Richard Eisermann talks to his predecessor Clive Grinyer about his future plans.

Richard Eisermann flourishes a copy of Italy's financial paper Sole 24 Ore and translates for me the headline: 'London, on the offensive against Italian design'. Italy and its great design city of Milan, until a month ago Eisermann's home town, has been given a wake up call to organise and fight back.

For Eisermann, London is the hub of British design activity and one of he reasons why he accepted the role of director of design and innovation at the Design Council. The cultural intensity and concentration of architecture, advertising, industrial, graphic and interior design is unique, and have combined to persuade an international design star with a wealth of experience working for Ettore Sotsass, Ideo, and Whirlpool to work here.

Eisermann is truly a global citizen. Born in Chile, of a German father and Chilean mother, he moved to the US and was bought up in New Jersey. At 12 his parents moved to Holland where he spent his high school years, but not before seeing Italy: New Domestic Landscape at New York's Museum of Modern Art, where he realised that design was his chosen path.

He returned to the US to study at the Rhode Island and began his professional career designing medical products for a Chicago consultancy, but eager to move on and missing Europe, he bought a one-way ticket to Milan, 'to make it happen'.

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