Tom Dixon on Designing With Longevity in Mind

The renegade British designer Tom Dixon has long had a roving obsession with raw materials—everything from cast iron, steel, and copper; to clay, glass, and stone; to felt, plastic, and marble; to, more recently, cork and aluminum. Entirely self-trained and without any formal design education, Dixon emerged in the design sphere in the 1980s by creating unusual welded salvage furniture that was at once antique, experimental, beautiful, and punk in spirit. Never short of bold, forward-looking ideas, Dixon works from a materials-first perspective. Over the years, he has created an industrial chair with upholstery inspired by the rubber inner tubing of car tires, furniture made of flame-cut steel, and even conceptual pieces grown underwater and built of Biorock. Central to all that he does is a quest for longevity and, in turn, sustainability; he has even, in the past, toyed with the idea of a thousand-year guarantee.

On the episode, Dixon talks about how two motorbike accidents transformed his life, his days in the early 1980s as a bass player in the disco-funk band Funkapolitan, why he considers cork a “wonder material,” and the parallels he sees between his design creations and those of a baker.

Special thanks to our Season 7 sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.

Show notes: 

[00:56] Tom Dixon

[07:02] Flame-Cut Furniture

[11:27] Design Miami

[12:06] Craig Robins

[13:50] Wolf Hilbertz

[31:14] S-Chair

[34:41] Giulio Cappellini

[35:12] Marc Newson

[35:15] Jasper Morrison

[38:56] Isamu Noguchi

[38:56] Akari Light Sculptures

[39:57] Constantin Brâncuși

[40:33] Dixonary

[46:34] Funkapolitan

[49:16] Funkapolitan’s “If Only”

[49:17] Funkapolitan’s “In the Crime of Life”

[50:17] August Darnell

[53:56] Guy Pratt

[53:58] Rockonteurs with Gary Kemp and Guy Pratt

[54:50] Creative Salvage

[01:01:06] IKEA

[01:03:37] Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec

[01:03:50] Enzo Mari

[01:03:51] Achille Castiglioni

[01:03:52] Verner Panton