Aaron Scott
Aaron Scott is a Brooklyn-based designer whose sculptural furniture and lighting explore the intersection of art, craftsmanship, and material experimentation. Working primarily with wood, Scott creates pieces defined by fluid forms, tactile surfaces, and a strong architectural presence, balancing technical precision with an intuitive and highly personal design language.
Originally from the forests of Southwest Oregon, Scott studied art and philosophy before moving to New York, where he worked across sculpture, writing, film, and furniture design. Through Aaron Scott Design, he develops collectible works that merge sculptural expression with functionality, resulting in objects that feel both contemporary and timeless.
Interview
I was born and raised in the woods of Southern Oregon, near the California border. I lived there until I went to college.
I have always made art, but it wasn’t until my mid-thirties that I realized I could earn a living by making ‘functional art’.
When I was nine or ten, my grandmother gave me a book of M.C. Escher drawings. I was fascinated by Escher’s use of distorted perspective and optical illusions. The idea that perceptual laws could be bent to create a more expansive or imaginative notion of space appealed to me and made me want to experiment with the limits of perspective, volume, and form.
I studied art and philosophy in school – I never took a single design or architecture class. I didn’t pay much attention to design during the first ten years or so I lived in NYC, and the objects I made were exclusively for art. My sculptures, which were sometimes used as elements in installations or conceptual art pieces, had gradually started to resemble utilitarian objects. Around the same time, people started asking me to build them things. I realized that there might be some overlap between the so-called artistic and the utilitarian and that my thinking about space and form was well-suited to design. Establishing limits is important in art, and I discovered I liked the constraints imposed by design: that the object, no matter how eccentric or expressive, still had to be capable of performing a function.
My creative process is organic and non-linear. Drawing and sculpting are important to my practice, but these often occur fairly late in the game. I spend a lot of time walking, reflecting, and daydreaming; I try to open myself to ideas that occur through randomness and chance. Concepts born from these more aleatory moments usually bounce around in my head for a long time before I sit down to actually sketch them out. Occasionally, a specific idea motivates research in a new direction – for instance, recently, I became interested in the geological process of erosion, and I needed to learn about the geomorphology of erosion before embarking on design ideas.
I usually spend my mornings at home, reading, writing, and working on my computer. I arrive at my studio in Dumbo in the early afternoon. I’m often occupied with multiple projects at once – for example, right now I’m working on a couple of different commissions while at the same time developing a new design for a lighting piece. Because many of my pieces involve a lot of gluing and clamping, I tend to jump from task to task in the studio. I might set something up to glue and then work on sculpting or sanding a piece that’s further along. I also take breaks to play the drums.
I have always had a deep appreciation for wood – its colors, textures, patterns, smells, along with its structural/engineering possibilities. My father was a builder, and working with him in his wood shop gave me a hands-on understanding of the material characteristics of wood. For me, wood is a plastic medium that lends itself to infinite design possibilities. I consider it a great privilege to be able to work with such a rich, beautiful and endlessly fascinating material on a daily basis.
Since the early 2000s, I’ve worked almost exclusively with stacked-laminate construction, a technique that relies on the careful laying out of alternating grain patterns on parallel pieces of wood, overlapped in successive layers to build out a form. This is a process that is both additive and subtractive: once the layers are laminated together in a stair-like or topographical form, they are sculpted with handheld power tools to obtain the final, smooth surface. If engineered properly, the stacked-laminate method can achieve outstanding strength and stability, while at the same time allowing for delicate curves and sinuous lines.
Even though all my pieces are made in my studio, following my own inspirations and techniques, design is always a collaborative process in some respects. Working with clients who understand what I’m doing with my work and want to use it in new or challenging ways on a project is something I enjoy.
I think it’s important not to rely too heavily on computers. 3D rendering programs are a great tool for aiding in the design process, but I worry that they can short-circuit the development of an idea. I’d also encourage young artists to take risks and not be afraid to make mistakes – it might seem like a cliche, but mistakes are the best way to learn, and breakthroughs often come by way of accident.
I don’t believe my work belongs to any particular design movement.
Gerrit Rietveld, Le Corbusier, Carlo Mollino, Eileen Grey, Franco Albini, Gio Ponti, Lebbeus Woods.
Wendell Castle, Verhoeven Twins, Charles Treyelyan, Mauro Mori, Amorph Design.
Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon, Giuseppe Penone, Ruth Asawa, Olafur Eliasson, Ron Nagle, Louise Bourgeois, Martin Puryear.
Dynamism.
“The object, no matter how eccentric or expressive, still had to be capable of performing a function.”
The Questions
(The Proust Questionnaire is a set of questions answered by the French writer Marcel Proust.
Other historical figures who have answered confession albums are Oscar Wilde,
Karl Marx, Arthur Conan Doyle, Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Cézanne…)
Not sure it exists
Ecological collapse
Overly-analytical
Hypocrisy
Daniel Dennett
Shoes
Reflective, distracted, unfocused
Confidence
Honesty, kindness, intelligence
Honesty, kindness, intelligence
‘On the other hand…’
Better mathematical skills
My name: I’d like to try being ‘Scott Aaron’ instead of Aaron Scott for a while
Writing a novel (unpublished)
A tree
Iceland
My library
Addiction
My own!
Self-discipline
Honesty
Wallace Stegner, Phillip Roth, Max Frisch, Thomas Bernhard, Heinrich Böll, Emmanuel Carrère, Witold Gombrovicz, Magda Szabó, Chris Kraus
Gantenbein, from Max Frisch’s Mein Name sei Gantenbein
Medieval craftsman
I’m not sure that I have ‘heroes’ per se, but I admire people who chart their own course in life and don’t pay attention to what others think
Dagmar and Hansel (two of my cats, now deceased)
Ignorance
I don’t believe in regret
With my foot on the (metaphorical) gas pedal
Nietzsche said something like, ‘All great thoughts are conceived while walking.’ This is my motto too, only I would add to this: ‘…or while doing nothing.’
“Mistakes are the best way to learn, and breakthroughs often come by way of accident.”
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