Designer Profile - Sir Terence Conran from Channel4.com/4homes

Being raised largely away from the rigours and privations of total war in idyllic Dorset during the 1940s clearly imbued the young Terence Conran with an appreciation of the simpler things in life...

1. In The Beginning
2. The Conran Empire

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In The Beginning

Sir Terence, as he has been know as since the early 1980s, recalls a quiet optimism being instilled within him at an early age by teachers. There was also a love of gardening then a necessary part of the war effort to supplement strict rationing and a fascination with the simple pleasure of growing and nurturing for the pot, a practical creativity that has informed his design work ever since.

As he comments in Dorset Society magazine: "I love the idea of planning, nurturing, cultivating and waiting patiently before your grand plans grow before your very eyes and you never know quite how they will turn out."

Sir Terence began his career as a student of textile design, but was already intrigued by the possibilities of wood.

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Britain in the early fifties was still a battle-scarred ghost of its former Imperial glories. Sir Terence remembers visitors to the highly successful festival of Britain in 1951 to which he contributed a 3D exhibit being drably dressed and almost overwhelmed by the verve and vivacity for which the Festival would become famous. The transformation he saw in these care worn, war brutalised faces when confronted with then eye popping imaginative design further augmented his desire to bring excellence within the realm of the masses.

The first store, 1964 - courtesy Habitat

"From the beginning of my design life, my ambition has been to offer intelligently designed products to as large an audience as possible at a price they can afford."

And so in 1952, Sir Terence temporarily turned his attention away from textiles to start up his own furniture-making business. That business, run from a humble basement studio in London's Notting Hill would give birth to The Conran Design Group in 1956. As much a business man as a designer Sir Terence would steer that company from its humble origins to become one of the most influential design agencies in Europe.

Sir Terence would only really start to make an impact on public consciousness back in 1964 with the opening of the first ever Habitat store back in 1964. It would take another couple of decades for the concept to really plant itself in the everyday language of the media but effectively you could trace the birth of the word ‘lifestyle’ back to the moment Habitat first opened its doors.

The founders - courtesy Habitat

Habitat’s real revolution was in providing an underlying theme and purpose beneath its acres of attractive European influenced homewares. Now you could create an entire look and adopt an entire new way of living through the items that you populated your home with. Items designed to be every bit as useful as they were enticing.

Britain’s raised on such gastronomic treats as stuffed carp, cauliflower salad, egg fricassée, and fish toast back in the 1950s were beginning to look outside the British Isles for inspiration. Sir Terence the proto-gastronome and bon viveur who had learned how to cook pasta at the knee of the sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi - saw in the championing of more European flavours in cooking by the influential food writer Elizabeth David amongst others, an obvious need for more specialised homewares.

Such was the success of this zeitgeist tapping approach, Mary Quant and John Lennon were spotted shopping there, that by 1973 there were 18 branches of Habitat. Sir Terence then opened the first branch of The Conran Shop at 77 Fulham Road, on the site of the very first Habitat store, and cheekily began to effectively sell coal to Newcastle by opening his first French Habitat in Montparnasse that same year.

Courtesy Habitat

Since then, businesses have been bought and sold Habitat notably being absorbed by the Ikea empire.

The Conran Empire >>

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