Its organizers confirmed it this morning by webconference: for the moment Maison et Objet should be well from September 4 to 8, and would welcome the architect Franklin Azzi as a guest star. Final confirmation expected mid-June.
In all the prudence of these first days of deconfinement, Philippe Brocart, Managing Director of Maison et Objet, announced this morning to maintain for the moment the edition of the September show while respecting the constraints of current health measures. With a downside: a final decision taken in mid-June, depending on the evolution of authorizations for gatherings of more than 5,000 people (currently prohibited until August 31), and of course the conditions of international travel.
Franklin Azzi, “Designer of the year”
For this edition, in the logic of strengthening the project activities of the show, the event welcomes as “Designer of the year” the architect Franklin Azzi. A desire to highlight the reflection that began – and has since become essential given the news – around new ways of working and the layout of workspaces. And, therefore, to insist on the importance of rethinking architectural and design projects by taking into account the environmental ecosystem in which they are part, and by integrating the notion of life cycle in the approaches.
By choosing Franklin Azzi, Maison et Objet is promoting these new approaches. The architect has made the rehabilitation of the premises a true signature of his projects. Whether it is the Montparnasse Tower or the Beaupassage islet in Paris, a work in progress on the development of roofs in open and green spaces like the upcoming rooftop of Galeries Lafayette, or coworking spaces, he questions the very structure of the space in a rereading of the place open to the traces of its history, and the optimization of its uses, a certain conception of continuity to better transform the existing, to reveal it by using its potential. For him, “ understanding what already exists is essential ”, that through his diagnosis, like a medical approach, the architect’s creative force will reside in his understanding of the technical issues already at work, on which he will be able to rely or divert, to better be creative. For him, the time is for flexibility, modularity, in an above all contextual approach, and the architectural signature is for humility, “When you design, you have to tell yourself that in twenty years it will be reworked by a colleague” while designing with a choice of durable materials to be “guaranteed for life”.
Nantes School of Fine Arts – Franklin Azzi – Architect – 2017
Architect, interior designer, with his multidisciplinary team, he also designs furniture elements according to the needs of his clients, which allows him an approach at very different scales of spatial organization and uses. “The coming generation is one of hybridization, of the confrontation of eras and methods, we are assemblers of concepts. “ And this is what he observes in the approaches to working methods, and that he has set design in an immersive way at the Parc des Expositions de Villepinte in September: in the iconographic research that he carried out with his team, he notes that in the ways of working or furniture, finally, throughout history, all the notions of compartmentalisation / decompartmentalization, of the private / professional sphere, of meetings, of movement, have already been addressed. Through this transversal vision, it is not a question of operating backtracking, but of “ stimulate the field of possibilities to be invented ” .
