HealingHQ talks to world reknowned visionary Ross Lovegrove 

Ross Lovegrove is one of today’s most influential and important cultural visionaries. A self-proclaimed 21st century “translator of technology into everyday products,” Lovegrove is widely considered the godfather of organic design. With an approach he calls “fat-free design” – creating objects that remove all extraneous material to present maximum beauty – Lovegrove develops objects and packaging that elevate our perceptions and deepen our respect for the Earth. 

You’re known as the godfather of organic design. Explain the philosophical and aesthetic essence of your work.
We’re in the 21st century, which by definition means that new and more relevant things are possible where technology, nature and design converge. If you look at the work that I do, I always try to innovate from a contemporary position, which means there are no rules. I think it’s really a disservice to humanity to work below one’s potential. I often see companies and individuals working way below their potential and it’s either because of a lack of awareness or simply because marketing and comfort levels come in and make things very comfortable. What I’m doing is soul-searching for something that relates more to a sense of evolution rather than style. Ironically, there’s a style that comes out of that.

It’s almost a paradox that you’re so influenced by organic, natural form, yet it’s manmade.
Well, it has to be. What man thinks of often becomes reality. If you look at nature, it’s the least pretentious phenomena there is. In fact, what nature does is improve things with ever greater purpose that which once existed. I think if we develop cars and everyday things that adapt to our environment in terms of sustainability, then we will be better off. There’s this incredible dichotomy at the moment where designers have become an extremely powerful wealth generator, but at the same time, I want to be on the end which has some sort of intelligence and logic and…intelligent design, if you will.

It could be said that art and design are physical manifestations of man’s perpetual quest for connection to divine intelligence.
Yes, yet you can argue that because everything we do is synthetic then it’s unnatural. But in fact, what we’re doing is taking the earth’s resources. There’s this abstract entity of minerals and other materials which man has managed to reconfigure and manipulate into new materials. It’s quite extraordinary. Everything you see today can be reinvented and re-evaluated with a greater sense of purpose, from a toothbrush to a water bottle to clothes. I literally just flew in to London from Tokyo and I’m thinking, why do they still give me heavyweight cutlery and plates on the plane? How much fuel does that cost to fly? Or the weight of my seat – why is it so heavy? It doesn’t seem right to me. There are bigger concepts we need to embrace. Like lightness, for example; using technology to promote the concept of lightness; minimum use of materials, fat-free objects that are lean and efficient. This is what I aim to create.

You grew up in Wales in a small village. Were you always inquisitive and ‘different’?
[Laughs.] Yes, I was always very different. You could say I wasn’t the child of my mother and father, and I don’t mean that in any kind of funny way. I just had a very different attitude and was kind of hypersensitive to things, so I used to spend a lot of time on my own. I’m one of four children and I was brought up in a very small house where there was no privacy or silence, so I craved both. I used to spend most of my time near the sea. The Welsh coastline is very confrontational; it’s extremely raw and earthy and I used to pick fossils out of the mud and wonder where on earth they came from.

Up on top of the cliffs, there was this Victorian stone building where [Guglielmo] Marconi made the first-ever radio broadcast. So these massive polarities of existence between a primitive, very primordial sort of culture and an extremely advanced culture, is where I lie. A lot of the progressive things I do actually come from a sense of the deep past and how this evolution is working itself out. I have massive instinct and I think that’s what is wrong today – we’re losing our instinct. We don’t know where anything comes from.

You’re supremely interested in creating a new automobile for the 21st century.

[Laughs.] It’s my quest! I drive people nuts talking about it.

You’ve got this gorgeous concept based on an image of a drop of water on a hot surface. Cars are made of some 30,000 components and you say, why not make it out of 300?
Exactly. You did your homework there. There are aspects of society that don’t seem to be questioning and they just seem inane to me. I mean, anybody who would consider using 30,000 components to make anything surely would consider reducing materials and reducing components. The motto should be reduce, reduce, reduce! Cars for me are all wrong and the motivation of why cars are created doesn’t seem to be right. Instead of protective sardine boxes where we’re immunized, we can have cars that allow us to interact with society more. And these can be cars which actually filter the air using new intelligence and technologies. I mean, why not?

So why is it not?
We have the mindset and we have the technology; we just don’t have the political will because it’s all adapted to the oil industry. It’s all too easy. When we face that moment when it’s not going to be easy anymore, people will be crying out for those kinds of objects. That’s why all these car companies are going downhill – they didn’t predict, plot and strategize being Earth-centric. You can’t be human-centric. Without the Earth, there are no human beings. So we need to make it fashionable, make it a great thing to be involved in, and we all gain.

You’ve said that you don’t make funky, “artificial” objects because it would be a disgrace. Have we exceeded our freedom to engage in frivolity?
Unfortunately, design has become a form of entertainment, a momentary uplift, if you will. And the louder that everybody shouts, then the louder everybody shouts to stand out. So as a designer, if I’m confronted with a new project, I always ask the root question: why should something exist? Then I’ll find a solution.

I don’t look at what exists and then try to do a version of it. I try to understand whether something could or should exist and then work around that. So I’m a little bit saddened when I see design celebrated as something rather trite, superficial, funky, colorful… I’m caught up in something in which I can either stay on board and help or get off. I think it’s better to stay on board and try to move forward with enlightened people.
 

Interview by Mar Yvette