Designing a life less ordinary
 |  Newson: "I'm fascinated with materials, with processes, with technologies." |
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(CNN) -- Marc Newson has a knack of making everyday items look like prototypes.
Whether designing kitchen and bathroom accessories for Alessi, training shoes for Nike, mobile phones for KDDI or a concept car for Ford, the Australian-born designer's work has always carried the hallmarks of original thinking.
"The process is always the same, it doesn't really matter what the object is, whether it's a prototype or whether it's for production," Newson told CNN.
"It doesn't ever really change my methods or the way I do things, I always approach things in the same way, think about things in the same way, get inspired in the same way. I'm fascinated with materials, with processes, with technologies."
Newson is also obsessed with air travel, a theme that has characterized his work since the aluminum Lockheed lounge chair that first brought him to prominence as a young designer in Sydney in 1986.
Last year the 41-year-old got to create his own full-size concept jet, the Kelvin40, for an exhibition at the Fondation Cartier in Paris.
"It was a crazy dream, a dream that I never really thought I would be able to realize," said Newson. "Oddly enough it took an art gallery in Paris to make that possible rather than the aviation industry. It really was Boy's Own stuff."
Newson's latest project, however, sees him working on the inside of the aviation industry, designing the interior for Qantas' new fleet of Airbus "superjumbo" A380s.
"I've more or less become one of Qantas's in-house designers," he said. "I'm designing their entire aircraft interior from the sharp end all the way back.
"That's been keeping me busy for the last three years and will keep me busy for the next two years but it's pretty exciting stuff. It's the biggest project that I've ever been involved in."
These days Newson is a celebrity designer with studios in London and Paris whose work is feature in the permanent collections of New York's Museum of Modern Art, London's Design Museum and Paris' Musee National d'Art Moderne.
Yet it is only though collaboration with corporations that his designs reach the production stage. In return, Newson thinks he can offer companies something different to their in-house designers.
"Those big companies now come to me because they sense that somehow I'm going to give a different spin to what they normally do," he said.
"A lot of times companies approach me not only because they think the result is going to be different, but because they're interested to see how that will affect the workings of what their designers do on a daily basis.
"They think that if they interject a little bit of chaos -- which is me -- into the system that maybe that will inspire and excite the young designers they have working for them, day to day."
As for the future, Newson has ambitions to take his interest in aviation beyond the earth's atmosphere.
"I'm crazy about anything that's space-related," he said. "In fact the sneakers I designed for Nike were indirectly designed for some Russian cosmonauts. I was invited to a number of launches in Baikunor [cosmodrome] in Kazakhstan.
"It's a very difficult industry, as you can imagine, to get involved in, but that's something that I'd love to do. I think there's some room for me to help out."
