After studying in London and Milan, James Irvine worked at Olivetti in Italy and spent a year at Toshiba in Japan before setting up his own design studio, and was a partner at Sottsass Associati from 1993 to 1997. Beyond his design work James Irvine taught in Karlsruhe, Milan. Among a portfolio of classic product and furniture design, James Irvine also designed more unusual objects as the Mercedes-Benz City Bus for Hanover on the occasion of Expo 2000. Alongside these stand Irvine's furniture, lighting, and product designs in collaboration with leading manufacturers including Thonet, Foscarini, B & B Italia and many, many others.
Designer James Irvine
England An Island; A Notion; A Context According to the Folios of Shakespeare, that most reliable of sources on the (hi)story of England, the (hi)story of furniture design in the lower half of the scepter'd isle begins before the (hi)story of furniture...
...The uniting of the varying landscapes being reinforced by graphic depictions and visualisations of the discussions and understandings as sketched by James Irvine, who in addition had proposed the name Citizen Office, while the evolving acoustics of the office landscape were considered in a sound installation by media artist Walter Giers...
...IMM Cologne kept us busy into February, but the month also saw the opening of an Eileen Gray retrospective in Paris, a visit to the Louis Kahn exhibition at the Vitra Design Museum and the sad passing of James Irvine...
...We once started, but never quite got round to finishing, a post in which we extolled the joys of a dank, snowy day in Leipzig - because it meant we had an excuse to leave our bikes at home and use the James Irvine designed Mercedes-Benz Citaro buses that flow through the city... And on such a dank, snowy day we learn the very sad news of James Irvine's untimely death...
...When we spoke with Thonet creative director James Irvine in Milan he enthused about the number of fascinating items in the Thonet archive...
