Given my proclivity for anagrams, I couldn't resist the congruence of a certain superstar designer's surname and the slick art/design/fashion editorial platform that recently took a tour of his London home.
A space-age aesthetic dominates at casa Newson, an unlikely look for a period building but one entirely reflective of the superstar designer's streamlined visual language. The futuristic interior gives way to mock-Victorian details such as a wood-paneled library, one of several flourishes authored by Newson's wife, fashion stylist Charlotte Stockdale.
Of course, Marc Newson has turned up on Nowness several times before—we posted the beautiful manufacturing video of the Ikepod hourglass—his suffice it to say that the high production value does justice to his immaculate, movie-set-like abode.
In Australian-born Newson's most celebrated work—cabins for Qantas Airways and the Ford O21C concept car, for example—his finely honed eye for materiality reigns supreme; here that is reflected in the marble that lines his bathroom, the massive wall of river rocks from Nova Scotia (a "big deal" to achieve, he confesses) and the composite linen that forms his giant dining table. His passion for metal is betrayed by a small display of unusual knives in the library: "I trained as a jeweler and a silversmith," he explains. "I love the way metal is worked, and certain techniques and processes are best illustrated in objects like knives, which are, essentially, tools. They display an incredible level of ingenuity and skill." After Taschen's recent publication of his complete catalog of designs, "Marc Newson. Works," Newson's next projects will be a private jet interior for a member of the Qatar royal family and a fountain pen for Hermès. "What holds my attention is variety," says the consummate aesthete.
Indeed, Newson touches on several of these projects in the short promo video that Dezeen produced on the occasion of "Marc Newson. Works" last fall.
But if you have about an hour to spare, it's well worth revisiting the 2008 episode of BBC's "Imagine" that covers all things Newson. We posted the first of five parts with links to the rest, but the going really gets good in Part 2, which starts with a shop visit to Aston Martin, followed by colorful commentary from collector Adam Lindemann, and ends with Newson's take on rapid prototyping when Alan Yentob asks about the Stratasys Prodigy—a prosumer-level 3D-printer that dates back to 2000—in the studio. And to compare/contrast with the Nowness short, Newson actually conducts a short tour of his Paris home in the third part, in which he expresses his ambivalence towards the the prototype of his wooden chair design for Cappellini (which turns up again in the Nowness clip).
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