![]() Our first meeting to talk about the (Red) project had been set for the Apple headquarters in Cupertino, where Newson had gone for several days’ work with Ive. With the (Red) auction approaching, however, Apple softened its hard-line stance, at least somewhat. to speak to me on the record, or to let me into the studio. We’ve had conversations about his work over the last several years that have never led to a full-fledged interview because Apple’s P.R. Ive rarely appears in public or gives interviews-even in Apple’s famous product launches, he usually shows up on a video-and his company design studio in Cupertino is harder to get into than the Pentagon. We were meeting in the Royal Suite partly because Ive was staying in a more conventional room down the hall, but just as much, I suspect, because that is how Apple does things: elaborately and curiously. (The Steinway appears to be entirely white, but when you lift its lid, the underside turns out to be painted an intense, brilliant red, while the pitcher has a red enameled interior.) A few other items, such as a circa-1990 Russian cosmonaut’s space suit and a sketch for one of Elvis Presley’s stage costumes from 1970, are objects Ive and Newson found and decided that they liked well enough to include in the auction as is. Several others, like a customized Steinway grand piano and a Georg Jensen silver pitcher, are variations on existing objects that Ive and Newson both liked and got the manufacturers to agree to tweak for the sale, generally by adding something red. Two one-of-a-kind pieces-a metal desk and a special Leica camera-were designed by Ive and Newson in collaboration, specially for the auction. In an effort that is part connoisseurship, part creativity, and part curatorship, the two designers have assembled a group of more than 40 objects that will be auctioned at Sotheby’s in New York on November 23 to benefit Product (Red), the eccentrically punctuated charity set up by Bono and Bobby Shriver in 2006 to support international efforts to fight the H.I.V. Ive, Apple’s chief of design, had come from the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, in Silicon Valley, to meet with Newson, his close friend, who lives in London and runs his own independent design firm, Marc Newson Ltd., to put the finishing touches on the first project they have ever collaborated on. The suite’s deep-blue dining room, which seats 10, looks as if it had been conceived as a place to sign a treaty. In the stiff formality of this sprawling, ornate suite there’s barely a hint even of the Art Deco that brings many of the other rooms at Claridge’s out of the 19th century. The walls are not white, the carpets are not gray, the furniture is not by Mies van der Rohe. The Royal Suite is the opposite of sleek. ![]() ![]() The Royal Suite at Claridge’s in London is not where you would expect to be meeting with Jonathan Ive, the man who designed the iPod, the iPhone, the MacBook Air, and just about everything else that has made Apple the temple of holy minimalism, or with Marc Newson, the industrial designer whose airplane interiors, chairs, watches, jewelry, and clothing have made him, along with Ive, among the most influential modern designers in the world. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |