About Adrian Olabuenaga

ADRIAN OLABUENAGA was born in 1955 in Buenos Aires, Argentina but grew up and was educated in Los Angeles, California. Raised with an architectural background, he has from a young age, been inspired by architecture, design and art. Starting with a ground breaking approach on hand made sterling silver jewelry in the early 1970s, and soon thereafter began working in the medium of functional art, which included his first solo show was in 1983, featuring his famous ArtRadios and what was then referred to as art-furniture.

In 1985, he founded ACME Studios with Lesley Bailey, his wife. Their first project was a 12 piece jewelry collection by the LA based member of the Memphis group, Peter Shire. Soon after, Peter introduced Adrian to Ettore Sottsass, and together arranged a large collection of jewelry that included 14 designers, that was known as the "MEMPHIS Designers for ACME" collection. It was released at the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum as part of the MEMPHIS MILANO exhibition, where the first production quickly sold out. As suggested by Ettore Sottsass, Adrian’s designs had to be included. His "Atomic" necklace from that collection won the DESIGN Plus award in Germany. Pieces from the same collection were featured in the MEMPHIS exhibition in 2005, at Museum of Decorative Arts in Frankfurt, Germany.  This collection had a profound influence on the jewelry design at the time and is now in the permanent collections of museums around the world, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.

Soon after relocating to the island of Maui, a collaboration started with Ettore Sottsass on “Casa Olabuenaga”, an acre and a half living/working compound, which was completed in 1997, and still operates as ACME Studio’s headquarters. It is now considered one of Mr. Sottsass’ most important works. Mr. Sottsass did all the architecture, Adrian did all the interiors and much of the furniture,

Also in 1997, he began experimenting with the design of writing instruments, which led to the invention of a new technique of applying printed designs onto the barrel of a pen. A project was organized that began with 5 pen designs, but has now involved over 100 of the world’s beet designers, artists, and architects that have so far contributed designs. This printing technique has caused a revolution in the pen industry

Not only is he the CEO, and creative director of ACME Studio, but he also designs for Ritzenhoff, MoMA, Boeing, Disney, Mercedes Benz, Warner Bros., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and many others, as well as creating corporate identities, branding and art directing for many companies.

His work is in the permanent collections of the following museums:

Denver Museum of Art, CO
Indianapolis Museum of Art, IN
Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY
Museum of Decorative Arts in Frankfurt, Germany
Groninger Museum of Art, Groningen, The Netherlands
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

Awards:
DesignPlus, Germany 
Best New Paper Product, MSA 
Good Design, US
Good Design, Japan