Tom Dixon at Design Miami 2009
I happened to catch up with British furniture designer Tom Dixon yesterday on his way over to the Audi Pavilion here on Miami Beach. Audi has just launched their new A8 sedan and Tom was tapped to do an installation of his own—the luminous Light Light—as part of the festivities. We walked the boardwalk between the Fontainebleau Hotel and the Pavilion together and chatted about manly smells, new colors and the nature of innovation.
How many years have you been coming to Design Miami, Tom?
About three, I’d say. How about you?
This is my second year here for the Basel and Design Miami hoopla. You’ve got a new piece showing in the Limited Forever show that Cappelini is putting on in their Miami showroom.
Yes, so I’ve heard. Though to be perfectly honest no one contacted me about it. I really have no idea what they’re doing. I’ve not done anything for them since like 1995.
So you’ve got no idea what it is?
I expect they’ll put out something I’ve done for them in a new color, perhaps. But no, I have no idea. I read about it in the program.
What do you make of all the one-offs and collaborations and limited-edition madness that Design Miami fosters?
Well, there’s always a bit of cynicism about it all, but I think with the economy some of that has been filtered out in the last year. I’m very curious to see what shows and how it all pans out though. Last year I showed some metal furniture, some really, really heavy stuff guaranteed to last for 1,000 years. But no one bought it then. So in a kind of silly rage I took a piece of it, a chair, and in a kind of performance art bit of a thing I cast it into the Bay.
Isn’t that littering?
Well, we fished it out, you see.
How does it look?
Super rusty. I was storing it at Craig Robbins [Design Miami co-founder] but his cleaning lady thought it was trash and had it hauled off to the dump. We got it back though. Maybe if it won’t sell this year I’ll pitch it back into the water and let it mature for another year. If Dubai sinks in the next couple days then I expect my chair will go along with it.
Not exactly design for the masses, then?
You know, I like design for the masses as well, though the truth is, innovation is really expensive. It’s always been fired by money, by the rich. I mean look around us, look at Miami. It’s vibrant and creative and interesting and also a playground for the rich.
What have you got cooking over at Artek right now?
I’m not really designing much for Artek at the moment. I’ve taken a board seat. Though what’s new is a cologne we’ve done with Comme des Garcons called Standard.
I was sent a bottle of that. I like it.
Oh thanks, I like it too.
Even my wife likes it.
As does mine, though she’s complained of how I smell for years. I like that Comme’s perfumes have a kind of metallic scent, none of that floral stuff. It’s all very manly.
It smells a bit as though you’d snuggled up to a pine tree.
Indeed.
So tell me about Light Light, the installation you’ve done for Audi at the launch of the A8. You’ve said that the flat-packed aluminum LED lights are inspired by the aluminum frame of the car.
Yes, that’s right. And I only had four weeks in which to do it. But design thrives under constraints. To be honest, there’s loads that I would have liked to have done, but four weeks isn’t much time, and I had to ship what I’d done from my London studio. So the lights and the inflatables weren’t inspired by that poor boy in his balloon, they were to do with the fact that I had to get them across the ocean.
What are you most looking forward to seeing at Design Miami?
It’s the art, really. That’s what I feed off of. It’s rare that I’m not in this place which isn’t all about design, and the confrontation between art and design you get here in Miami, where the design fair is just a pimple on the back of this art giant, is very rewarding.
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