An internationally acclaimed Israeli artist, designer and architect, Ron Arad is regarded as one of the world’s leading designers, renowned for his original and innovative work. He challenges convention, resists definitions and refuses to belong to any single discipline. In this interview, Arad talks about creativity, achievement and life itself.
It is not every day that one of the world’s most famous and influential designers sits down for a Zoom conversation from London, where he has lived and worked for the past 48 years.
Ron Arad, whose exhibition Strings, Love Songs and a Red Car is currently on view at Gordon Gallery in Tel Aviv, was unable to attend the opening due to COVID-19 restrictions, but plans to visit before the exhibition closes.
Arad is considered one of the leading figures in postmodern design—a groundbreaking creator responsible for bold innovations in contemporary technology and the use of an extraordinary range of materials. He designs almost everything imaginable, from mass-produced industrial products to limited-edition studio pieces for galleries and collectors.
Over the course of an illustrious career, he has designed furniture, objects, lighting, jewelry, eyewear, hats and sculptures, as well as interiors and buildings—including restaurants, hotels, retail spaces and major public buildings around the world. His work is characterized by curved, often amorphous forms and lines, frequently combined with a raw and humorous aesthetic.
Arad, 70, is married and the father of two daughters. He lives in Belsize Park in North London. Born in Tel Aviv to a painter mother and a photographer and sculptor father, he also has a brother who is a composer and viola player.
“I grew up in a home where art and music played leading roles,” he says. “As a child, whenever I made a nice drawing, my mother would say I was going to be an ‘architect.’ For some reason, she mistakenly thought that being an architect was more respectable than being an artist.”
In the early 1970s, Arad studied industrial design at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, followed by architecture studies in London. He later served for 12 years as Head of the Design Products Department at the prestigious Royal College of Art.
In the early 1980s, he established his first design studio, One Off, together with his partner Caroline Thorman. In 1989, he founded Ron Arad Associates, specializing in design and architecture, followed by Ron Arad Architects in 2008.
Arad has designed furniture and objects for some of the world’s best-known design companies, including Swarovski, Alessi, WMF, Vitra, Kartell, Moroso and Cassina. He has also collaborated with luxury fashion brands such as Kenzo and Adidas, and with technology and automotive companies including Samsung, LG and Fiat.
His work has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions and is held in the collections of leading museums, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
His public artworks can be found in major cities around the world, including London, Tokyo, Seoul, Milan, Toronto, Singapore and Tel Aviv.
Among his best-known creations are chairs designed for Vitra, Kartell and Moroso, as well as the celebrated Bookworm bookshelf—a flexible, spiraling shelving system produced by Kartell in 1993.
It is impossible not to be impressed by Arad’s virtuosity and his relentless experimentation with materials ranging from steel, iron and aluminum to plastic, bronze, fiber optics and LEDs—an approach that has placed him at the forefront of contemporary design.
©Daniele venturelli
The Iconic Rover Chair
The Rover Chair was the creation that launched Arad’s international career and drew him into the world of design. It was 1981.
“One day, while wandering around the city, I found a pair of leather seats from an old Rover car in a scrapyard. I took them back to the studio and attached one of them to a curved metal frame made from tubing. One day, a passerby came into the studio and, speaking with a French accent, asked to buy six of the chairs. It was the famous fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier.”
They later discovered that they shared the same birthday, one year apart, and Arad subsequently designed one of Gaultier’s stores.
The Rover Chair became a design icon.
“When I exhibited it at the Centre Pompidou, I already had to wear white gloves to carry it into the exhibition space,” Arad adds with a smile.
Inspired by the Rover Chair, he went on to design a limited-edition series of chairs in rusted or chrome-plated steel called Moreover for Vitra.
The Exhibition at Gordon Gallery
The exhibition Strings, Love Songs and a Red Car presents new works that continue Arad’s ongoing exploration of the boundaries of materials.
The exhibition consists of three parts. The first is Quartet, a group of four chairs supporting string instruments that perform a chamber concert without musicians. The music was composed by Arad’s brother. Playing by itself, the composition evokes the absent musicians and becomes a powerful metaphor for a period in which concert halls stood empty.
The musical motif continues in the second work, displayed on the wall behind it: Oh Lord, Won’t You Buy Me a Mercedes-Benz, a reference to the Janis Joplin song.
Arad explains that he created the red Mercedes during the pandemic by giving instructions via Zoom to a shipbuilding facility in the Netherlands, where the car underwent a compression process using a large industrial press.
The third part of the exhibition includes pieces from the Love Songs series, featuring records, books and sculptures.
According to Arad, he had already explored the technique of crushing cars in his 2013 exhibition In Reverse at Design Museum Holon, which he also designed.
“I exhibited six Fiat 500s there, transformed by industrial presses from functional three-dimensional cars into useless, two-dimensional objects hanging on the wall.”
What and How Did You Work on During the Past Year, Under the Impact and Restrictions of COVID-19?
“My studio team consists of twenty people, and we have been working from home for more than a year. I realized that things change, and not everything is as self-evident as we thought.
“I managed to complete many projects during the pandemic, working with workshops and galleries entirely through Zoom. The Mercedes piece currently being exhibited in Israel was something I saw in real life for the first time—not on Zoom—at an exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, and I wouldn’t change a thing about it.”
During the previous year, Arad also began experimenting with weaving. Inspired by covers draped over cars in the street, he collaborated with renowned British automaker Morgan to design a woven cover for one of its models, intended for display at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.
During our Zoom conversation, he showed me a video of a dummy car model he had built in his garden from objects he had around the house, in order to demonstrate how the cover would look.
Arad approached the celebrated London tailoring house Huntsman to create a tailored cover for another car he had built, this time from automobile parts supplied by Morgan.
Because of the pandemic, the Royal Academy exhibition was postponed, and the car—a piece of art in its own right—was displayed in the window of the prestigious tailoring house.
Continuing his exploration of weaving, Arad presented an exhibition in Los Angeles titled Don’t Fuck with the Mouse, featuring four handwoven tapestries inspired by Mickey Mouse. He used them to cover artworks by celebrated artists including Damien Hirst, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg.
He later created a woven cover for Michelangelo’s Taddei Tondo, held in the Royal Academy collection, and produced a copy engraved with the words “Absolutely Not for Sale.” The work was sold at Phillips for £138,600.
Where Does Your Inspiration Come From?
“Inspiration comes from everything around you. It can be something you saw lying on the pavement, a book you read, an exhibition you visited or music you heard.
“You are also inspired by work you have done in the past. When you are working, many ideas emerge around you, and you have to choose which one to focus on. But all the other ideas that appear along the way may also be worth returning to.
“There is no shortage of ideas. The challenge is knowing which ones deserve your time—and which ones don’t.”
What Are You More—an Artist, Designer or Architect?
“The answer to that question lies in the title of my exhibition, No Discipline, which was shown in 2008 at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and later at MoMA in New York.
“The title can be interpreted in two ways: it describes my temperament, as someone who is undisciplined and dislikes conventions, and it also reflects the fact that my work is not confined to a single field.
“I have no honorary membership in any of these disciplines, and I don’t need a passport to move from design to art or from art to architecture. I move freely between them and believe in creative freedom without definitions.
“It is amazing to begin with sketches for a building, work with numerous people and authorities, obtain approvals, oversee the construction and eventually see people going to work inside a building you designed.
“On the other hand, it is also fun to attend an event and see someone wearing earrings you designed.
“The purpose and constraints of each field are very different. When I design a piece of furniture for mass production or plan a building, there is a great deal of negotiation with outside parties. When I create an artwork in the studio, I don’t consult anyone.”
Architectural Projects
Arad’s major project at the time of the interview was the design of a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust near the Palace of Westminster in London, a project he won together with British architect David Adjaye.
The above-ground structure consists of a series of bronze elements through which visitors pass as they descend into the underground section of the site, where a Holocaust museum and learning center is planned.
In Israel, Arad designed the entrance hall of the Israeli Opera at the Tel Aviv Performing Arts Center. In 2010, Design Museum Holon, also designed by Arad, opened to the public.
The museum building is composed of a system of sweeping, weathered metal ribbons in shades of brown, orange and red, creating a structure unlike anything else in the Israeli landscape. The building became an international design icon and received an innovation and design award from luxury travel magazine Condé Nast.
At the time of the interview, Beit Shulamit Cancer Center at HaEmek Medical Center in Afula was under construction based on Arad’s design. He was also working on an office building at the entrance to Jerusalem, near the International Convention Center.
In Tel Aviv, together with architect Avner Yashar, Arad designed the prestigious ToHa office tower on Totzeret HaAretz Street. Alongside the existing 29-story tower, the 63-story ToHa 2 was then planned for construction and undergoing the approval process.
Many Designers See You as a Role Model. What Quality Helped You Get Where You Are Today?
“I never liked doing what people expected me to do. I was always interested in creating things that were new and different.
“I designed a bicycle that could be ridden without wheels and an uneven ping-pong table with a ‘belly’ in the middle, which slows down the game.
“I’ve never had much affection for conventions.”
Who Has Influenced You?
“Great people from many different fields. For example, artist Marcel Duchamp, singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, author Joseph Heller, sculptor Alexander Calder, photographer and artist Man Ray, and many others.”
What Do You Do in Your Spare Time?
“I like playing ping-pong and the word game Snatch. Over the past year, because of the pandemic, I also walked a great deal around my neighborhood and discovered some wonderful places.”
What Is Your Dream?
“I’m working on a project that is still a surprise, and I hope it comes to fruition. Usually, I manage to make the things I dream about happen.
“Beyond that, I hope everything will be all right and that we can return to normality—that this bizarre pandemic will finally be behind us. I know that in Israel people think it already is, but elsewhere in the world it isn’t yet.”
Finally, What Advice Would You Give a Young Designer Who Wants to Become the Next Ron Arad?
“Don’t be the next anybody. Be yourself.
“If you have it in you and you are good at what you do, go and reinvent yourself—and show the world new and original things that nobody has done before.”
