Ron Arad's World

I got told off before the interview with Ron Arad had even started. 'What do you mean you haven't seen my show at the Centre Pompidou!' he snapped. I could have bluffed my way through except Arad has a sniffer dog in the form of the world's worst website. There is absolutely nothing on it: not even a birthday. 'If the website said everything, you wouldn't need to meet me or ever come to my studio,' he said. Or bother with Parisian museums for that matter.

Paris it is, because... how can I put it? Arad's school of charm is not what we Anglo-Saxons are used to. The 57-year-old Israeli-born architect and designer, who has dominated the international design scene since he banged together the Rover chair in his Covent Garden studio in 1981, is a bit gruff. 'Why do you keep jumping to the end of the story before I have even finished!' he blurted out. I noticed the photographer's face tensing up. I think he expected Arad to stalk out, but having first met the designer over 12 years ago, I know there is a cuddly side underneath (his students at the RCA love him, though he did cause a rather big fuss when he merged the departments of furniture design and industrial design). I did temporarily forget this as he contradicted, interrupted and more than occasionally told me off for not being an expert on all things Arad.

In fact, he has so many items on the market that I kept getting them all mixed up. It doesn't help that he somewhat mischievously plays the Italian manufacturers off against each other. Many of his projects, including the Clover chair for Driade, started life elsewhere. 'The chief at Magis (for whom the chair was originally intended) said it wasn't as nice as the chair I designed for Moroso,' Arad said. 'So I took it to Driade, who loved it!' Again, I'm not sure a bashful Anglo-Saxon could muster the chutzpah to do this but, equally, I don't think the Albertos and Giannis of the design world would dare challenge Arad either. Arad is in your face: he hates theory, won't indulge in intellectual banter and is positively terrifying when you mention the words 'selling out to the art world'.

It's a sign, to me at least, that Arad is gritty and hands-on rather than the sort of designer who draws blobs on screen that someone else (a poor Italian engineer) has to figure out. There were prototypes all over the office, including one for his PizzaKobra light for iGuzzini, which arrives in a pizza box and cleverly rises up like a snake. His conference table is surrounded by the Tom Vac and Ripple chairs. The fact that they were made for two competing manufacturers (Vitra and Moroso), but are as related as I am to my children, would, you might think, cause alarm, but Arad handled it. 'The Ripple chair is a sequel to the Tom Vac. I was interested in knowing what would happen if the backs criss-crossed. I sent the drawing to Rolf Fehlbaum [of Vitra] and said: "Do you have any issues with this?" He answered that he expects products by the same designer to have things in common.' An ordinary mortal designer might have never have had his calls returned, but Arad is Arad.

Back in the frozen confines of his office, Arad pulls up a picture from the Bologna Art Fair of a giant ping-pong table in mirrored stainless steel. The limited-edition version sold for E375,000. One featured in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition last June (it was shown on the cover with Tracey Emin and Humphrey Ocean playing ping-pong) and, though beautiful, appeared to me to be the height of pre-crash folly.

'That's really decadent,' I said to Arad. It took some guts to say this knowing that Arad wasn't going to take a punch without returning 30.

'What is the most expensive piece of artwork you own?' he asked. I mentioned a Hitchens. 'Don't you think it's a bit decadent to spend that much money on some paint smeared on paper? If you need to play ping-pong with your kids, this is not what you buy.'

For some time now, the art world has been feasting on the insatiable appetite of the suddenly rich. Dealers who couldn't get their hands on a Hirst thought: 'Aha! Let's sell design!' So they approached Marc Newson, Zaha Hadid and Ron Arad and asked for limited editions to sell for six figures. The term 'design art' popped up as an all-encompassing explanation for chairs that now came with a price tag of E185,000. To put it in context, most designers make their living working in the world of hi-tech manufacturing where the idea is to lower the costs. Now they were told: ask for as much as you want and whatever you do, don't make it look like furniture.

'Arad really doesn't need to worry about money,' says Simon Stock of Sotheby's, who has worked with him and describes him as your 'typical artistcraftsman who's in it for the sport. He's very creative, very enthusiastic.' And rather difficult to work with I imagine, though Stock didn't say that. Deyan Sudjic, a friend and head of the Design Museum London, says Arad was once called the Bruce Willis of design. 'He is smart, and has a way with ideas, and is always moving on,' he says. One of his ideas was the Upperworld Hotel at Battersea Power Station, where the suites were going to be reached by shuttles through Tube-like corridors.

To be fair, Arad made pieces such as New Orleans (a large sculpted armchair), the Big Easy (another armchair) and Oh Void chairs long before someone who calls himself an art dealer stumbled upon them, but it's the 'art' mantle he wears that irritates his peers because it means riches.