[stag_intro]Last Thursday in Art School we watched an old BBC Imagine on the Australian designer Marc Newson. He makes you question whether design has to have a purpose or just look good.[/stag_intro] His work is very typical of the design and art market. He generally works on furniture, his first successful piece was the Lockheed Lounge as shown in the picture above. This lounge chair was ‘never meant to be comfortable’ he says, it was inspired to look like a ‘blob of mercury’. This at the time could only be achieved using aircraft construction, rivets and sheet aluminium.

Marc Newson does design more functional things, in fact he’s pretty much designed everything from dish driers to spacecraft. To quote ‘If you can’t do that, you’re not a good designer’. I prefer his functional more utilitarian designs like his seats for the Quantas A380, they seem more considered and less materialistic. Honestly, I have never really understood furniture basically made to be never used. This just seems to remove the point of the object, to me a well used object is a well designed object. Yes, a good product is a desirable product – thats basically Apples ethos. Unlike Apples products, Marc Newson’s Furniture is unusable and uncomfortable. I think this distinguishes the line between Art and Design.

I do admire him for stretching the boundaries in manufacturing technology. His marble tables and chairs made from one single block of marble are beautiful. Linking to my previous post, he does seem to care about skilled workers and values their time and effort for the way they can manipulate metal and stone. However, I do wonder what his thoughts on sustainability are considering the amount of waste marble create from these processes. You can’t be good at everything though can you…

[stag_button url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoS71sBKESI” style=”light-blue” size=”small” type=”round” target=”_self”]BBC Imagine: Marc Newson – Urban Spaceman[/stag_button] [stag_button url=”http://www.marc-newson.com/default.aspx” style=”light-blue” size=”small” type=”round” target=”_self”]Marc Newson Website[/stag_button]