4 FEATURES
By Wessel Stoltz
#DESIGNER
Welcome to the Newson world
#DESIGNER order
By the time most of us reach the age of 51
we’d have had a few kids, a midlife-crisis
and a car crash or two.
Having just recently turned 51, Marc Newson, on the other hand, had been named as
one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people (in the same year as Bill Gates,
Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela…),
been awarded the CBE by Her Majesty
Queen Elizabeth II and holds Adjunct
Professorships at both Sydney College of
the Arts and Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
Born in Sydney, Australia, Newson spent
much of his youth travelling through
Europe and Asia and started
experimenting with furniture design while
studying jewellery and sculpture at Sydney
College of the Arts where he graduated in
1984.
Two years on, the Australian Crafts Council
awarded him a grant which he used to stage
his first exhibition showing off the Lockheed Lounge chair which stole the show. It
has, in fact, proved so popular that in 2009
it sold for a cool £1 000 000 at an auction
run by Phillips de Pury & Company and has
up to date set three consecutive world records at auctions…
5 FEATURES
yachts. Recently Newson even collaborated with Beretta, designing and making
a streamlined side-by-side 486 shotgun
with some of the finest engravings ever
seen on a firearm.
A long-time friend of Newson,
Jonathan Ive (yup, the Jonathan Ive from
Apple…) said in an article in the New
"I THINK MARC IS FAIRLY
PEERLESS NOW. MARC'S
FORMS ARE OFTEN
IMITATED, BUT WHAT
OTHER DESIGNERS
SELDOM IMITATE IS HIS
PREOCCUPATION WITH
MATERIALS AND
PROCESSES"
– JONATHAN IVE
York Times “I think Marc is fairly peerless now. Marc’s forms are often imitated,
but what other designers
seldom imitate is his preoccupation with
materials and processes.”
And it is this peerlessness that attracted
furniture behemoths Vitra and Cappellini
to collaborate with Newson.
His distinctive, curvilinear designs are
often described as futuristic, sexy, witty and original and combined with the
tongue-in-cheek names he gives his
works, such as ‘bucky’ and ‘super guppy’,
his designs have been catapulted into the
ultra-hip world of pop-culture appearing
in Madonna’s videos and even an Austin
Powers film set.
Felt Leisure Chair by Cappellini
Marc Newson really isn’t a desiger – he’s
a phenomenon, and lucky for us, a
recurring one at that!
Orgone Chaise Longue by Cappellini
Embryo Chair by Cappellini
BRINGING THE PEACE
AND QUIET OF THE
OUTDOORS INSIDE.
Skip forward a few years, and stints living and working in Tokyo and Paris, Marc
decided to make London his new home in
1997. Here he and business partner Benjamin de Haan set up Marc Newson Ltd.
Described as the most influential designer of his generation, Newson has used his
creative clout to perfect designs across a
wide range of disciplines, creating everything from furniture and household objects
to bicycles, cars, commercial aircrafts and
GINKGO WALL PANELS
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