Marc Newson

Marc Andrew Newson (born 20 October 1963) is an Australian industrial designer, creative director, and artist who, in a career spanning nearly four decades, has worked in many industry sectors including furniture, product, and transportation design, luxury goods, fashion, and fine art.

His work is primarily characterized by smooth geometric lines, organic shapes, an absence of sharp edges, and the use of transparency and translucency.

Newson's Lockheed Lounge chair holds the record for the highest price paid at auction for the work of a living designer.

Design critic Alice Rawsthorn called Newson "one of the most influential designers of his generation", and fellow designer Jony Ive has described him as "fairly peerless now".

Newson was born in Sydney, Australia on 20 October 1963 to Carol and Paul Newson, an electrician.

Carol was 19 years old when she was pregnant with Marc, and married Paul during the pregnancy.

However, Paul left the family soon after Marc was born, and Carol moved back into her parents’ house to raise Marc.

Newson is of Greek origin on his mother's side.

He studied jewellery design and sculpture the Sydney College of the Arts, and graduated in 1984.

In 1986 Newson was awarded a grant from the Australian Crafts Council and staged his first exhibition at Roslyn Oxley9 gallery, which featured the LC1, the first iteration of an idea that was later developed by Newson into the Lockheed Lounge in 1988.

The following year he moved to Tokyo, where he mostly worked with the design company Idée, and where he created works such as the Super Guppy lamp (1987) and the Embryo Chair (1988).

He describes his 1988 Embryo Chair as "one of the first pieces where I hit upon a discernible style".

He moved to Paris in 1991, where he set up a studio.

He co-founded the Ikepod watch company in 1994, leaving the company in 2012.

In 1997 he moved to London, where he and business partner Benjamin de Haan set up Marc Newson Ltd.

He has served as an adjunct professor of design at Sydney College of the Arts (where he first studied sculpture and jewellery) and as creative director for Qantas.

1999: commemorative postage stamp series celebrating Australian design featured an image of Newson's Embryo Chair on a 90c stamp.

Marc Newson has been represented by Galerie kreo, in Paris, since the year 2000.

He is also the only industrial designer represented by the Larry Gagosian gallery.

Speaking about his work and methodology in Domus magazine, Newson states that “You can draw a curve on the paper and know immediately that it is the right one, but you can not do the same to the computer; the curve is not realized with a function or using a digital guide, it is a form that is drawn freehand.”

2005: selected as one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people of the year.

An example of his Lockheed Lounge chair sold for $968,000 at Sotheby's in 2006, and £1,100,000 at a 2009 auction at Phillips de Pury & Company.

At the 2006 Design Miami fair he produced 12 Chop Top tables, all of which sold out in 20 minutes at an estimated $170,000.

Newson married Charlotte Stockdale, a fashion stylist, in 2008.

They have two children and live in Bibury Court, a mansion in the Cotswolds that was converted from its previous use as a hotel.

They also have homes in London, Paris, and Greece.

Every year he races one of his four vintage sports cars – an Aston Martin, a Lamborghini, a Ferrari and a Cisitalia – in the Italian Mille Miglia, while wearing bespoke tweed driving suits by H. Huntsman & Sons, and was quoted as saying: "I'm not a motor head, I don't like the new versions of any of those cars."

One of Newson's best friends is Sir Jonathan Ive of Apple Inc., whom he met in Japan.

2011: winner of the Lucky Strike Designer Award

2012: appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2012 New Year Honours for services to design.

In a 2012 article in The New York Times, Ive described Newson's work:

"I think Marc is fairly peerless now. Marc's forms are often imitated, but what other designers seldom imitate is his preoccupation with materials and processes. You have to start with an understanding of the material. Often your innovation is just coming up with a new way to use material."

2013: the Philadelphia Museum of Art staged a retrospective of his work titled Marc Newson: At Home.

He also received the museum's Collab Design Excellence Award on the same occasion.

2022: awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the Royal College of Art in London

2023: winner of Australian Design Prize in the Australian Good Design Awards.

His work has become amongst the highest selling in auctions.

He was hired by Jony Ive and joined Apple as a senior vice president of design in September 2014.

In April 2015 his Lockheed Lounge chair sold at auction for £UK2.4 million ($AU4.69 million), making it the most expensive object ever sold by a living designer.

In June 2019, Newson joined LoveFrom, a design consultancy founded by Ive upon his departure from Apple.