Stephen Paul Bayley (born 13 October 1951 Cardiff, Wales) is a British design critic, cultural critic and author.
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Bayley spent his childhood years in Liverpool, attending Booker Avenue County Primary School and Quarry Bank High school (now known as Calderstones School). The latter was also attended at an earlier date by the late Beatle John Lennon. Growing up in Liverpool, Bayley was inspired by the city's architecture and its built environment.
He was later educated at Manchester University and the University of Liverpool School of Architecture.
He has worked as a museum curator. In the 1970s he was a lecturer in the history of art at the University of Kent, but first became prominent in the 1980s as an authority on style and design when Sir Terence Conran chose him to head up the Boilerhouse Project,[1][2] at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the V&A, in London. This was Britain's first permanent exhibition of design and it was host to more than 20 exhibitions in five years including Ford Motor Co, Sony, Issey Miyake, Coca Cola and Taste. He then became Chief Executive[2] of the Design Museum in London which grew out of the Boilerhouse Project.
In 1989 he was made a Chevalier de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France's top artistic honour, by the French Minister of Culture and in 1995 he was Periodical Publishers' Association Columnist of the Year.
He was appointed as the creative director of the exhibition at the Millennium Dome in Greenwich. After a series of disputes he resigned in 1998 citing ministerial interference. On his resignation he said of the dome that "it could turn out to be crap", and accused government minister Peter Mandelson of "running the project like a dictator". Mandelson said that "he had not been a dictator but had been decisive and had got a grip on a project that was suffering from drift". Mandelson also said that Mr Bayley's other remarks did not merit a response.[3] Chief Executive of the Dome Project, Jennie Page, gave evidence to a House of Commons Select Committee which included the issue of his resignation.[4]
In 2007, Bayley became The Observer's architecture and design correspondent.[5] In his column of 22 March 2009,[6] he claimed that: "Botticceli's model for The Birth of Venus was a common Florentine hooker called Simonetta Vespucci, painted nude to titillate his client". He was arguing against the motion that: "Britain has become indifferent to beauty" proposed by Roger Scruton and David Starkey, who held an image of The Birth of Venus next to an image of the British supermodel Kate Moss, in order to demonstrate how "cruddy" British culture is.
In July 2008, Bayley, described as a 'design guru', became the first of three non-executive directors to join the management board of Sidhu & Simon Communications, a public relations and sponsorship agency.[7]
He is also the 'style director' of Guest Hotels.[8][9]
He writes for several newspapers and is a contributing editor of GQ. He is also a regular columnist in British CAR Magazine where he offers a critique of contemporary motoring design from a philosophical perspective. He has also appeared on television series such as Have I Got News For You and Grumpy Old Men.
He has also written several books, including A Dictionary of Idiocy and General Knowledge, ISBN 186154086X. His latest book, Life's A Pitch,[2] ISBN 0593056434, co-authored with Roger Mavity, was published in March 2007.
He lives in his south-west London house with his wife, Flo, and their two children, Bruno and Coco. He has lived there for 25 years and says that the house still isn't finished: "doing up a home is like food and sex: it should never be rushed" and that the sole purpose of the garden is as "a place to sit with a book and a glass of wine".[8]