by Marcus Fairs

Moritz Waldemeyer’s talent is so undefined, design pundits don’t know what to call him. Is he an artist? Engineer? Programmer? Designer? DigitAll talks to design’s latest genre-busting enfant terrible.

It’s an unlikely career path for one of design’s fastest-rising stars: former child math prodigy brought up in communist East Germany; trainee bank clerk; engineer at corporate giants Philips and Ford. Now, in his latest vocational switch, Moritz Waldemeyer has become an, er... what is his job title exactly? “I always find it quite difficult to describe what I do, actually,” Waldemeyer says, German accent poking through anglicised speech patterns. “I guess it’s a combination of engineering and art.”

Waldemeyer, only 32, personifies a new breed of genre-busting creative. He has become design’s new poster boy, not through his own design work—although he does that too—but through his work for other designers. Equal parts inventor and handyman, he’s a super-networked collaborator with a string of A-list clients including designer Ron Arad, fashion designer Hussein Chalayan and Pritzker Prize-winning architect Zaha Hadid. Waldemeyer is the guy they call when they need someone to bring their most fantastical creative ideas to life. He programmed Lolita—the extraordinary, Ron Arad-designed
spiral chandelier (seen at left) which displays scrolling text messages received by a mobile phone hidden inside the light. He engineered Hussein Chalayan’s striking Spring/Summer 2007 catwalk collection, featuring a servo-controlled dress with remote-controlled fabric tentacles that perform a robotic version of Marilyn Monroe’s billowing-skirt scene from The Seven Year Itch. And he wired Z. Island, a working prototype of a futuristic computer-controlled kitchen designed by Zaha Hadid that integrated audio, TV, and internet into its space-age lines, and was touted in just about every design magazine on the planet.

Chaining his bicycle outside the Royal College of Art in London on a slushy winter’s day, Waldemeyer is indistinguishable from the other students: his hair is long, face boyish, clothing urban. As a part-time tutor at the RCA, Waldemeyer skips the utilitarian student canteen and heads for the college’s Senior Common Room—a curious hybrid of corporate hospitality suite and gentleman’s club. Inside, the lounge and dining room are buzzing with the chatter of professors, college grandees, and visiting lecturers; over roast duck and celeriac mash, Waldemeyer is introduced to a senior rocket designer from the European Space Agency and one of the world’s leading nanotechnologists.