Stephen Bayley

Stephen Paul Bayley (born 13 October 1951) is a British design critic, cultural critic, journalist and author.

Childhood and education

Bayley was born in Cardiff, Wales and spent his childhood years in Liverpool, England, attending Booker Avenue County Primary School and Quarry Bank High school (now known as Calderstones School). He was inspired by Liverpool's architecture and its built environment.

He was later educated at Manchester University and the University of Liverpool School of Architecture.

Career

He has worked as a museum curator. In the 1970s he was a lecturer in the history of art at the University of Kent, but first became prominent in the 1980s as an authority on style and design when Sir Terence Conran chose him to head up the Boilerhouse Project,^[1][2] at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the V&A, in London. This was Britain's first permanent exhibition of design and it was host to more than 20 exhibitions in five years including Ford Motor Co, Sony, Issey Miyake, Coca Cola and Taste. He then became chief executive^[2] of the Design Museum in London which grew out of the Boilerhouse Project.

In 1989 he was made a Chevalier de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France's top artistic honour, by the French Minister of Culture and in 1995 he was Periodical Publishers' Association Columnist of the Year.

He was appointed as the creative director of the exhibition at the Millennium Dome in Greenwich. After a series of disputes he resigned in 1998 citing ministerial interference. On his resignation he said of the dome that "it could turn out to be crap", and accused government minister Peter Mandelson of "running the project like a dictator". Mandelson said that "he had not been a dictator but had been decisive and had got a grip on a project that was suffering from drift". Mandelson also said that Mr Bayley's other remarks did not merit a response.^[3] chief executive of the Dome Project, Jennie Page, gave evidence to a House of Commons Select Committee which included the issue of his resignation.^[4]

In 2007, Bayley became The Observer's architecture and design correspondent.^[5] In his column of 22 March 2009,^[6] he claimed that: "Botticceli's model for The Birth of Venus was a common Florentine hooker called Simonetta Vespucci, painted nude to titillate his client". He was arguing against the motion that: "Britain has become indifferent to beauty" proposed by Roger Scruton and David Starkey, who held an image of The Birth of Venus next to an image of the British supermodel Kate Moss, in order to demonstrate how "cruddy" British culture is.

In July 2008, Bayley, described as a 'design guru', became the first of three non-executive directors to join the management board of Sidhu & Simon Communications, a public relations and sponsorship agency.^[7]

He is also the 'style director' of Guest Hotels.^[8][9]

Publications

He writes for several newspapers and is a contributing editor of GQ. He is also a regular columnist in British CAR Magazine where he offers a critique of contemporary motoring design from a philosophical perspective. He has also appeared on television series such as Have I Got News for You and Grumpy Old Men.

Books

• In Good Shape (1979)
• The Albert Memorial (1981)
• Harley Earl and The Dream Machine (1983)
• The Conran Directory of Design (1985)
• Sex Drink and Fast Cars (1986)
• Commerce and Culture (1989)
• Taste (1991)
• Labour Camp (1998)
• General Knowledge (2000)
• Sex : a cultural history (2000)
• A Dictionary of Idiocy (2003)
• Life’s a Pitch (2007)
• Design : intelligence made visible (2007)
• Cars (2008)
• Woman as Design (2009)
• Liverpool: shaping the city (2010)
• La Dolce Vita (2011)
• Ugly: The Aesthetics Of Everything (2012).

Personal life

He lives in his south-west London house with his wife, Flo, and their two children, Bruno and Coco. He has lived there for 25 years and says that the house still isn't finished: "doing up a home is like food and sex: it should never be rushed" and that the sole purpose of the garden is as "a place to sit with a book and a glass of wine".^[8]

References and external links

• Stephen Bayley at the Internet Movie Database
• Flo Bayley's Studio 176 website
• Centre for School Design Launch: Stephen Bayley, Talk(video)