Dyson: The House That Suction Built

Can the pioneering vacuum maker transform itself into a full-blown tech company? An exclusive peek inside the house that suction built.

- Mathew Shaer, photographs by Kate Peters

Sir James Dyson, inventor and honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire, works out of a glass-walled office on the second floor of Dyson world headquarters, in the village of Malmesbury, 100 miles west of London. The space is airy and bright, and filled, museum-style, with tokens of Dyson’s design influences: a book on the history of the Toyota corporation, an old but durable plastic Sony flip phone, a toy 1961 Mini Cooper, a die-cast model of a 1970s-era Hawker Siddeley Harrier warplane. “The Harrier was a revolutionary machine,” Dyson tells me. “It could take off and land vertically, and it had a one-piece carbon fiber wing that made it very, very light. It wasn’t the fastest battle plane out there, but it was the one all the RAF pilots wanted to use, because its extreme lightness made it so maneuverable. And, of course,” he emphasizes, “it was a British invention.” A few years ago, Dyson located a real-life decommissioned Harrier jet on the Internet and paid to have it hauled from an airfield in nearby Essex to Malmesbury. It now sits at the main entrance to Dyson HQ, directly beneath the founder’s office windows.