Ron Arad | Artist | Royal Academy of Arts

Ron Arad RA (b. 1951)

Born in Tel Aviv in 1951, educated at the Jerusalem Academy of Art and later at the Architectural Association in London, Ron Arad co-founded with Caroline Thorman in 1981 the design and production studio One Off. Later, in 1989, Ron Arad Associates architecture and design practice was established, and from 1994 to 1999 Ron Arad Studio - a design and production unit – was formed in Como, Italy. In 2008, Ron Arad Architects was formed alongside Ron Arad Associates to concentrate on larger architectural commissions.

Ron Arad was awarded the Royal Designer for Industry (RDI) in recognition of his “sustained excellence in aesthetic and efficient design for industry” in 2002. He was Professor of Design Product at the Royal College of Art in London from 1997 until 2009. Ron Arad was awarded the 2011 London Design Week Medal for design excellence. He was elected as a Royal Academician in 2013.

Ron Arad’s constant experimentation with the boundaries and possibilities of materials, from metals to composites, and his radical re-conception of the form and structure of objects and buildings, large and small, has put him at the forefront of contemporary design and architecture.

In 2011 Arad opened Curtain Call at the Roundhouse London, a suspended curtain of over 5000 silicon rods acting as a canvas for live performance, film and animation, a concept that travelled as 720° to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Israel in 2012. The exhibition No Discipline opened at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2008 and travelled to New York’s MOMA in August 2010. Restless opened at the Barbican Centre in London in February 2010. In 2014 he showed In Reverse at the Design Museum Holon and the Pinacotteca Agnelli, Torino.

Arad’s public sculptures include Big Blue in Canary Wharf (2000), Evergreen! in Roppongi Hills, Tokyo (2003), Kesher, in Tel Aviv (2011) and Vortext in Seoul, South Korea (2011). Architectural projects include the foyer at the Tel Aviv Opera House (1994), Hotel Puerta America, Madrid (2005), Hotel Duomo, Rimini (2006), Mediacite shopping centre in Liege, Belgium (2009), and the award-winning Design Museum Holon, Israel (2010).

Profile

Royal Academician

Designer

Born: 1951 in Tel Aviv, Israel

Nationality: British

Elected RA: 12 December 2012

Gender: Male

Visit Ron Arad RA (b. 1951)'s website

Preferred media: Architecture, Furniture design, Industrial design, and Sculpture

Works by Ron Arad in the RA Collection

4 results

Works associated with Ron Arad in the RA Collection

1 results

Anne-Katrin Purkiss

Ron Arad RA Elect, November 1994

Camera: hasselblad 500 c/m (scanned from negative ilford delta 400asa). printed on hahnemühle fine art paper (pearl).

My studio life

Welcome to Camden

“We moved into this building in Camden back in 1991. It’s an old dairy farm so there would have been cows and horses in the yard.”

© Eamonn McCabe

"We worked here as we built here"

“It’s a crumbling old building – the walls are very powdery and it’s a bit of a maze. Its life expectancy was ten years, and that was nearly 30 years ago. When we arrived, I couldn’t help myself from renovating it all. We worked here as we built here – moving the drawing table from one place to another. One day it was decided it was finished.”

© Eamonn McCabe

Then the computers moved in

“We used to have a metalwork studio here, full of fumes and noise. Then the welders left for Italy and the computers gradually moved in.”

© Eamonn McCabe

"I never wanted to become a craftsman"

“I never really wanted to become a craftsman. Since moving towards technology, we’ve gained more time, and the capacity to do other work, but lost that proximity to the tool box. I used to have dirty fingernails! That said, I still do a lot of work in the studios – we use one outside Maastricht and another by Como in Italy.”

© Eamonn McCabe

Curtain Call

“These silicon rods hanging from the ceiling were tests for a project called Curtain Call that we did at The Roundhouse just up the road in 2011.”

© Eamonn McCabe

Gomley

“The figure in the corner we’ve named Gomley (without the ‘r’). In terms of dimensions he’s the average of all the people in the office, and we use him to imprint furniture and ensure we’re working at the right scale.”

© Eamonn McCabe

Immortalising cars

“I’ve always been interested in cars. I had an exhibition recently called ‘In Reverse’ at Design Museum Holon in Israel in which I showed cars crushed like pressed flowers. I was asked why I was destroying these cars. But I’m not destroying them; I’m immortalising them.”

© Eamonn McCabe

Ping pong

“I made this ping pong table with a concave surface because it makes for longer rallies. I showed a different version at the RA Summer Exhibition in 2008. Sir Anthony Caro told me it was a marvellous sculpture and asked if I’d ever thought of actually playing ping pong on it. He didn’t realise it was a ping pong table!”

© Eamonn McCabe

Business decisions

“A few years ago I made a conscious decision not ever to grow above 25 people because, at a certain point, instead of a business working for you, you work for the business.”

© Eamonn McCabe

I never really wanted to become a craftsman.

Ron Arad RA

Gallery

Ron Arad RA, Thumbprint, 2007.

bronze.

Ron Arad RA, Ping Pong, 2007.

Photo: John Bodkin Dawkins.

Ron Arad RA, Mediacite, Liege.

Photo: Marc Detiffe.

Ron Arad RA, Cage Sans Frontieres.

Photo: Luca Fascini.

Ron Arad RA, 720 Degrees, Jerusalem.

Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg.

Ron Arad RA, Pressed Flower, In Reverse.

Ron Arad RA, Hotel Duomo, Rimini.

Photo: Alberto Ferrero.

Ron Arad RA, Design Museum Holon.

Photo: Asa Bruno.

Ron Arad RA, Safe Hands Toronto.