Chapter 1 of 24
Ron Arad, 1987
If I was asked to give an advice to a student about to graduate fronlanarchitectural or a design school, that advice would be "don't get employed, don't get a job". When you work for other people you definitely accumulate a lot of experience, but the way I see it is accumulation of bad habits. Architects and designers tend to do what they are trained to do, what they've practised all their life. And that's why things look so similar to other things. I know it's very easy to say that and you have to make a start. I can tell you what I did. After I graduated from the Architectural Association in London I had a brief experience of working for an architectural practice in Hamp- stead. For me it was very frustrating working on other people's ideas. The practice is their channel of creativity. There's no room for other people. So it didn't take me very long to realise "No, I'm not going to be employed". Yet I have this urge to design. OK, you don't get museums and cities to design, things you did in your final year at college, but there's no reason why you shouldn't de— sign a chair for example. There are problems there. Most chairs are manufactured at great tooling cost, the development cost. In the same way that no—one's going to give you a city to design, no—one's going to say "here, here's my factory, tooling cost, all that, let's produce your chair". That's why my first designs were based on development that already existed.