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This blog was set up after two years of research in the field of home office, interior and product design as well as office productivity. It is based on real experience and professional advice.-
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Office Design, Interior Design. More then just aesthetics.
Ron Arad – The Story
Tel Aviv (1952 – )
Design took a radical turn in the 1980′s, deconstructing the rigid ideology of the Bauhaus–often with great humor. Avant-garde designers like Philippe Starck and Ron Arad brazenly borrowed from the “historical closet” of previous styles and created biomorphic forms with whimsical names like Arad’s Big Easy Red chair, the After Spring Before Summer chaise lounge and the Empty chair. These chairs posed anew the question, “What ought a chair to be?”
Like the Tom Vac chair (1997) featured by DWR, Arad’s work often suggests movement through graphic, gestural lines or references to organic forms. The Tom Vac chair also represents the designer’s interest in exploiting the formal and structural possibilities of modern materials like the new plastics.
Arad first studied at the Jerusalem Academy of Art and the Architectural Association London and later opened his architectural design office, One Off Ltd., initially based in Covent Garden and later, Chalk Farm, London. Primarily known for chair design, Arad has also had important architectural commissions, including the interior for the Tel Aviv Opera House.
Born in Tel Aviv in 1951, he moved to London in his early 20s to further his studies in architecture. He fell into furniture design after walking out of his office job and into a scrapyard, where he picked up some tubular steel scaffolding and a 1960s Rover 2000 car seat to make what would later become a 20th-century design classic. He set up a studio in Covent Garden and waited for someone to notice his comfy recycled seats. “Nobody was interested,” he recalls. “Then one Boxing Day there was a knock on the door and it was a little guy with a French accent. I said, ‘Sorry, we’re closed.’ ‘But I want to buy these chairs,’ he says. ‘Come in,’ I said. ‘We’re open.’ ”
The “little” Frenchman ordered six Rover Chairs, at a cost of £99 ($223) each, paying by cheque and leaving a Parisian delivery address. It was Arad’s long-time business partner, Caroline Thorman, who noticed the name on it. “I didn’t know who Jean-Paul Gaultier was,” he grins. “And in 1981, he didn’t know who Jean-Paul Gaultier was either.”
Part of the RON ARAD Profile is made out of DesignWithinReach informations.
Our opinion
Ron Arad is a big personality in the industry of furniture design but at the core he is mostly formed as an architect. Architecture is very different then design. Design in our days is more about function (hence “Form follows function”). To have a good chair design for eg. you’ll need for people to feel it usefull, easy to use, very confortable and very beauty. As Ron Arad himself says not all of his design are as confortable as people would want. In our opinion he’s more focused on aesthetics and most of his design are good-looking but lacking confort.