Ron Arad Israel, b. 1951

‘I am not very good at doing what other people expect me to do. I don’t have the discipline.’

Ron Arad is a British designer who was born in 1951 in Tel Aviv. Trained at the Jerusalem Academy of Art, Ron Arad then studied at the Architectural Association School in London.

Ron Arad became famous in the early 1980s thanks to his Rover chair, a seat he created by assembling a steel frame and a leather car seat found in a scrapyard.

Although ready-made, each of these chairs were unique, ‘one-offs’ – and One Off would also be the name he gave to his first company.

In the mid 1980s, he discovered the virtues of sheet steel. Thin and flexible from the rolling mill, it possesses no real mechanical strength. Once bent or folded, however, it stiffens and can resist efforts to compress, flex or twist it.

Since then, he has endlessly explored new technologies, using materials such as plastic, polished steel, aluminium and carbon. 

Free-spirited and without constraints or borders, Ron Arad navigates between design, architecture and the visual arts.

In 1997 he was appointed head of the Department of Design Products at the Royal College of Art in London. 

In 2008 the Centre Pompidou presented a retrospective of his work entitled No Discipline.