The designer: Tom Price

Price's designs for the Metropolitan Works in east London will be unveiled in February (Claudia Janke)

When Kanye West says he likes your chair on his blog – before you've even graduated – that's probably not a bad start to your career. Tom Price's Meltdown Chair was one of his final pieces before graduating from the Royal College of Art in 2007 – a month later, he landed his first major commission (he got the call when he was on the beach): the Metropolitan Works in east London wanted him to create a design around their new building.

He clad the building in 40 perforated panels – a symbol of old technology, perfectly stamped, very regimented – and liquefied them, so the holes melted. "I wanted to express the capacities of the centre, so they became swirling patterns – like a large abstract painting," he says. The project, Price says generously, was a "huge learning experience", thanks to public liability requirements: once the panels were produced, he was told the holes couldn't be larger than 10mm in diameter, with the bridges between the holes at 3mm. "Because the holes were organically produced, that meant I had to go back and change every line, every circle – hundreds and thousands of them," he laughs.

The building will finally be unveiled in February; after this sisyphusian task, what next? There's Oliver Sweeney's shop window that he's taking over in New Bond Street to display new pieces of furniture, also in February. "I see myself lying somewhere between art and design," he says. "I am very much dealing with the three-dimensional." Keep your eyes open for his work – something tells us it won't be long before his fan base is made up of rather more than a global hip-hop star.

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