marc newson

MARC NEWSON (1963-) is known for his funkily futuristic, but technically rigorous approach to design. Born in Sydney, he has worked from studios in Tokyo, Paris and, now, London, to design everything from a private jet to a Ford car. "The thing that has always driven me as a designer," he once said, "is feeling pissed off by the shitty stuff around me and wanting to make it better."

As a child, and later an art student, in Australia, Newson had no notion of what it meant to be an industrial designer.

His break-through piece was the 1986 Lockheed Lounge, the realisation of his image of "a fluid metallic form, like a giant blob of mercury" based "loosely, very loosely" on the 18th century chaises longue he had seen in reproductions of French paintings. Newson made it himself in "a couple of miserable months" of hammering hundreds of aluminium panels on to an home-made fibreglass mould. After the Lockheed Lounge was exhibited at a Sydney gallery, photographs of it appeared in magazines all over the world.

For the next few years, he eked out a living from odd jobs and grants while making prototypes of a few pieces. After a second hand-made metal piece, the 1987 Pod of Drawers, Newson adopted the sleek, luxuriantly industrial style which would become his signature: starting with the 1988 Embryo Chair, another reworking of the orgone, this time covered in brightly-coloured wetsuit fabric. He revisited the orgone and Aussie watersports in the 1989 Orgone Lounge, which was shaped like a surfboard in homage to Sydney surfies.

That year, Newson moved to Tokyo to work for Teruo Kurosaki, the Japanese design entrepreneur. Freed from the usual young designer’s struggle for funds, Newson put some old designs, like the Embryo Chair, into production and developed new ones, like the 1990 Wicker Chair. Kurosaki exhibited his work at the Milan Furniture Fair, thereby launching Newson in Europe. With commissions from Cappellini and Flos, Newson left Tokyo for Paris in 1992.

He eked out a living– "people thought I was loaded because I got a lot of press, but I was still strapped for cash" – by selling limited editions of sculptural pieces, such as the 1992 Event Horizon Table, and designing restaurants, like Coast in London (1995) and Komed in Cologne (1996). When he was paid a windfall $20,000 for designing a Shiseido perfume bottle, Newson splashed out on his then-dream car, an Aston Martin DB4.