Design Features A Profile of Philippe Starck

Date Published:

10/06/2008

If you talk to any genuinely creative individual about their talent/skill they will almost to a person describe the creative processes as equal parts agony and ecstasy. Inspiration can prove elusive when tied to a pressing deadline, and flow unwanted and torrentially when it is least expected and hardest to capitalise on i.e when you are on the loo...

Clever and prolific man that he is, Philippe Starck, you would think either has an abundant stock of writing and drawing materials permanently to hand in his lavvy or has mastered the tricky technique of being creative to order. In actual fact, as recorded in a conversation between Monsieur Starck and Pierre Doze for the book 'Starck by Starck', (Taschen) the enfant incorrigible of world design regards his creations as a biological inevitability:

Credit: Tom Whipps

'Objects are no longer a concern; they are more like an unavoidable secretion of a slightly shameful kind, like sweat or ear-wax. I never stop producing. You might say I produce out of sheer idleness.'

On paper at least, Philippe Starck certainly seems rarely to have been strapped for an idea. Born in Paris in 1949, the son of aeroplane designer Andre Starck, Mummy's little cabbage would spend hours at his father's knee painting, cutting and sticking as is the norm for any reasonably well balanced young child. He would also spend hours disassembling, dismantling and then - even more impressive- rebuilding quite complex pieces of machinery, which isn't quite as common. Imagine what his mother and father's fridge door must have looked like!

Starck studied at Nissim de Camondo school in Paris, after which in 1968 he set up his first business producing inflatable objects. A year later he would become artistic director at the internationally renowned Pierre Cardin.

Watch 'Hard Starck' for Fossil, 2004

There followed a move to the United States after which in 1978 he returned to Paris and designed his first nightclub 'La main bleu'. His founding of the business Starck Product in 1979 was to provide the launch pad for his stellar international career and his reputation as the 'superdesigner' of the late twentieth century Starck's incontinent creativity had already seen him produce many protoypes in many different fields. Within just a few years, Starck would have remodelled the furniture for President Mitterand's private apartments in the Elysee Palace in Paris, transformed the interior of the Cafe Costes, and created classics of interior design at restaurants in Tokyo and Hotels in New York. He would also bring his unique touch to the Groningen Museum. in Holland, and the Eurostar terminal in Paris, while his work on the Galerie Jean-Paul Gaultier, (Cannes, Paris, France, and London) seemed to confirm him as the designer's designer of choice.

Perhaps not surprisingly for someone who by his own admission seems to involuntarily secrete ideas, Starck and his company were riding the wave of contemporary approval into several ambitious new areas.

Starck's architectural work has included everything from commercial buildings in France, Japan and the USA to an air traffic control tower at Bordeaux airport (blink and you'll miss it), and individually designed houses which were sold through a mail order catalogue.

Philippe Starck at John Lewis

Equally at home with a whoopee cushion and a crayon as he is a draughtsman's compass, the restlessly creative Starck has also produced furniture for such internationally famous names as Alessi and Cassina, crockery, vases, lighting, spectacles, stationary, wrist watches, the Olympic flame, children's toys, alarm clocks, and boats (including the yacht Wedge II). It's the kind of work rate that might even have made the likes of the late Picasso, Sir Terence Conran, Bollywood, and the Artist Previously Known as Squiggle wonder if perhaps they had been taking their career seriously enough.