ROSS LOVEGROVE: The Power and Beauty of Organic Design

It is important for young designers today to be designing for the future through new and emerging sustainable materials and designs. Ross Lovegrove is a designer who is leading the way into discovering the power and beauty of organic design through his use of biopolymers in his products and artworks.

Regardless of his pretentious comments made throughout the presentation, Lovegrove portrayed a lot of truth in the need for large companies to begin taking on sustainable practices. His example of how entertainment company Sony, disregarded his opinion to begin using materials such as biopolymers in order to beat Apple was overwhelming. The need for these amazing materials to become more widely acceptable became highly obvious, as it was clear that large corporations took these sustainable practices as a joke.

His interest in natural growth patterns seen in the enormous skeletal structures of dinosaurs was highly interesting and reminded me of the Australian company Dinosaur Designs who design these bone-like jewellery and pottery out of polyester resin. However, it was his combination of these organic structures and biopolymers that stood out from other designers using the theory of biomimicry in their designs. Lovegrove’s demonstration of an alternative design, to make his Go Chair originally made from magnesium into a renewable design through the use biopolymers instead of magnesium.

I was really intrigued by his water bottle and the process he took to create it. His interpretative computer drawing of Leonardo’s drawing did not impress me, in fact I though it rather wrong and pompous to compare such a famous piece of art to his own drawing of downward lines. However, I do believe that his representation nonetheless posed a great influence on his design of the beautiful water bottle. Having thought similarly about using flexible materials to create a water bottle for our previous assessment, I found Lovegrove’s design stunning and a perfect capture of water itself in the most ergonomical and aesthetical way.

Overall, I was very interested in the work of Lovegrove and his intuitive perception into organic design. My only query was for a man so obsessed with nature and organics, why is his workspace (as well as some of his work) so sterile and artificial? I guess it was something to do with his “other self.”