Currently Tobias Wong's website contains the following quote: "In a dream I saw a way to survive and I was full of joy." The 35-year-old designer died in his Manhattan home on Sunday, and the chief medical examiner has now ruled his death a suicide.
Wong first got into the spotlight when he created a lamp out of a yet-to-be-unveiled Philippe Starck chair in 2001. He debuted his piece, called This Is A Lamp, one day before Starck's chair was shown for the first time. Since then, Wong has created an expansive collection of humorous pieces—some shown above—which include a gold-plated McDonalds coffee stirrer, a diamond ring mounted upside-down for scratching graffiti, a 5-speed vibrating ottoman with a 12" deep hole on the side, designer air-sickness bags (for a show at JFK's Terminal 5), and a disposable lighter lined with mink.
Paola Antonelli of MoMA's Architecture and Design department told the NY Times, "As time went on his work became more and more ironic, sarcastic and pointed. He had an enfant terrible style of design that was very fresh in New York. Today you see all sorts of people doing conceptual design, but he was one of the first."
