The lights? They’re the same ones used in the Mars Rover. The sun visors? From a Learjet. The latches securing the windshield? From a vintage commercial freezer door.
form is bred out of them — it’s like design schools seem to run more like an MBA program. Since you’re self-taught, what books have changed your behavior the most? Cradle To Cradle had a significant impact on me as a human, a consumer, a creator. It made me think through the life cycle of products and challenge the traditional cradle-to-the-grave approach of design and manufacturing. Not that we have every opportunity to apply this philosophy in what we do, but whenever we can, we do. It changed my perspective and is now a constant consideration. I also love Raymond Loewy’s autobiography, Never Leave Good Enough Alone. He’s the guy who actually coined the term “industrial designer.” It didn’t exist until he made it up one day when he had to put something on his business card. He designed the Air Force One logo, Concorde interior, Lucky Strike packaging, Studebaker cars et al. He’s a lunatic and proves that it’s okay to be a lunatic and to be obsessive compulsive 26
on the details, because the details are what matter. Ettore Bugatti’s biography and Napoleon Hills’ Think and Grow Rich are also up there. What’s a dream project you’d love to take on? I love the idea of alternative history — what if this happened, what if that hadn’t happened — and one of my favorite decades for design is the 1930s; specifically around ’37, when one of my favorite design languages, Streamline Moderne, hit its apex. It’s just beautiful. I wish I had been alive in that era. I’ve often thought: what if Streamline Moderne continued to evolve as a rich design language? What if the World War II hadn’t happened and the military industrial complex hadn’t corrupted product development into quantity trumping quality? Where would the Streamline Moderne design language have gone? Having even more fun with this, now what if Buckminster Fuller and the famed automobile designer Gordon Buehrig visited Howard Hughes while he was still
living in the Cabana in the Beverly Hill Hotels? I’m talking before Hughes went completely bat shit and moved to Vegas, but after he had built the H-1 Racer airplane. What if the three of them got together at Hughes’ Cabana one night and threw back one too many martinis? What would their napkin sketch look like? What car would Howard want them to design so he could take a Hollywood starlet out and impress her? It just became a funny list of rules and constraints to define a product which I’ve yet to talk anyone into building. Eventually, I’ll have to build it myself for myself because it’s just driving me nuts and keeping me awake at night. We can’t wait to see it.
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