By Jennifer Glickel
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — Famed designer and conceptual artist Tobias Wong died in his East Village apartment at the age of 35 on Sunday, police said.
The Manhattan medical examiner ruled the death a suicide after police found Wong unconscious in his East 9th Street apartment.
Wong was known for his witty reinterpretations of other designers' work and for adding humorous twists to everyday objects.
Some of his more famous designs include a rose brooch made of Kevlar, a stack of 100 one-dollar bills bound together by peelable glue, and a gold-plated McDonald's coffee stirrer (a nod to the object's popular street usage as a cocaine spoon).
Wong first garnered attention in 2001 when he transformed a Phillipe Starck Bubble Club chair into a lamp. A provocateur from the start, Wong purposely showed his creation, entitled "This Is a Lamp," the night before Starck publicly unveiled the original chair.
"As time went on his work became more and more ironic, sarcastic and pointed," Paola Antonelli, senior curator in the Museum of Modern Art’s Department of Architecture and Design, told the New York Times.
"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," Antonelli said.
Wong, who was originally from Vancouver, Canada, is survived by his mother, his stepfather, a brother and his partner Tim Dubitsky.
