So you see your space as an organism that’s constantly changing?
Everything you see here I did. It’s not for display—this is how we work. The space is constantly changing through 3D-printed models, new limited editions I’m having built, objects. It’s like a living organism, yeah.
When I go to peoples’ studios sometimes and they’re dry as a bone, I couldn’t imagine working there. If you go to Brancusi’s studio in Paris outside the Pompidou, it’s a reconstruction, but it’s such a beautiful space—there’s an aura about it. I always thought, “Wow, what an amazing place to be, just to have your sculptural design around you.”
I’ve always been somebody who loves form and is totally engaged with it from a sculptural point of view, in the British realm—by which I mean people like Tony Cragg and Henry Moore. The thing is, if you take “design,” the word means to resonate something. It’s not a question of function only, although that’s incredibly relevant these days, even more relevant relative to environmental and ecological issues. Where my mind is set right now—and you’ll feel it in the studio—is that everything I’ve been preaching for 20 to 30 years is starting to come my way: organic essentialism, organic design, new materials, appropriation and research, lightness, dematerialization, 3-D printing, the incredible three-dimensional, fourth-dimensional realm that you get in architecture, fashion, design, automotive, across the board. We aren’t going back to this rather staid minimalism. What you have to understand is that minimalism without meaning is just cheap, and if you look at how things are made, it’s a hell of an investment to be able to create form. It’s very easy to produce form that’s uncomfortable or imbalanced.
If you put together everything I just talked about, you get some beauty. You get a form that is so emotionally sincere—like nature, which is a very universal language. I’m not in the game of popular culture. I just don’t like that mulch of society. It’s not because I don’t care about it; it’s just that I think individualism is everything. Rarity, uniqueness, individualism is a luxury these days.