His working life has been based in the glittering Hong Kong for more than five years now, where he says the Chinese market is stimulating, hugely inspirational and facilitates the harmony between the integrity of his design and the manufacturing skills of the local industry. One example is his ZipZig Lamp, presented recently at London's Super Design and made of thousands of small pieces of recycled paper neatly folded by hand. Following his marriage last December, his heart is in Australia – in Avalon, New South Wales – where he has a beach house under construction.
The world is, has always been and always will be small and intriguing for the English designer Michael Young (1966, Sunderland), a contemporary nomad who has managed to fully exploit the industrial potential of the great China and turn it into a plus rather than a minus. His story stems from thousands of kilometres travelled to destinations far removed from the usual capitals of design. In 1994, he opened MY002, his first London studio. A year later Terence Conran considered him "the most inspiring British designer" and David Bayley praised his innovative and dynamic style in The New York Times. He moved to Reykjavík and designed a nightclub for Astro in a flash and then, before flying to Asia, stopped off for a few years in Brussels, where the studio that will become his European base is currently under construction.
From far-off Hong Kong, his gaze is constantly focused on the old continent, with which he works incessantly on collections for leading furniture companies – from Magis, Dog House, to Established&Sons, Writing Desk, Lacoste, which let him play with plastic and fabric to produce a traditional polo shirt invaded by gold crocodiles, and Chivas, which asked him to produce pharaonic bar designs for its events; then come Cappellini, Danese, Artemide, Sawaya and Moroni, Rosenthal and Mandarina Duck, to mention but a few. The world promptly becomes home and office (or in this case studio) for this design gypsy who keeps his eye on technological developments but remains true to the simple, linear style that sets him apart from the rest. He is always more interested in good design than dancing cryptically around the latest fads.
Young's hand is that of the light sign and linear form, often combined with incandescent colours and avant-garde materials. His superlight brushed aluminium Chair 4A for Ostbahn (2009) weighs just over one kilogramme. Flexible and versatile in his designs, he produced the Cityspeed bicycle for Taiwan's Giant (2007), glassware for Chivas (2007), elegant oil and vinegar bottles for the Portuguese firm Herdeiros Passanha (2008), a USB-bracelet in rubber with floral decorations for the Japan's Lost In Ozone (2004), a Bird House in recycled paper (2007) and Sabar, an "all-black sex toy" used in 2007 to create a waterfall installation at 100% Design in Tokyo.
He was guest editor of the latest issue of China's Surface magazine and art director of 100 Design Shanghai (2010). In a career of just under 15 years, these are just a few of the designs by someone for whom fame really did come all at once. Some time ago he joined the world of museum acquisitions, with requests by the world's most famous institutions: in 2002, his Woven Steel Pieces were immediately selected by both the Centre Pompidou and the Louvre in Paris; the same goes for his Mid Nineties collection of furniture, now in the permanent collections of Germany's Die Neue Sammlung and the Design Museum in London. In 2002, the Kortrijk Biennale commissioned a 2,000m² personal installation. He has designed several limited editions for the gallery of Pearl Lam (the queen of China), although Young does say: "What interests me most is design as an industrial art and therefore mass production."
Last year, Vienna Design Week held a personal exhibition of his work curated by the young and talented Tulga Beyerle. When invited to lectures and conferences, a usually ruffle-haired and casually dressed Michael Young, who always looks as if he has just got off an aeroplane, charms audiences with his British accent (and humour) accompanied by a constant smile. The first question from the audience is: "Why Hong Kong?" Because we need a bridge between East and West to show that China can produce quality too. Maria Cristina Didero