STORY
Biography
About Ross Lovegrove
Born 1958, Ross Lovegrove graduated from Manchester Polytechnic with 1st Class BA Hons Industrial design in 1980 and took a Master of Design at the Royal College of Art, London in 1983. In the early 80’s worked as a designer for Frog Design in West Germany on tech projects for companies like Sony and Apple; he later moved to Paris as a consultant to Knoll International, for which he created the highly successful Alessandri Office System.
Invited to join the Atelier de Nimes in 1984, alongside with Jean Nouvel and Phillipe Stark, he consulted amongst others: Cacharel, Louis Vuitton, Hermes and Dupont. Returning to London in 1986 he has since worked on projects for Airbus Industries, Kartell, Ceccotti, Cappellini, Moroso, Luceplan, Driade, Peugeot, Apple, Issey Miyake, Vitra, Motorola, Biomega, LVMH, Narciso Rodriguez, Yamagiwa, Tag Heuer, Swarovski, Herman Miller, Artemide, Renault, Japan Airlines, Toyo Ito Architects, Kenzo, Valextra, GH Mumm, LG, F1, Samsung and KEF.
Winner of numerous international awards his work has been extensively published and exhibited internationally including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Guggenheim Museum NY, Axis Centre Japan, Pompidou Centre, Paris and the Design Museum, London, when in 1993 he curated the first permanent Design collection. His work is held in permanent collections of various design museums around the world including the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MOMA), the Design Museum in London, the Vitra Design Museum, in Basel, the Die Neue Sammlung, in Munich and the Centre Pompidou, in Paris.
Cultural
recognition
The Centre Pompidou recognised that Ross Lovegrove’s unique vision of Design was representative of how the transition from the 20th to 21st Century would play out. In 2016 it hosted a 1000 square-meters exhibition of his work entitled ‘Convergence’. How science, technology, art, anthropology and ecology can converge to drive a new but intelligent approach in design with truly new aesthetics and physiognomy. Ross Lovegrove describes himself as an ‘evolutionary biologist’ but also a visionary and a sculptor of technology, defining a new genesis of how we can harness the incredible potential of planetary resources to create economic, fat free, lean and
efficient products. He was the first designer to present at TED Global alongside James Watson co-discoverer of DNA, Craig Ventor, who mapped the human Genome and, Janine Benyus, the author of Biomimicry. His second TED talk called Genesys, presented at Oxford university, further reinforced his view that industry needs to transition from the fossil fuelled and mechanical to the natural and biological by instinctively designing with a very present synergistic mindset using advanced digital design and progressive manufacturing methods.
Ross in numbers
Awards
• Architecture MasterPrize Winner 2022
• Mark Wilkinson Award for Lifetime Achievement 2021
• Grand Prix Du Design Gold Winner 2021
• German Design Award 2021
• Dezeen Awards finalist 2020
• Good Design 2020
• German Innovation Award 2020
• Red Dot Design Award 2019
• Elle Deco EU 2019
• Elle Deco China 2019
• LIT Design Awards 2019, Lighting Product Design of The Year
• Good Design 2019
• German Innovation Award 2019
• German Design Award 2019
• Architecture Masterprize Award
• European Product Design Award 2019
• Iconic Awards 2019
• IF Design Award 2019
• IDA Design Awards, Gold Winner 2019
• Designboom Lifetime Achievement Award 2018
• German Design Award 2016
• Red Dot 2015 Best of the Best
• Alsace Innovation Award 2015
• German Design Award 2015
• LIT Design Awards 2011
• RedDot 2010 Best of the Best
• Hungarian Design Prize 2009
• Batimat Design Award 2009
• Vogue Traveller Ecology Prize, SOLAR TREE MAK Vienna, 2007
• Elle Decor 2006
• Good Design 2006
• Wall Paper Design Award 2006
• World Technology Prize, Time Magazine/CNN 2005
• Final Nomination for the Prince Phillip Design Prize 2004
• Good Design 2004
• JANUS Paris 2004
• Awarded Royal Designer for Industry by The Royal Society of Arts 2004
• ‘Designer of the Year’, A & W Hamburg 2001
• ID Magazine Good Design Award 2000
• iF Industrie Forum Design Award, Hannover 1999
• Medaille de la Ville de Paris 1998
• George Nelson Award 1998
• D&AD Silver Medalist
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