Discern Living Editor-in-chief, Abhik Bhattacherji attended the ID Symposium at the recently concluded India Design ID 2016. The symposium saw the coming together of some incredible designers, architects and creative thinkers, over two days. Luminaries in the design world, including Bijoy Jain, Mario Bellini, India Madhavi, Toyo Ito, Tom Dixon, and Nipa Doshi, shared their stories and personal philosophies around art, design, techniques, and sustainable architecture. They also shared anecdotes that illustrated their love for India, its heritage, crafts and artists, and their take on the ingenuity and the future of the creative class as they understand it. This post explores the work and thought process of Tom Dixon. Read on to discover more about this award-winning designer and his unique approach to design.

It was a cathartic experience to hear Tom Dixon speak, for the very first time in India, about his design journey and his aesthetic narrative. A talented, welder, designer and architect with no formal training, Dixon is someone who celebrates and explores the synthesis of materials with technology, industrial design and artistry. He won my heart as he delivered a riveting talk about his life, his design philosophy, his dog and his hope to become an angler of furniture.

Dixon is an accidental designer and that too, quite literally. His captivating talk started with an account of how a broken arm and leg during his teenage years put an end to his career aspirations with a disco band. This seeming tragedy at the time turned into a miracle, which helped kick-start his design career. Growing up in the 1975's, the era of the Sex Pistols, Dixon’s baptism into the punk generation helped him achieve a sense of confidence, shaped his attitude, and helped him build a clear, core aesthetic. "The great thing about the punk movement was that it proved you could do things without a certificate or any lessons. You could just do it with an attitude."

Tom Dixon as a musician and his Punk Rock inspiration

What I came to adore was Dixon’s practical approach to design. Early on in his career, he decided that welding was his superpower. Fixing motorbikes and cars led to him creating an avalanche of semi-functional pieces. The man literally welded anything he found! He said, “It helped me test my ideas out more quickly”. An impatient designer, wood was not his material of choice, as it would break too easily during his experimentation. Instead, he worked on anything he could find - Chinese soup ladles and parts of broken bicycles among them. Machines, metals, motorbikes, and even the guillotine influenced his early designs. Working with these raw materials helped Dixon find his distinctive design style and taught him innumerable lessons on the process of production and manufacturing. Turning a pile of material into something desirable was and continues to be his salvation. Is that not the true nature of art and design: to turn raw materials into gold; almost like alchemy?

Picture Courtesy 1. pedrosilmon.com 2. bestde signbooks 3. collection.vam.ac.uk

Some early designs when Dixon was experimenting with welding.



Dixon’s doodles caught the interest of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York and a store in London’s Notting Hill where he began selling a few of his designs. A stint at the home & design retail giant Habitat (his first real job!) helped him understand the business of design; this is where he picked up valuable knowledge of commerce and manufacturing.

Picture Courtesy Tom Dixon

A doodle of a chicken metamorphosed into the iconic, sculptural S-Chair, which saw Dixon’s journey from self-production to the Italian luxury manufacturing giant Cappellini.

Dixon’s talk went on to describe how his brand has shaped his design principals. He made a hilarious comparison to cows being branded just like companies are branded! After all, what is branding if not a stamp of authenticity and ownership? His desire is to build a brand that has a distinctive narrative and core aesthetic that is experimental, minimal yet meaningful. He mentioned Habitat, Verner Pantone, and Vitra as spaces and people who shaped his sensibilities, and in many ways, his career too.



The logo of the eponymous brand, Tom Dixon

No narrative about Dixon would be complete without a significant mention of his iconic lights. They are so well-known globally that they are regularly counterfeited and sold in Khan Market, India; on eBay in China and Australia and almost everywhere else in the world as well. Interestingly, if you were to Google ‘Tom Dixon lights’, you would undoubtedly see fake products for the first twenty pages before you arrive at an original Tom Dixon product. It is highly recommended that you thoroughly research products you buy online, thereby ensuring that the designer, the artist and the manufacturer are rightfully compensated, rather than a counterfeiter.



The audience seemed to be in complete sync with Dixon when he said, “lights are handbags of the interiors world” as “they not only transform the mood of space but they also act as a decorative and functional tool."





Picture Courtesy Tom Dixon



A great example of an iconic Tom Dixon lighting design is this Etch Web Brass lamp, which has an irregular pentagon shape, making for a theatrical piece of lighting for a hallway or a hotel lobby.



Shop here for lights by Tom Dixon



The 2000’s were a good decade for Dixon. Buckingham Palace awarded him the O.E.B. medal and soon after, he launched his eponymous brand. In the mid-2000's, Dixon’s Design Research Studios began offering interior design and architectural services. This spurred him to become more excited about interiors and architecture, through the experiences that helped his own design journey to mature. He has created some stunning spaces for hotels, cafes, resorts, spas, restaurants, corporations and residences. Here is a selection of some of my favourite spaces, created by him.



I absolutely loved the Mondrian Hotel in London, flanked by the Blackfriars Bridge on the South bank of the River Thames. Dixon’s Design Research Studio has designed the interiors of this hotel. The studio took their concept and inspiration from a luxury cruise liner as they modelled and designed this 359-room hotel. I love that the lobby resembles the hull of a ship and how cleverly the light illuminates the space.



Picture Courtesy Tom Dixon

This luxury penthouse created by Dixon’s Design Research Studio is situated in a Victorian building across London’s Canary Wharf. It was gloriously transformed into a space that features oakwood floors, exposed brick and a functional yet striking approach to décor and design.



Picture Courtesy Tom Dixon



This is the Harrod’s sandwich café, also designed by Dixon’s Design Research Studio. I love how the plump purple chairs and the cluster of Tom’s brass light installation give this room a chic look. The marble-topped tables and the deep-hued classic interiors make this café unexpectedly glamourous – a look we love!



Picture Courtesy Tom Dixon



Another project was the radical makeover of leading advertising agency McCann’s Manhattan office. Dixon and his team replaced cubicles with an innovative open-plan layout. Dixon was a perfect pick to revitalise this particular office, as his vision and aesthetic resulted in a space that facilitates communication and creativity brilliantly. The way he made his iconic copper-plated lights look almost like an art installation was a genius move, and the interspersion of bright and deep hues added warmth and dimension to the office.



Picture Courtesy Tom Dixon



In 2006, Dixon embarked on a project he called the Disruptive Furniture Experience. Choosing Trafalgar Square as the venue for this activity, Dixon gave away 1000 polystyrene chairs in less than six minutes, to the general public. Dixon explained that his idea behind the initiative was to prove that disruption can be a good thing, even in the furniture business. Through this, he had wanted to make a point that the movement of a product, from manufacturing to the customer’s home, should be a quicker process. He also invited sponsors in the audience to help host something similar in India – a worthwhile activity for us all to consider!



Picture Courtesy Tom Dixon



A collaboration with The British Council brought Dixon to Jaipur. He indulged in some anti-design and converted brass water pots into lights. Metal workers who intricately hammered etches on brass pots were the inspiration as Dixon travelled through Rajasthan. This beat-work on brass inspired him and led to his collection, Beat Lights. He stayed true to the shape of the traditional brass pots and added a modern twist as he created this collection.





Picture Courtesy Tom Dixon



Today, you can visit Dixon's countless stores across the world and bring home a small piece of Tom Dixon. The designer creates crockery, candles, rugs, furniture, and lighting solutions, amongst countless other products (some other collaborations include T-shirts for Lacoste and apparel for Adidas). What he enjoys is experimenting with a variety of verticals, where he gets to keep one foot in the classical and the traditional and the other in modernity and the future. You must get yourself a copy of Dixonary , the product designer’s 2013 book . In Tom’s words, "Dixonary is a chronological sweep through my thirty years of designing.”



The talk ended with a burst of the pleasantly bizarre, as Dixon spoke passionately about his underwater furniture farm, which is still conceptual and an experiment. This ludicrous idea of submerging furniture welded together underwater is currently underway in the Bahamas. Fish, algae and coral thrive beautifully in and around this underwater furniture installation. He ended his talk joking that one day he will be able to fish out a chair from his underwater furniture farm and sell it on the art market!





Underwater Furniture Farm