I recently watched a TED talk by Ross Lovegrove who is an organic essentialist industrial designer. I really like his work and that of his mentor Henry Moore. Lovegrove looks up to James D.Watson and Leonardo daVinci. I recommend this TED talk if you believe that the human race would be wise to take lessons from natures fat free, essential design style (as Lovegrove puts it). One of my favourite quotes is “Strangeness is a consequence of innovative thinking”. Some of the concepts he talks about are:
- humanization of artificial light
- earth centric design
- organic aesthetics
- organic essentialism
- nature liberating form
He talked about Japan having no distinction between fine and functional art. I did not need to be convinced by this comment. I fell in love with the place on my first visit to Tokyo the super city.
And his design style:
- Make holistic forms and break them up into what you need to build the form
- Make organic things which are essential, remove the bits that aren’t needed by the design. He refers to nature drilling holes in things to remove superfluous elements and parts.
- “Fat free” is the consumer phrase he uses to describe this. Fat free design and fat free natural forms.
More can be found at Ross Lovegroves website or in his book Supernatural: The Work of Ross Lovegrove
