Unbounded Creativity

A glimpse into Ron Arad’s whimsical world where magic happens one curve at a time.

This is northwest London where Ron Arad works and lives. As one of the most influential multidisciplinary figures of our time, the UK-based visionary needs little introduction really. For over forty years he has blurred the contours between art, architecture, sculpture and design through constant exploration of curves, lines, volumes and concepts combined with an incessant experimentation of materials and technological gimmicks. He is known for record-breaking auctions of one-off studio pieces. Collaborations with the most iconic industrial and fashion design brands. And a major retrospective: No Discipline, held at the Museum of Modern Arts in New York and at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Clearly, he can’t sit still.

With a painter mother, a sculptor father, a musician brother, what else could he become? In childhood, each time he showed his mother one of his drawings, she said: “You will make a great architect.” As if to protect him from the pains of an artist’s life. He studied at the Academy of Arts Bezalel in Jerusalem, then moved to London where he entered the School of Architectural Association, despite not submitting a portfolio, as all prospective students did, but showing up with a 6B pencil and telling the commission he was there because, not he, but his mother wanted him to be an architect.

Rules are not something Ron follows, and partly why he didn’t become a full-time architect, constantly juggling between building regulations and clients’ briefs. The boundless limitations of art suited him much more. An approach he managed, in his own way, to transfer to design. His inception in 1981 was marked by his creation of the Rover chair. Assembled from two ready-mades, with more of Picasso’s Toro and Marcel Duchamp in the back of his mind than today’s concept of recycling. A chair that earned him the label of promising new designer from Rolf Fehlbaum of Vitra. “Whatever that means – says Ron – a week earlier I didn’t even know I was a designer.” Definitions too, imply boundaries.

In 1989 he co-founded Ron Arad Associates with Caroline Thorman. Thirty years on, his studio in Chalk Farm, an old piano factory, is “filled with junk” according to Ron. Prototypes, models and finished creations populate a space that is controlled chaos. An apt reflection of himself, relentlessly jumping from one project to another. In the early days, the studio was teeming with metalworkers welding and bringing to life Ron’s sketches, but then it was “at risk of turning into an artisan’s workshop” so Ron replaced the machinery with computers and electronic pens. At any given time, multiple projects are being developed by him and his small team of designers and architects. “It’s a progressive kindergarten” complete with a stainless-steel ping pong table, with ends curving upwards to make rallies last longer, naturally a design by Ron.

A short ride in his prized Nissan S-Cargo, “a Japanese car that has the simplest shape, made with a compass and a ruler” takes to his residence and home studio, set up during lockdown. On the ground level, the studio is encased by a Corten steel extension with a ceiling in glass blocks. A clever play of floating umbrellas, held together with magnets that attach to the metal beams, becomes a canopy for shielding his desk from the sun. At the centre, a mosaic carpet and empty space. This is where (he shows me in a video) he recreated, no differently from child’s play, the silhouette of a Morgan car with cushions and objects such as his Gaetano Pesce chair, to test the woven car blanket he was developing. He continues with images of an modern jacquard loom at work then switches to an artisan in Senegal hand-weaving polyethylene cords on a Modou chair. “This is weaving and this is weaving too,” says Ron, leaving the jarring contrast of production that creates equal beauty up in the air.

In his verdant lawn, a sculptural furniture garden, the black squiggly Modou, with a frame made of repurposed metal of oil drums, is one of the recent collections Ron has developed in Dakar with Patrizia Moroso as part of their long collaboration and friendship. “Every day is an anniversary with Moroso,” he says.

After so many years, what keeps fuelling his imagination? “Wanting to create things that did not exist until now.” What do his diverse conceptions have in common? “Curiosity.” And a good dose of sense of humour as suggested by the playful names he picks for his objects. Ron quotes Oscar Wilde: “‘There are only two types of people: they are either charming or boring.’ I use these same words to describe objects of art and design.” Then he brings up Useful, Beautiful, Love, an ingenious rocking chair made from a huge Cedar trunk. Engraved a quote by William Morris: “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” So what’s the deal between form and function? “They are good friends.”

A rare peek into Ron’s private sphere gives a feeling of calm and warmth. Maybe he does slow down after all. Milo, his toddler grandson engages him in play. “He has already surpassed me,” says Ron smiling, while describing the boy’s vivid imaginative games. But doesn’t he too still feel like a young child playing construction and pushing boundaries? “I’ve been sketching and creating since I was eight years old, but now I’m starting to realize I’m not that young anymore.” We can only keep on watching how far Ron’s inventive ideas will go. For now, it seems that underneath that hat, his joy of creating is nowhere close to abating.