;

There Has
Always Been
a Relationship
Between Design
;
and Technology

Ron Arad on
Interactivity
and Low-Res Design

Above right
Lolita chandelier, Gio’ Marconi
Gallery, Milan, 2004, and ‘Nine
Positions’, the British pavilion, Best known for his tactile and colourful furniture designs,
9th Venice Architecture
Biennale, 2004 Ron Arad also experiments with multimedia technologies in his
The chandelier Arad designed
for Swarovski is made of a interactive installations and built work. Lucy Bullivant talks to
crystal pixel board, spiral in
shape, and omnidirectional. It Arad and discovers how he transfers the pleasures of one
links to viewers’ mobile
phones via SMS. It includes medium over to another: his impulse to ‘bounce’ physical objects
2,100 crystals, 1,050 white
LEDs, a kilometre of nine-way such as his tempered steel ‘rolling shells’, translating into low-res
cable braid shielding and 31
processors. interactive responses on demand – a technological tactility.
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Top
Lo-rez-dolores-tabula-rasa
installation, Milan Furniture
Fair and 9th Venice
Architecture Biennale, 2004
Ron Arad in the resonant
Lo-rez-dolores-tabula-rasa
installation. A giant wall made
out of pieces of Corian®, a
sensual man-made solid-surface
material embedded with fibre-
optic pixels, became a filter for
a film and still images, made by
interactive designers The Light
Surgeons, projected onto its
surface. Due to the screen’s
translucency, the images appear
in textured low resolution.
Right and below
By filtering technology in this
way, Arad forced it to become
something tactile and
experiential, in the process
creating an entirely new, and
highly three-dimensional,
method of transmitting film.
Next page, top
When people entered the Gio’
Marconi Gallery in Milan, they
encountered imposing yet liquid,
satin-smooth walls embedded
with fibre optics, onto which
films at low resolution had been
projected, creating a grainy,
reverberating effect.
Sensuous man-made materials can now be harnessed
to new technologies, and transformed into unique
interfaces for communication. In Lo-rez-dolores-
tabula-rasa,1 an installation designed by architect and
designer Ron Arad and exhibited during the Milan
Furniture Fair in 2004, was a unique form of screen
(a giant 8 x 4 metre wall) made out of pieces of Corian®
(a man-made solid surface material) embedded with
37,127 fibre-optic pixels. This became a filter for film
and still images projected onto its surface. Because
of the screen’s translucency, the images appeared
in low-res, with fine lines Arad likens to ‘topographical
lines on a map’. In a process of ‘planting the moving
picture in the material, the film is being sent to the
depths of the Corian®’. The entire room turned into
an immersive film it was hard to leave. Kurt Forster,
the curator of the 9th Venice Architecture Biennale,
certainly agreed, including it in the atmospheric
Episodes display sequence there in the autumn of 2004.
Such is the pulling power of the alchemical designs
Arad creates: his interest in design straddles three and
four dimensions seemingly effortlessly. By filtering
technology in this way, he forces it to become
something tactile and experiential, in the process
creating an entirely new concept for transmitting film.
‘When you look at any LCD screen, if it’s not switched
on, it’s like a black hole – very dense. But here we can
have a tactile, perfect white wall which is beautiful in
itself, smooth and stucco-like. You can always tell
when something’s a projection or a plasma screen.
But I don’t think there’s ever been a real surface like
this, which has the ability to transmit film and images.’
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 depth of the wall, and you think you see running
messages – or are there people inside?’
It’s hardly surprising that many of Arad’s installations
are event based, given that he was a student of Bernard
Tschumi’s at the Architectural Association. They are also
always very simple. Lolita,2 a chandelier for Swarovski,
first shown at the Gio’ Marconi Gallery in Milan in 2004,
is made of a crystal pixel board, spiral in shape, and
therefore omnidirectional. This took him immediately to
the next decision: to link it to everyone’s mobile phone via
SMS. But it is no ordinary chandelier; it possesses 2,100
crystals, 1,050 white LEDs, a kilometre of nine-way cable
braid shielding, and 31 processors. Peter Cook included
the piece in ‘Nine Positions’, the British Pavilion exhibition
on UK architecture at the 9th Venice Biennale,
scrawling on the gallery wall the appropriate mobile
number visitors needed to ring to set off a reaction in the
chandelier. He aptly describes Arad as ‘inevitably drawn

Middle and right Corian® is often used in an everyday fashion

Lo-rez-dolores-tabula-rasa
installation, Milan Furniture
– for example, for kitchen table tops – but Arad
Fair and 9th Venice also designed a table in the material shaped like
Architecture Biennale, 2004
Arad also designed a low, flat
a lens, with 22,000 fibre-optic pixels embedded
shell-shaped Lo-rez-dolores- in its form, which serves as another ‘recipient’
tabula-rasa coffee table made
of Corian® in the shape of a
of a choice of media images.
lens, and also embedded with This fusion of material and media was an
fibre optics, to go with the
installation. At a more intimate
exciting experience to witness, as Arad predicted.
scale, it showed moving When people entered the Gallery Gio’ Marconi
images from the user’s choice
of media projected on its
in Milan, they encountered the imposing tactile,
curved form. When not satin-smooth structures embedded with fibre
switched on, the table had a
smooth, seamless white
optics. ‘Then, just when you are not looking,’
appearance. says Arad, ‘moving messages emerge from the

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Above
Grand Hotel Salome (Mexico
City), Milan Furniture Fair, 2002
Arad designed the bedroom of
a fictional urban hotel he
invented, located in Mexico
City. A circular bed complete
with orbital/nesting ‘furniture’
(bed head, bedside table and
desk) was positioned inside an
inverted ‘pill box’ billboard
made of curved acrylic panels
clad in Lumisty™ film. This
functioned as a 360˚ projection
device displaying a wide range
of images, information and
links to live transmissions, and
could be used for video
conferencing or to create a
more leisurely totally ambient
environment. The bathroom
mirror (top), was convertible
from transparent to
translucent or to opaque,
allowing information and
entertainment to be viewed
from the bathroom.
towards gadgets and new technologies,
interactive conditions and new materials’, a
designer who is ‘interested in these things as
a part of a necessary kit of devices – as many
and as diverse as may be necessary’.3
Both Lolita and Lo-rez-dolores-tabula-rasa
are potentially semipermanent pieces. One of
Arad’s more hybrid interactive projects in the same
mould is Grand Hotel Salome,4 a speculative urban
hotel located in Mexico City exhibited in Milan
in 2002. A circular bed sat at the centre of an
inverted ‘pill box’ billboard made of curved
acrylic panels clad in Lumisty™ film, inside a
shell that was entirely made of a screen onto
which images were projected. It reflected Arad’s
desire to make a more synergistic relationship
Arad drew the potential
boundlessness of IT into a
down-to-earth union with
comfort in this womb-like
space. The central
omnidirectional projection
device in the form of a drum
displayed a myriad of
information. From the
comfort of one’s bed, city
maps, messages, travel data,
audio poems and multichannel
entertainment, taking the
viewer right into the middle
of the football pitch, can be
part of the immersive hotel-
dwelling experience.
between technology and tactile space. ‘IT knows no
boundaries: it is not limited to a small screen, keyboard
or telephone,’ he says. At the same time, what is
important to him in a hotel is not ‘someone else’s idea
of chic, but comfort and ease of access to information,
entertainment and ambience’.
Arad drew the potential boundlessness of IT into a
down-to-earth union with comfort in this womb-like
space. The central omnidirectional projection device in
the form of a drum displayed a myriad of information.
From the comfort of one’s bed, city maps, messages,
travel data, audio poems and multichannel entertainment,
taking the viewer right into the middle of the football
pitch, were part of the immersive hotel-dwelling
experience. Links to other live transmissions and video
conferences, or even just scenes of visitors buzzing the
room from the lobby, could be zapped into a media art
gallery. The space functioned on cue as a total ambient
environment. Arad gave his conception a localised
virtual transparency. Outside the pill box, images in
reverse could be seen, and in the bathroom the mirror
was convertible from transparent to translucent or
opaque, allowing information and entertainment to be
viewed from here as well. ‘When we do a project like
this, we make sure it leaves the virtual world, and can
be made like this,’ says Arad.
One of Arad’s housing designs is the living room and
family dining room of the Millennium House (2002–)5
in Doha, Qatar, a villa designed by Arata Isozaki for the
57
Top, middle and bottom
Grand Hotel Salome (Mexico
City), Milan Furniture Fair, 2002
The drum-shaped
omnidirectional projection
wall. In the exhibition, visitors
could view all of the projected
images from outside the
pillbox correctly, and the
reversed images from the
outside.

58
 minister of culture. The house is made up of
many parts, each designed by different
All these installations are
architects, including Achille Castiglioni (gym), relatively low-res, or
David Hockney (swimming pool), and Ettore
Above
Living room and dining room, Sottsass (formal reception), with set pieces by
on demand, rather than
Millennium House, Doha,
Qatar, 2002–
artists such as Anish Kapoor. Arad’s suite of high-res or pervasive.
A playful and extrovert design for
a villa designed by Arata Isozaki
rooms features a programmable floor that can Talking of the way things
be instructed to move in a certain pattern or
for the minister of culture, with
different spaces designed by frozen into a given ‘landscape’. The bedrooms operate in the interactive
various architects including
Achille Castiglioni and Ettore
overlook this void, which moves like a pixel business, Arad observes
Sottsass, and artists David board. An extrovert conception, it includes
Hockney and Anish Kapoor. Arad
lighting systems – full colour LEDs – made of
that ‘we are always fighting
was commissioned to design the
living room, and the adjoining spheres that can be located anywhere in space to increase the resolution,
family dining room, which was an
amphitheatre-style pit with a
at any chosen size or colour, and operated by but sometimes you discover
horseshoe-shaped table the remote control. The dining room is a space
server could walk into the middle
of, and transparent seats that
shaped like the pit of an amphitheatre, with the beauty of low-res’.
could be moved around its edge. transparent seats that move freely around, and

59
Above
Living room and dining room,
a horseshoe-shaped table the server can walk Arad also dislikes talking about
into the centre of. The design was featured in the
Millennium House, Doha,
Qatar, 2002– 8th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2002, with
interactivity as something
The living room, overlooked by
the villa’s bedrooms, had a a touchscreen so that visitors could design necessarily involving
programmable floor that
moved like a pixel board, and
permutations of the floor themselves. technology. ‘It’s a lazy word. I
All these installations are relatively low-res,
could be instructed to move in
a certain pattern or be frozen or on demand, rather than high-res or pervasive. don’t like it being overused, as
in any given landscape. When
the installation was shown at Talking of the way things operate in the if it is a compensation. Not
the 8th Venice Architecture interactive business, Arad observes that ‘we are
Biennale in 2002, visitors could
always fighting to increase the resolution, but
everything has to be
use a touchscreen to design
permutations of the floor. The sometimes you discover the beauty of low-res’. interactive. There has always
lighting was incorporated in
floating spheres in a range of He also dislikes talking about interactivity as been a relationship between
potential sizes and colours something necessarily involving technology. ‘It’s
that could be located anywhere
in the space. a lazy word. I don’t like it being overused, as if design and technology. Now
Opposite
it is a compensation. Not everything has to be we can do certain things, and
interactive. There has always been a relationship
The ceremonial yet playful
amphitheatre pit of the dining between design and technology. Now we can
every medium can be
room, with its horseshoe-
shaped table and transparent do certain things, and every medium can be translated to another medium.’
seats. translated to another medium.’

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Notes Arad is as research-driven as he is committed to
1 Commissioned by the Gallery
Mourmans. Project team: Ron The power of the design at every single scale. His tempered-steel ‘rolling
Arad, Egon Hansen, Sebastien shelves’ he calls interactive, in that they are highly pliable:
Noel, Marcus Hirst, Helena
Ambrosio, The Gallery
spatial works Arad has ‘In the old days, I always used to bounce things, before
Mourmans, Frero Tech bv, The
Light Surgeons (installation
crafted in recent I knew what to do with them.’ The floor of the
Millennium House can be interactive, or not, as desired.
film). Technical input: Massimo
Fucci, DuPont Surfaces, A & D
years has to do with The interactive facility of Arad’s architecture is far
Relations, Créa Diffusion.
2 Design: Ron Arad. Produced triggers – above all, from being gratuitous. He is currently designing the
by: Moritz Waldemeyer for Upperworld hotel that will sit suspended on a bridge on
Swarovski. sound, light and smell – the roof of Battersea Power Station, with a horizontal
3 Peter Cook, Nine Positions,
British Pavilion exhibition for emotional surprise, shuttle taking visitors to the door of their bedrooms.
catalogue, 9th Venice
Architecture Biennale, The and low-res solutions All the roofs will be convertible, so visitors can open
British Council (London), 2004. up their bathrooms to the elements.
4 Design team: Ron Arad, Asa
Bruno. Video: The Light
are showing The power of the spatial works Arad has crafted in
Surgeons.
5 Design, modelling, imaging
themselves to be the recent years has to do with triggers – above all, sound,
light and smell – for emotional surprise, and low-res
and animation: Ron Arad
Associates, Geoff Crowther,
ideal mediators for solutions are showing themselves to be the ideal
Egon Hansen and Paul
Gibbons.
this emergent process. mediators for this emergent process. 4

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