Ron Arad is a leading and eminent industrial designer, architect and artist, known for his creative and innovative designs. He was awarded the Royal Designer for Industry (RDI) in recognition of his “sustained excellence in aesthetic and efficient design for industry” in 2002.
Image source: http://www.driade.com/en/designer/ron-arad
About his life
Ron Arad is an Israeli industrial designer, artist, and architect, born in Tel Aviv in 1951, educated at the Jerusalem Academy of Art and later at the Architectural Association in London. After graduating, Ron Arad co-founded with Caroline Thorman the design and production studio One Off in 1981, and later, in 1989, moved on to create Ron Arad Associates (architecture and design practice). In 2008, ultimately, Ron Arad Architects was established alongside Ron Arad Associates.
Image source: https://www.dezeen.com/2016/04/22/ron-arad-moroso-spring-to-mind-exhibition-25-years-collaboration-milan-design-week/
What are Arad’s style main features ?
Ron Arad’s constant experimentation with the boundaries and possibilities of materials, from metals to composites, and his radical re-conception of the form and structure of objects and buildings, large and small, has put him at the forefront of contemporary design and architecture.
During Arad’s practice, design had taken a radical turn as of the 1980s, deconstructing the rigid ideology of the Bauhaus – often by applying a striking sense of humor. Avant-garde designers like Philippe Starck and Ron Arad brazenly borrowed from the “historical closet” of previous styles, using them to biomorphic pieces with whimsical names like Arad’s Big Easy Red Chair, the After Spring Before Summer Chaise Lounge and the Empty Chair.
His early furniture, combining materials associated with the high-tech style and the French objets trouve to produce poetic post-industrial “readymades.” Whether working on furniture or architecture, everything Arad does aims to demonstrate his belief that design has a responsibility to not only have utility, but also be able to surprise and delight.
Image source: http://www.ronarad.co.uk/products/zigo/
What are his most famous creations?
PRODUCT
Some of the early, more celebrated works by Arad include the remarkable Rover Chair, produced by joining together two ready-made pieces, a scrap yard seat of a Rover 200 fused with a frame of Kee-Klamp scaffolding. Other products such as the stereo cast in concrete produced in 1983, and the Tinker chair made by beaten steel, took over the London public of the 80s by rage, the people, overindulged in the spirit of post-punk nihilism and harsh individualism, took a deep fascination to Arad’s methods of fusing used scrapes of materials, and that demonstrated to them, an escape from the infestations of urbanism.
Image source: http://www.ronarad.co.uk/architecture/big-blue/
ARCHITECTURE
Architectural projects include the foyer at the Tel Aviv Opera House (1994), Hotel Puerta America, Madrid (2005), Hotel Duomo, Rimini (2006), Mediacite shopping centre in Liege, Belgium (2009), and the award-winning Design Museum Holon, Israel (2010).
Images source: https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/artist/ron-arad-ra-elect#gallery
Info sources:
https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/artist/ron-arad-ra-elect
https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/artist/ron-arad-ra-elect
