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Ross Lovegrove: Building an alpine dream

  • Story Highlights
  • Industrial designer Ross Lovegrove is known for his organic, flowing forms
  • He is building a "bed under the stars" in the Alps for his latest project
  • Lovegrove's work is held in design museums including New York's MOMA
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LONDON, England (CNN) -- Ross Lovegrove is widely regarded as one of the most important and innovative contemporary industrial designers.

Designer Ross Lovegrove is one of the most innovative of contemporary designers.

Ross Lovegrove with a model of the capsule to be built on Moritz Craffonara's private mountain in Italy.

And he doesn't disappoint on the innovation front with his latest project.

Lovegrove -- famous for his tactile and fluid sensual forms -- has teamed up with a private client who dreams of sleeping under the stars atop his private mountain in the Alps.

With money seemingly no object, Lovegrove has designed what he calls an ''alpine capsule," to fulfill the wishes of restaurateur and club owner Moritz Craffonara, who has lived in the Badia region of Italy for more than 40 years.

The capsule bed will be mirrored on the outside but transparent on the inside to take advantage of a 360 degree view of the breathtaking landscape.

Lovegrove describes the capsule bed as an "incredible ethereal space. You lie on this irregular shaped bed, maybe you can play classical music or something that is going to stimulate your senses and then you are going to marvel at this 360 degree view around you, I couldn't think of a better way to wake up in the morning," he tells CNN.

The bed will be built within a couple of years according to the designer, who hopes that it will attract people from all over the world. SeePhoto some of Ross Lovegrove's designs. »

Placing a seemingly incongruous space-age pod on a mountain top in the middle of the Alps is something Lovegrove has no qualms about doing.

He said: "In areas like this where they predominantly build from wood and you see the very old buildings, they are very beautiful, they work in total harmony with their environment and I'm not looking to interfere with that at all.

It's worse for me to design a hybrid type of structure that is trying to tastefully fit in."

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For him, the capsule is part of what he calls "a new nature," -- a man-made situation "that brings in the positive aspects of man's material and technological potential."

"I'm interested in developing an aesthetic for the 21st century which comes from the intelligent use of resources, materials and structures," he says.

Away from his client work, one of Lovegrove's projects is the "Car on a Stick," an electric bubble car that turns into an elevated streetlight at night.

This style typifies Lovegrove's methods of blending organic inspiration with a fresh approach to function, cutting-edge manufacturing technologies.

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In the early 1980s, he worked on the Sony Walkman and and the Apple iMac and over his long and varied career, has worked with a wide range of influential clients including Airbus Industries, Peugeot, Issey Miyake, Tag Heuer, Herman Miller.

Above all, the common theme of Lovegrove's design is the passion that imbues them.

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