pq Eyewear by Ron Arad. Courtesy of pq eyewear and Ron Arad. 

Israeli designer and architect Ron Arad has collaborated with New Eye London to design Pq Eyewear, the premiere collection of eyewear designed exclusively by the designer, and whose name is inspired by the spectacle shape the letters form.

“There are very few new ideas in the world of glasses,” the designer writes on his website. “Now everything is retro, or sometimes even a retro of retro. I felt there was something missing.”

It took Arad two years to agree to the commission and when he did, it was with the goal of improving functionality, rather than fashion. "How do you free people from the tyranny of the hinge?” he recently told the Financial Times. “How do you free them from the tyranny of the components?”

pq Eyewear by Ron Arad. Courtesy of pq eyewear and Ron Arad. 

The collection is made of two different lines, and comprises both spectacles and sunglasses responding to different aesthetic and pragmatic needs. When asked about the genesis of the two series of eyewear, Ron Arad replied: “There are a handful of [eyewear] brands that are actually inventive and ambitious and want to do things but the majority is retro-of-retro. The A Frame addresses something that is very difficult to know why people didn’t take it on before - adjusting the different widths of the left and right lenses. People have different width noses and different distances between the eyes, so it’s not rocket science to come up with a system to allow you to tweak it.”

pq Eyewear by Ron Arad. Courtesy of pq eyewear and Ron Arad. 

The A-Frame is a series of 20 different frames with the unique characteristic of the nose shaped in the letter A. In pursuit of coming up with a pair of frames to fit any face, Arad created this line. It’s a simple name for new kind of glasses idea that puts an A-shaped wire structure into the middle of the frame. The A in the bridge can be easily adjusted, to move the two lenses and frames closer or further apart. The wire that forms the A also forms the invisible sprung hinges. The magic really happens when you take the glasses off; they close effortlessly.

The Corbs collection is inspired by master Le Corbusier, and is made out of a single block of acetate. It includes flat outside frames with slatted inside ones so that the temples can move inwards without bending backwards. Corbs is a frame with a new hinge idea that was inspired by the vertebrae in animals.

pq Eyewear by Ron Arad. Courtesy of pq eyewear and Ron Arad. 

“Most trousers look like trousers, most sweaters look like sweaters, most glasses look like glasses,” comments the designer. “But there is room for something new as well.” The frame designs are available in a number of variations on the pq website.