In Conversation With Marc Newson (VIDEO)

Arguably the most influential designer of his generation, Australian Marc Newson has traversed the boundaries of what a designer does, creating everything from furniture and household objects to cars, aircraft, yachts and buildings.

Now based in London, many of his works have become modern design icons. Jonathan Ive of Apple, who may be considered the only designer with comparable influence, has said that "amongst designers, Marc Newson is peerless" -- high praise indeed, as was the inclusion in Time magazine's "100 most influential people in the world."

His design sensibility for the universal was honed spending his childhood travelling across Europe and Asia, culminating in his first exhibition after graduation in Sydney featuring his Lockheed Lounge, a piece of furniture that has now, over 20 years later, set three consecutive world records at auction.

The Lockheed Lounge

Mark Newson Works

As a new retrospective of his work is published by Taschen, Marc speaks to Crane.tv at his London home on how in fifty years our time will be looked back on with the same regard as the industrial revolution in terms of progress of design and technology. It isn't all positive though; he laments the fact that we aren't all travelling to the moon like he wished as a boy and the sense of an optimistic utopia that he imagined as a boy didn't pan out as expected.

He questions his young daughter's affinity for the iPad and the fact that technology loses its value for those to whom it becomes a natural part of their existence without understanding what it took to get us here.

Text by Sam Voulters for Crane.tv

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