Ron Arad: rejecting labels, free designer

10/18/2021

Israeli architect and designer Ron Arad (1951) occupies a prominent place in the gotha of contemporary designers. Having arrived on the British design scene in the "Post-Punk" years, before quickly gaining international notoriety, Ron Arad will imprint a unique style, marked in large part by experimentation with forms and materials. In 2008, the Centre Pompidou devoted a 1st^er monographic exhibition to him under the title: "No Discipline". This article aims to explain this title that Ron Arad claims through his creations among the most outstanding.

Ron Arad leaves his country to train as an architect in London. In 1979, he graduated from the Architectural Association School of Architecture, having had the French-Swiss architect Bernard Tschumi as his teacher and the late Zaha Hadid (1950-2016) as his colleague. He founded his 1^rst studio: One Off Ltd in 1981, in collaboration with Caroline Thormann. Success came quickly for Ron Arad with the Rover (1981) and Well-Tempered Chair (1986) seating.

The Rover Armchair is simply a Land Rover seat salvaged by the artist from a junkyard paired with 2 Kee-Klamp structural elements to stabilize it. In his early days, Ron Arad was quite influenced by Marcel Duchamp's Ready-Made, a 1^er clue that already explains his refusal to be confined to one discipline in particular: architect, design, or even art. As he says himself, "I was always more interested in Marcel Duchamp than Marcel Breuer. More by Claes Oldenburg than by Mies van der Roh." As for the Well Tempered chair, it shows the designer's inclination for misappropriation, this unusual seat revisiting the codes of the club chair.

*Vintage Rover Chair, design Ron Arad for One Off, 198*

*Well Tempered Chair, design Ron Arad for Vitra Editions, 1986. Incredible piece formed from 4 strips of tempered steel and screwed together with bolts*
© Wright 20

Ron Arad later asserts a style marked by a love of curved, pure lines. He rejects the straight line and angles. His FPE (Fantastic Plastic Elastic) chair created in 1997 for Kartell, and especially the Bookworm storage shelf (1993), which became a worldwide bestseller that made him internationally known, are perfect examples. With Bookworm, Ron Arad breaks free from the traditional codes of horizontal or vertical storage: his creation defies gravity and undulates in space like a coil.

FPE chair, design Ron Arad for Kartell, 1997. Aluminum and translucent plastic
© Lineadue

Left: *Bookworm shelf, design Ron Arad for Kartell, 1994. Originally conceived as a soft steel object, Kartell produced an injection-molded PVC version 1 year later, for a planetary box...*
Right: *Bookworm storage tier, in an alternate spatial arrangement. Each user manipulates the tape to create a unique shape. Arad invents the "serpentine"*
© Art Design Trend

*Zigo armchair, design Ron Arad for Driade, 1992. Stainless steel tubular frame and natural rattan shell. Zigo is another example of Ron Arad's love of sinuous forms*
© Contemporary Creation

Ron Arad is a protean designer. Trained as an architect, he gives a new lesson in the use of curved lines by designing and drawing the Holon Design Museum, the 1st museum dedicated to design in Israel opened in 2010. Created in collaboration with architect Bruno Asa, this museum is a unique work that features 5 monumental ribbons that wrap the building for an impressive result. In contrast to the international architectural style stemming from the Bauhaus, Ron Arad's architecture is decidedly unruly...

Holon Design Museum, design and architecture: Ron Arad and Bruno Asa. The ribbons that encircle the building are made of Corten steel. Original fact: they take on shades of rust varying in intensity depending on the daylight!

But where Ron Arad's style stands out the most is in his willingness, beginning in the late 1980s and early 1990s, to create sculptural design. Ron Arad experiments and plays with materials to give them unpredictable forms. The result is new and unconventional pieces that make him a designer-sculptor. A refusal of labels - the famous "No Discipline" - that suits this bulimic designer very well. Ron Arad knows no boundaries between art and design.

This taste for sculptural design can be found in his work "Rolling Volume", in which Ron Arad designs large rocking chairs that become, as the materials he uses evolve, veritable pieces of furniture-sculpture with reflective surfaces. Ron Arad is thus a true "technician" of the material: his original pieces evolve with the technology and materials used.

Rolling Volume Chair, design: Ron Arad, here a piece made in stainless steel. The 1st piece produced by Ron Arad in 1988 was a rough hollow structure with visible welds that held the curved steel pieces
© Denver Art Museum

Left: *MT3 model rocking chair, design Ron Arad for Driade, 2004. A work on the volume obtained thanks to a rotational molding that leaves a hollowed-out interior space. The block is made of polyethylene* ©Archi Products
Right: *"Voido" model rocking chair, Ron Arad design for Magis, 2000s. The piece is made of black lacquered polyethylene*

Model MT3 rocking chair in a classic interior, design Ron Arad for Driade, 2004. A true piece of furniture-sculpture. The functionality of the object is not the 1st concern of the designer who experiments without complexes, nor rules... the famous "No Discipline"
©Archi Products

*"Voido" rocking chairs, design Ron Arad for Magis*
© Silvera

Another iconic seating series in Ron Arad's work demonstrates his play with volume and material. In 1986, Ron Arad had already had fun revisiting the club chair with his Well Tempered seat. 2 years later, in 1988, he created Big Easy, a new interpretation of the club chair with a vision of visually soft furniture and full volumes. While the 1st^er version of Big Easy is made of steel, Ron Arad, true to his method, will over the years propose different variations of Big Easy in relation to the evolution of materials and techniques.

Ge-Off Sphere Suspension, Not Made by Hand Not Made in China Collection, design: Ron Arad, 2000. To arrive at such an object, Ron Arad collaborated with the American rapid prototyping company MATERIALISE following a CO2 laser powder sintering process: the SLS (Laser Sintering)
© Centre Pompidou

All Light Long Table, design Ron Arad, Paperwork series. Ron Arad uses a composite material of carbon fiber and honeycomb structure here. In the end, the material of the table is extremely strong and the piece of furniture itself very light!
© Art Design Tendance

Oh Void 2 rocking chair, design Ron Arad, 2004. To create this exceptional piece, Ron Arad used a material that was still little known at the time, Corian ^®, at the initiative of the American chemist DuPont de Nemours, who wanted to bring this material to light. Corian ^®, a plastic material based on acrylic resin allows him to make this translucent piece in which fine stripes are drawn.
© The Gallery Mourmans. Photo Erik and Petra Hesmerg

<! Below are some examples of pieces made by Ron Arad that still make him a very influential figure in contemporary design today.

In 2019, for the champagne house Ruinart, Ron Arad designed 3 crumpled pewter champagne buckets... As a desire to abuse the material and reminiscent of his work done in 2013: Pressed Flowers - principle of dried flowers -. The artist, rather than the designer, had presented a series of Fiat 500 cars flattened by a pneumatic metal press... So, is it really possible to choose a label to qualify Ron Arad's work!!!