Alex McDowell

Alex McDowell is one of the most innovative production designers working in the film industry today, but the impact of his ideas extends far beyond cinema.

His work on films including Minority Report and Fight Club not only amazed audiences worldwide but also set new standards for the integration of digital technology and traditional design. An advocate of what he calls "immersive design," and a visiting artist at MIT's Media Lab, McDowell is involved in several projects in which design, engineering, art, and science converge in new ways. We are delighted to welcome him to the Wexner Center to speak about his work and the future of design in this year's Glimcher Lecture.

McDowell has recently completed production design on Watchmen, the much-anticipated and just-released film based on the legendary graphic novel by Alan Moore and directed by Zack Snyder. His films also include Steven Spielberg's The Terminal; the cult classics The Crow and The Lawnmower Man; Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; Tim Burton's The Corpse Bride and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; Anthony Minghella's Breaking and Entering; and the animated feature Bee Movie for Dreamworks.

ASL interpretation provided.

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Presented with support from the Glimcher Program Fund, which supports an annual presentation by a distinguished figure from the fields of architecture and design.

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McDowell first incorporated digital design into his work for Fight Club, then sophisticated the process in 1999 when he established a fully integrated digital design department for Spielberg's Minority Report. For The Terminal, he set up another cutting-edge art department to realize a full size airport terminal, the largest architectural set ever built for film.

McDowell is currently working on a new fully CGI animated feature. Other projects include Death and the Powers, an innovative robotic opera in association with MIT Media Lab; and ProjectLab, an ongoing art-science exhibit series with Long Beach University Art Museum director Chris Scoates, which fuses emergent media, computer science, engineering, electronic music, digital art research, and art production. He is also founder and codirector of the 5D: Future of Immersive Design conference, which was launched in fall 2008. McDowell, who is based in Los Angeles, was named Royal Designer for Industry by the RSA, Great Britain's most prestigious design society in 2006.