event. He has contributed to public debates for Creative Dundee’s first Pecha Kucha event, for the British Council’s ‘What’s the Future of Domestic Life’ with Creative Dundee, Architecture Fringe and Sumi Bose. He has presented at the Agile Cities ‘Art, Architecture, Design & the City’. Over a three-year period, Andy also worked as a designer in the community for the Engineering Development Trust [EDT] for their Go4SET initiative for regional high school’s bringing design thinking and sustainability into the classroom and the S2 curriculum. He also led two ‘Visual Thinking’ workshops for regional art, design and technology high school teachers at DJCAD.

He has reviewed various articles for Interior Design/Interior Architecture Educators Association IDEA Journal, for Interiors: Architecture, Design, Culture, and published in the International Journal of Co-Design, the IJCER: International Journal of Construction Education and Research, the Building Services Engineering Research & Technology Journal and for the Journal of Interior Design: Thinking the Body Inside: IDEC Special Issue.

He has contributed to numerous conferences, books and book chapters including ‘The Handbook of Interior Architecture & Design’ (Bloomsbury), coauthored two books, ‘Interior Tools Interior Tactics: Debates in Interiors Theory & Practice’(Libri) and ‘Thinking Inside the Box: A Reader in Interiors for the 21st Century’ (Libri) and is currently completing a coauthored book chapter entitled ‘Space, Object, Experience’ for ‘The Handbook of Interior Architecture’ (Routledge) led by University of Kansas. Andy is planning to submit a new book proposal to Routeledge on new domestic space in 25/26.

He co-led three international conferences, for Interiors Forum Scotland, 2007 and 2008, and in 2022 was part of the Dundee team leading on the Transformative Teaching: Focus on Pedagogy event for AMPS Architecture, Media and Politics. He was a roundtable chair at the Architecture & Collective Life Conference, 2019 and has been an invited conference committee member most recently for the IE 2024 Practice conference, Northumbria, for the ICMEK 6th International Congress on Interior Architecture Education: Core, Code, Collaboration + Creativity, Istanbul, and at the CII 2024 International Symposium: Current Issues in Interiors, Yasar University, Izmir. 'Dooring' published at the Experiential Design Conference, Florida State, 2020 with Portsmouth and Northumbria colleagues laid the foundations for later drawing activity shown at the DJCAD Research Expo linked to his most recent sculpture.  

His internationalisation activity includes successful application to the University of Antwerp’s IDW2023 “Storm” Masters workshop. He was the British Council Venice Fellowship HE Advisor between 2017-21, a UNESCO Dundee representative Wuhan Design Biennale 2017. Between 2009-2020 he was a co-ordinator for the Group for International Design Education network of 8 nations. In 2012 and 2019 respectively, Andy led and hosted international workshops and has been a regular co-editor/author of various GIDE publications including ‘CampUS’, (2017); ‘Design Feeds the Planet’, (2015); ‘Design in Action / Celebration’, (2014); ‘Creativity for Local Enterprises’(2012), ‘Exhibit’ (2011) and ‘Design for Innovative Communities’ (2010). Andy led the international blended learning collaboration and level 2 ‘Border Crossing’ module between Dundee, Amsterdam, Texas and Ljubljana leading to published outputs for ELIA’s Location Aesthetics conference. Prior to this Andy research-led teaching resulted in a Centre for Education in the Built Environment / HeA funded case-study. In 2012 he led the pilot Summer School between DJCAD Interiors, Oklahoma and Shanghai interior department’s exploring the Mobile Museum with the support of the V&A.

Andy is an educator and spatial researcher who has extensive experience of teaching across multiple levels nationally and internationally. Prior to entering higher education, he worked in industry as a Chartered interior designer (CSD) for award winning Architecture practice Nicoll Russell Studios, where he was an RIBA Royal Institute of British Architects Gold Medal team member. He worked in a commercial capacity for the RIAS, Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland. He is an Advance HE Fellow, member of the Society of British Theatre Designers, a past Trustee of the UK Interior Educators charity 2019-22, a member of the EiE, European Interior Educators, and a former RSA Fellow, CSD member. He’s been an invited expert at various AHRC focus groups including ‘Antimicrobial Resistance in Indoor Environments’, London ; ‘Proto Publics Social Design Sprint’, Lancaster and was invited to show an installation at the ‘AHRC Connected Communities & Design Summit & Showcase’, Edinburgh.  In 2005 he initiated and co-founded IFS, Interiors Forum Scotland with Glasgow School of Art, Edinburgh College of Art, Napier University, Glasgow Caledonian University and Glasgow City College.