Ron Arad is a British industrial designer and architect. He was born in Israel in 1951 and grew as the son of a painter and a photographer in Tel Aviv. From 1971, he studied at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem and then at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London.
In 1981, together with Carlonie Thorman, he founded his own design studio One Off Ltd. in London. Here, he started designing his own pieces of furniture and producing them manually with simple means. The pieces of furniture were mostly made of steel sheet welded together and characterized by an unconventional, sculptural aesthetics. In 1989, together with the Canadian architect Alison Brooks, he founded the Ron Arad Associates Ltd. and at that time Ron Arad started to produce his furniture designs in series. From 1994 to 1997, Arad was professor for product design at the University of applied Arts in Vienna. Later, he was professor of furniture design and product design at the Royal College of Art in London.
In 1994, "Bookworm" designed by Ron Arad was presented for the first time. This fancy book shelf, produced in a modified synthetic version by the Italian design brand Kartell, is now a modern designer classic and brought Ron Arad his greatest commercial success until now. Arad was the architect of the Bauhaus Museum that opened in Tel Aviv in 2008 and of the first ever design museum in Israel, the Design Museum Holon opened in 2010. The Israeli designer also conceived numerous art works in public spaces, among them the Vortext in Seoul and the Kesher sculpture at the Tel Aviv University.
Ron Arad works are characterized by an experimental approach with materials such as steel, aluminium and polyamid and a radically new concept of shape and structure of his home furnishings, which turns him into a pioneer of contemporary design and contemporary architecture. Ron Arad was honoured with several prizes. In 1994, he was elected Designer of the Year at the Salon du Meuble in Paris, in 2011 he received the London Design Week Medal for outstanding design and in 2013 he became member of the Royal Academy of Arts.
For his own studio, Ron Arad designs numerous limited editions and, besides, he works for diverse big companies in the world of design, among them Kartell, Vitra, Moroso, Driade, Alessi, Cappellini, Cassina and Magis.