Ron Arad: Trouble maker

He's now fêted by Britain's arts establishment, but the designer Ron Arad is still on a mission to shock, subvert and infuriate, as Stuart Husband finds during a tricky audience at his studio

"Sure, people remember that place," says Arad, with a fleeting smile. "It made a big impact. And it kind of defined my approach from the beginning. I'm interested in designing things that didn't exist before I designed them. I'm not interested in styling the vernacular, conventional, or generic. People can lead very happy lives just tweaking away," he says, assuming an extravagant - and, it turns out, characteristic - look of hauteur. "Me, I don't tweak."

Two decades on, we're sitting in Arad's north London HQ, a ramshackle former car showroom. Cantilevered steel "claws" slice through a lofted studio crammed with the "seriously new things" that Arad has subsequently dreamt up - moulded wooden floors that lift like ski-jumps, sinuous Bookworm shelving units, clear plastic dining chairs that "stack like Pringles". It's like being trapped in the belly of a rapacious crustacean, but the sheer wealth of stuff - and the employees beavering away in the design studio downstairs - are testament to Arad's achievements. He's won numerous Designer of the Year honours; he's produced work for Alessi and Cappellini, among others; he's had a retrospective at the V&A; his work is in the collections of the Design Museum, MoMA in New York, and Paris' Pompidou Centre; he's currently Professor of Design Product at the Royal College of Art; and he's about to embark on his biggest British commission yet - the hotel at the top of the redeveloped Battersea Power Station. It seems that we're finally ready to embrace Arad's left-field visions; after all, formerly "edgy" contemporaries like Tom Dixon now find themselves creative-directing for Habitat. There's one problem, however; Arad doesn't really want to be embraced.

"It's really important to him to be seen as this loner and rebel," says a former RCA student of Arad's. "He's never happier than when he's got something to rail against. It can make him a really inspiring teacher, but also a bit of a pain in the arse. I remember him going on and on about how the Rolling Stones died the day Mick Jagger accepted a knighthood, and how Bob Dylan would never sell out in that way. He's married with teenage kids, but there's a big part of him that doesn't want to be a grown-up."

Arad is certainly child-like, if not occasionally childish. He's a big, soft-spoken bear of a man, dressed in the modern designer's utilitarian uniform of nondescript but obviously well-made black T-shirt, jeans and trainers. Interviewing him is a frustrating business; he changes subjects capriciously or hops out of his chair and disappears mid-sentence like someone in the throes of terminal Ritalin deficiency.

"Boredom is the mother of creativity," he declares. He's expounding on his design philosophy when he suddenly asks if I've seen Google Earth, and spends the next 15 minutes demonstrating its wonders; he occasionally ignores questions altogether, or will opine that "the general standard of writing on design in this country is tragically low", whilst giving you a pitying look. He runs the gamut from charming to exasperating. He refuses to discuss the ostensible reason for our meeting - a decanter he's designed for the Italian company Guzzini, part of its "Foodesign" initiative in which 100 top designers, including Arad, Tom Dixon and Karim Rashid have come up with "the ultimate kitchen accessories" - altogether: "Oh, that's so boring," he harrumphs. "I did it such a long time ago. Let's talk about something else instead." This is the following, entirely typical, exchange:

Independent on Sunday "What would you rather talk about, then?"

Ron Arad "Well, you're the journalist, aren't you? Why don't you ask me a question?"

IoS "OK. You've said design has always been more appreciated in Barcelona or Italy, so why did you stick it out in the UK all these years?"

RA [distracted] "Sorry? What?"

IoS [repeats the question.]

RA "Oh well, I had no role models to follow here, and that was kind of good in a way. I mean, I didn't even know what designers did and I didn't know how to become one. I studied at the Architectural Association, and that taught me that I didn't want to become an architect, and I didn't want to work for other people."

IoS So you were flying by the seat of your pants when you opened One-Off?

RA [goes off to answer the phone, comes back] "What about my pants?"

IoS [repeats the question.]

RA "We did things and thought about them later. We didn't deliberate or hesitate."

IoS "And you've worked the same way since?"

RA Absolutely. The thing is... [drifts off.]

IoS "The difference is, you're part of the establishment now."

RA [grins, cocks an eyebrow.] "Am I? Part of the establishment? Do I get a certificate?"

IoS "Maybe a carriage clock."

RA [distracted by phone. Goes to answer it.]

Arad's conception of himself as a maverick was undoubtedly shaped by his upbringing; his father was a sculptor and his mother a photographer. Both were Communists. His father was born in Russia and ended up in a Palestinian commune while on his way to Spain to fight Franco; Arad himself came to London in 1973 to escape conscription into the Israeli army.

"I didn't want to do anything anyone told me I had to do," he says flatly. "I've always been much more interested in doing things that people told me I couldn't. I always ask myself about any project: is it subversive enough?"

This is the kind of attitude that produces the Nina Rota - a circular, omni-directional, leather-upholstered bed (Arad himself has one: "You don't want to sleep on a square one ever again") - but that inevitably raises hackles among the Corinthian columns of what Arad insists on calling "the establishment". He caused a flurry at the RCA when he merged the departments of furniture design and industrial design, and his plans for a flagship store for Hogan in Sloane Street were met with similar incomprehension - "The head guy told me, 'Mr Arad, a shop without a window is like a man without a willy,''' he says, grinning broadly.

His scheme for the Upperworld Hotel at Battersea Power Station is the first chance for his adopted country to experience Arad's imagination in full effect. And the computer simulation he shows me - which, he says a little sorrowfully, will inevitably have to go through major changes - produces the same sense of giddy shock that the Rover Chair once did. Pod-like horizontal "lifts" career between the Station's four chimneys Blade Runner-style; there are no walls slicing the external spaces, enabling 360-degree views on all sides; and the rooms are based on one Arad created for a Hotel of the Future project in Italy, featuring the circular beds, and a series of programmable projections on the walls, à la Minority Report. Meanwhile, you'll be able to press a button in your pod-bath, and activate a retractable roof in order to contemplate the heavens. Arad's also hoping to install some of his Bird Tables - coffee tables containing 20,000 fibre-optic strands under the surface that project the images of birds flying across their span.

Unlike some of his fellow designers, Arad likes to name-check artists or those on the more avant-garde shores of fashion. He loves Hussein Chalayan (Arad's Table That Eats Chairs - a table whose chairs are folded and placed like drawers under its surface - recalls Chalayan's coffee-tables-cum-dresses); he thinks Issey Miyake's endlessly versatile APOC (A Piece Of Cloth) is "a giant step - it's proof that the more sophisticated a machine gets, the less machine-like a product is". Antony Gormley opened Arad's show at the V&A. He's pleased - and a little disconcerted - when I say that the subtly spinning display units he designed for Yohji Yamamoto's store in Tokyo remind me of the spinning table-top sculptures of American artist Charles Ray.

"Chuck Ray, he's a great artist," he mutters. "Yes, you're one of the few journalists who knows about Charles Ray. It's funny, when I did those units I thought of his pieces. No-one ever made the connection before. So two points there."

As he approaches his mid-fifties, Arad may claim to disdain the accolades that have come his way, but he is thinking about his place in history. He thinks the Bookworm could stand for his life's work, he says: "Because it's a best-seller against all the odds, it never existed before I came up with it, and it's not rolling over and demanding that you love it.

"Part of the attraction of teaching at the RCA," he continues, "is that I can bring on some talent that might frighten the high street a little. I wish there were more people to run with, doing things that made me look conservative, that would give me the energy to push further."

This sounds deeply unconvincing, I venture. Surely the fundamental thing about you is that you'd never join a club that would have you as a member?

"Absolutely I would," he shoots back. "I wouldn't join any other club. It would be full of people like me."

This should be taken with a pinch of salt. As he jumps up yet again to answer a phone, play on his computer, or skulk around in a non-specific fashion, you're left to reflect that Ron Arad didn't style himself One-Off by accident.

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