Like musicians, we think through our hands,” says Gadi Amit, fondling three pieces of raw wood precariously bound together with masking tape. Amit has built his 22-year career designing award-winning technology devices for brands such as Dell, Palm, and Verizon; this year, he took top honors in the International Design Excellence Awards. Yet the 47-year-old industrial designer is curiously enamored of the power of craft. “Designers here are so computer minded; I say, ‘You guys have computer vertigo, go down to the shop,’ ” Amit says, referring to the windowless basement workshop of his San Francisco studio, NewDealDesign. “As you play and sculpt with foam and putty, you actually discover, versus a more analytical or cerebral approach. That it’s ambiguous and inaccurate is a good thing.”
Going analog isn’t Amit’s only unconventional stance. One of the brat pack spawned by Frog Design, he has become an unapologetic critic of the green-design movement. “In the sustainability crowd,” Amit says, “I feel that sometimes beauty is the first thing that takes a hit.” The “beauty” Amit is referring to isn’t some $20,000 chair enclosed in glass at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, but well-built objects so lust-worthy that people will want to hold on to them forever–objects like his prize-winning Slingbox 700U, a media device no bigger than a piece of toast, stripped of a plastic skin in favor of waffled aluminum that is virtually 100% recyclable. “My theory,” says the Israeli native, “is that beauty is a very positive, visceral force that we should harness for sustainability.”
Over coffee in his studio’s loft, Amit talked about how computers are like animals, whether sex appeal trumps carbon footprint, and why buying a Prius may ultimately be an irresponsible act.
