Philippe Starck (b.Paris 1949) - enfant terrible and court jester of the international design jet-set - is the best-known designer of our times, as well as one of the most prolific: his cult objects have proved as successful in the marketplace as they have with design critics. His success has been built on his ability to translate his sometimes prophetic insight into social and cultural changes in Western society into objects, spaces and buildings. The son of an aircraft designer, he has inherited his father’s love of technology and penchant for futuristic design - it comes as no surprise to learn that many of his furniture pieces are named after characters in the novels of visionary sci-fi writer Philip K.Dick. Driven by his omnivorous curiosity, he has made a name for himself in many areas of contemporary design. As an interior designer, he first attracted notice in the mid 1970s with two Paris nightclubs, La Main Bleue and Les Bains-Douches, and was commissioned to decorate and furnish President Mitterand’s private apartment in the Elysée Palace in 1982. These were precursor of the spectacularly successful Café Costes, in turn the inspirational prototype for later designs like the Paramount Hotel in New York, the Manin restaurant in Tokyo and the Felix restaurant in Hong Kong. His collaboration with Driade as a furniture and furnishings designer began in the early 1980s with a collection which is still developing and expanding. He has also designed kitchen scales, sanitary wares, a TV set, watches, lighters, lamps, toothbrushes, kitchen utensils, eyewear, stools, ashtrays, lemon-squeezers, a scooter, a motorbike and even pasta. In his work as an architect, his masterly visual flair is an evident in the prefabricated house for 3 Suisses as it is in office blocks like the Asahi Building in Tokyo.

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