Michael Young

Biography

Planes and trains are his offices, travelling a working method. British-born and Hong Kong-based Michael Young is an international star designer, driven by a pas­sionate interest for technological evolution and mass industry. As well as a constant quest­ioning of human typologies and habits ...

Born in 1966 in Sunderland, northern Eng­land, Michael Young studied Furniture and Product Design at Kingston University, London. In the mid-90s Terence Conran chose Michael as his favourite designer. Simultaneously that time’s so-influential magazine Wallpaper hailed his work, but Young fled from the cocktail-party circuit to Iceland, where the land­scape helped him to focus.

Later he moved to Brussels and then Taipei. And finally to Hong Kong – where his company Michael Young Ltd is bold enough to claim that it designs icons rather than items. Like the exceptional easy chair Avalon for Swedese, a one-piece injection chair, created as an expres­sive nod to Verner Panton.