Supernatural: The Work of Ross Lovegrove

(Hardback)

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This book is the first monograph on the product designer Ross Lovegrove. Written by the designer himself, with a forward by Paola Antonelli, it presents a complete overview of the designer's career, featuring realized and unrealized project. While the main texts explains Ross Lovegrove's philosophy and way of working, the products descriptions reveal the main feature and characteristic of every project. This book will present the work of Ross Lovegrove, one of the most interesting and fascinating individuals working in contemporary design. His work includes a wide range of products from furniture to high-tech products, from water bottles to airplane seats and explores the possibility of realizing sculptural and organic shapes through modern technology and material. Born in 1958, Lovegrove studied industrial design at Manchester Polytechnic and at the Royal College of Art in London. At the beginning of the eighties he started working for the industrial design consultancy Frogdesign in Germany, where he was assigned to projects for Apple and Sony. After this experience he became an in-house designer for Knoll in Paris where he developed different office systems. He went back to England in 1986 where he established his own practice and started to collaborate with the most important design manufacturers such as Kartell, Luceplan and Cappellini. He is currently working on a number of projects in Japan where he enjoys unparalleled success as a European designer. In recent years Ross Lovegrove has worked on a design concept that he likes to define as organic essentialism, inspired by elements and aesthetics taken from the natural world and reshaped in futuristic forms. His interest in this sort of new naturalism, which he terms supernatural, is accompanied by research into new materials, new applications and new methods of production. This combination of archetypal inspiration and up to date technology makes him one of the most interesting and unusual figures in the design world.

Reviews

'beautifully presented - full of nuggets of design wisdom. Super' IDFX Interior Design, April 2004 'tightly edited - provides as much of an insight into [Lovegrove's] future as it does into his past. - Supernatural differs from the usual monograph in its sense of purpose' Blueprint, July 2004 'beautiful exploration of [Lovegrove's] inspiring creations' Daily Telegraph, 10 July 2004 'If there is a prize for the most beautiful book on design, this one has to be in the short list. Phaidon, a publisher noted for quality production, has excelled itself with this silver and white volume that matches the elegance of Lovegrove's creations.' Uptown, April 2005

Author Bio

Paola Antonelli is Curator for the Department of Architecture and Design at the New York Museum of Modern Art. She has been a Contributing Editor for Domus magazine and the Design Editor of Abitare. She has lectured at the University of California, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and has taught across Europe and the United States.