Interview

HADEN-GUEST: What’s in the show?

ARAD: The museum wanted me to do a retrospective. Why is design important? What is design? How do you design? We just wanted to show the latest work. I did find a balance, a way to evaluate my language—which is architecture, industrial design, and studio and gallery pieces.

HADEN-GUEST: What do you mean by studio and gallery pieces?

ARAD: Things that are not designed to be sold in shops. And things that are not mass-produced. Things that are not necessarily practical solutions to real problems, but things that are done for their own sake—without considering or negotiating with anything or anyone. So these are the three major areas.

HADEN-GUEST: The show goes to moma next?

ARAD: The show goes to the moma. But it doesn’t go to the moma because the space in the moma is different. The people in the moma are different; the moma has a different approach to things. And also there’s a different curator. Curators want to believe that they influence things. So it’s the same show but a different show. I had to make a presentation to the trustees of the moma and show them the work that I’m doing in Paris. And I made a little film. I can show it to you?

HADEN-GUEST: Yeah!

ARAD: It’s 20 minutes. It’s studio and gallery pieces, industrial design, and architecture. Architecture is not normally a good thing to show in exhibitions, because you never see the real thing. You only see models, drawings, or photos. It’s just something representing something that is somewhere else. So I decided to take one of my old projects and build a one-to-one replica of it. So rather than have a model, I have a reconstruction.

HADEN-GUEST: Same size?

ARAD: Same size. Same everything. It looks the same. The original is the island, the foyer of the Tel Aviv opera house from 15 years ago, a few weeks before computers took over architectural practices. And everyone thought it was a computer project, but no, it was done by hand. And I highlight one project that should be finished soon, which is a design museum outside of Tel Aviv, in Holon. Do you know where Holon is? Most people don’t. It will put them on the map. I came up with a way to combine the structure and the filtering of light all in one. [ARAD starts the movie.]

HADEN-GUEST: When you arrive at these forms, how much of it is intuitive? You’re dealing with real-life elements, like weight and stresses.

ARAD: There are engineers who work on everything you come up with. The thing about this particular museum is that it’s not just a pretty face—it’s a structure. It’s a museum without a single column. [Further images appear onscreen.] This is a house I did in Kenwood, Hampstead, London. This is a project I did for Battersea Power Station . . . That is in Italy . . . This is a shopping mall . . .

HADEN-GUEST: How many of these will be in the show?

ARAD: All of them. But just one real-life structure. And these are the projects that are going to be shown in models on the computer. [Computer simulations appear of projects intended for Les Diablerets, the fiercely fanged mountains that tower over the fancy Swiss resort village Gstaad. One is a commission from the British motor-
racing magnate Bernie Ecclestone.] This is a mountain that was bought by Bernie Ecclestone. My site is there. [An assistant comes up. Another visitor has arrived.] Later!

HADEN-GUEST: This is going to be built?

ARAD: [nonchalantly]Probably. [Another computer simulation of this Alpine utopia appears. It is captioned “Moonshadowsnow.”] This is a Swarovski project. The early sketches had some crystals in them—blown-up crystals. But I went off it very fast. It’s going to be built entirely off-site and helicoptered in. It’s called Camera Obscura, because you can see it upside down, in motion, because the building moves. [A kind of fairground music strikes up. “Hahahaha . . . Hoo-hoo! . . . Hee-haw!” It’s partly jolly, partly jeering, like the ominous clown in a horror movie.]

HADEN-GUEST: What’s that sound? A karaoke yodel?

ARAD: I went on the Internet and looked for a yodel. And I found this. So I played it in reverse. Back and forth. [The yodel fades away. The Alpine projects are replaced by other images.] Now, industrial design . . . You see that piece up there? It’s not about what it looks like. It’s about how it’s done. It’s done by sliding the membrane into two aluminum extrusions. It’s a bit like Chaplin’s Modern Times [1936], you know? [another image] And look at this one! It’s very elastic, and it’s perfectly strong. What you see here is what you get. It’s called Screw. And there are no hidden parts.

HADEN-GUEST: Do you patent your designs?

ARAD: I design mainly for Italian companies and producers. So they do it, they register it. It doesn’t stop people in China. I went to visit some factories in China that make copies. And they probably produce more of my work than what is made in Italy. I had meetings with them. I didn’t fight with them. I thought, How can we help them promote themselves? [Two chairs appear.] I thought I was going to save the world with these [chairs].

HADEN-GUEST: How?

ARAD: Because it’s a slow technique. I felt that doing two at once from just one mold that separates into two chairs would double the speed. But, actually, it slowed it down. I can stop and explain it to you?