You’ve said that you hope for your work to evoke joy and emotion, which is not the response elicited by most mass-produced or custom furnishings. Although your works vary in scale, materials, and function, they all eschew right angles, by design. Are they intended as biomorphic correctives to the tyranny of our rectilinear built environment—like a connective tissue to the emotive shapes found in nature?

RG: Yes, and yes. The most efficient way to lay out a city or to build a structure is a square box or on a grid. However, it’s not the most livable—and there’s a whole science around this. Even going for a walk, there’s a difference between moving in a straight line and meandering along a curving path, which is really good for the brain.

For me to carry on doing what I do, I need to have some raison d’être. And my life thesis is that we were not meant to be living in square buildings, sitting in rooms surrounded by flat surfaces. We didn’t evolve that way and I don’t believe it's good for us. It’s not like I was one day thinking, You know what the world needs? More round stuff! But there’s something about being in the presence of these shapes that is therapeutic and beneficial—and so nothing in my work is symmetrical and there are no straight lines.

I’m not particularly optimistic about what we’re doing to the planet. But my contribution is an aesthetic one, and I can hope that these anti-synthetic forms—which are not made on a quadruple-axis milling machine but by human hands—might have some kind of impact.

Back in the aughts, you won a Vogue/CFDA Fashion Fund Award for your eponymous line of denim and spearheaded two other celebrated clothing lines, one with Bono. How did you pivot from fashion to art?

RG: The definition of success in the clothing business is to make 10,000 of something. But for me, when something did well, it was my cue to try something else instead. When I realized it’s not what I wanted my life to be, I started making objects on weekends, because it made me happy. But I never thought it would be possible to make a living this way because I could always hear my dad’s voice saying, You can’t make a living as an artist. It’s not a viable occupation! Honestly, not one person in my life thought it was a good idea, except for Evan Snyderman at R & Company. And it worked instantaneously: the first show, in 2015, sold out.

Perhaps your father [Stanford Gregory] makes up for it with his contribution to your recent monograph, Event Horizon. I love how his essay about your embrace of asymmetry embarks: “Order and conformity have never been Rogan Gregory’s modus operandi.” Your sister Tremaine, a biological anthropologist, also wrote about your work through the lens of her field. Clearly, your family is an integral part of your artistic development.

RG: Absolutely. I grew up in Ohio in a scientific milieu where nature was hugely important. We spent summers in the Canadian shield, where the receding glaciers scraped everything off, leaving these lakes, cliffs, and boulders. It’s harsh and minimalist, like a Japanese landscape. I grew up studying these forms, as well as looking at plants and animals and trying to understand why they do what they do. Why kelp floats a certain way, or how a coral reef reproduces. And that’s the impetus for a lot of my work.

Your work has a salubrious effect on those who live with it but, realistically, is inaccessible for a large swath of the population. How does great design trickle down to an audience that might be equally appreciative?

RG: It’s a great question and I do think about it. And while it’s not something I could do with my work, it’s not to say I wouldn’t be open to a collaboration with, say, someone like Ikea. In fact, I should do something like that, because it really would be more democratic.