Born in 1951 in Tel Aviv, Israel, Ron Arad now lives in London and works as a designer and architect. After aborted art studies in Jerusalem, Arad moved to London in 1973 where he studied architecture, before in 1981 his career as a furniture designer began with the Rover Chair. Typical for on Arad's designs are the artisan production methods: his furniture, often being formed from welded steel sheet, broke with aesthetic conventions and surprised with its sculptural aesthetic. In addition to furniture design for Vitra, Kartell and Moroso Ron Arad has also designed for the likes of, for example, Kenzo or Swarowski. One of his great architectural works is the Bauhaus Museum in Tel Aviv, which was opened in 2008. Ron Arad also taught and teaches product and furniture design.
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...
...In his Ron Arad monograph Restless Furniture Deyan Sudjic notes that the Sticks & Stones furniture crusher Arad developed for the exhibition Nouvelles Tendances staged by the Centre de Creation Industriel Paris in 1987 was itself only saved from the crusher through the post-exhibition "intervention of a friendly Swiss furniture manufacturer... As if confirmation were needed, the Sticks & Stones crusher greets visitors to the Vitra Design Museum Schaudepot exhibition Ron Arad: Yes to the Uncommon!...
...Featuring over 250 copper based projects by artists such as Joseph Beuys or Anselm Kiefer, architects including James Stirling and Renzo Piano over design objects by, amongst others, Tom Dixon, Ron Arad and Oskar Zieta, and on to a final section looking at more technical uses of copper, including IT and communications applications in addition to copper's anti-bacterial properties, Copper Crossing will seek to explain the contemporary relevance of this most ancient of materials...
...As with so much of Ron Arad's commercially available, serially produced, furniture designs the story of Tom Vac starts a long, long way away from the domestic conformity one has become accustomed to seeing them in... The first commission came from Ron Arad, was unveiled during Milan Design Week 1997 and involved a stack of 100 aluminum chairs Arad had specially developed for the project...
...From the likes of Ron Arad (Tel Aviv, 1951) over Arik Levy (Tel Aviv, 1963) or Jair Straschnow (Rehovot, 1965) and on to the ever reliable flow of high-quality graduates from internationally recognised institutions such as the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design Jerusalem, including the London based design studio Raw Edges (Yael Mer and Shay Alkalay, both Tel Aviv 1976), Israeli designers have made and continue to make an important contribution to the evolution of global design...
