The Style & Design 100

Hayon, 32, has been busy. After the Spaniard's imaginative "Mediterranean Digital Baroque" exhibit opened in London in 2003, he left his job as head of design at Fabrica, the creativity hub run by Benetton, and started his own studio in Barcelona. A slew of diverse projects followed. There have been artistic installations throughout Europe, projects for companies like Coca-Cola and Adidas, and the AQHayon Collection for ArtQuitect, a line of bathroom fixtures widely praised for its whimsical sensibility—in stark contrast to the trend at the time. Hayon defines himself as an artist, not a designer. "I think design can be much more like art. I work with intuition. If they say white, then I go black," he says. "And maybe in that black, there's a little bit of white."