Virtual projections and a return to matter: our era, rich in paradoxes, builds bridges between universes that were once sealed, even contradictory. Between real and virtual worlds, Maison et Objet chooses to focus its September edition on sensitive and sensory experiences, attentive to a society in search of emotion and escape, between defiance and rebirth. Decryption by Vincent Grégoire, director Consumer Trends & Insights at NellyRodi.
“In 2020, we were all in resistance mode, in 2021, in resilience mode. 2022 marks a desire for rebirth. » With the Covid, the fear of losing taste, smell, and the feeling of a vacuum that gives a feeling of limiting the space where the gaze is directed, has developed a reaction back to taking into account the senses. … even a relationship to the world in “hypersensitive” mode. From the house-of-refuge, alongside the digital natives, the boomers have begun to tame the digital, an accelerated appropriation of the digital, which calls for no backtracking. Vincent Grégoire thus observes a generational divide with “quinquados” who refuse a possible downgrading by age, who rub shoulders with a young generation who have chained periods of crisis and who have not known life without the Internet and who manage in parallel to the daily a digital life through social networks, in playful mode as well as in project mode. Digital is becoming a medium like any other, it naturally accompanies the physical experience, and augments it more than replaces it.
Hybridization of universes
A clash of experiences, which tends to make the borders between real and virtual worlds porous. A need for the tangible alongside a desire to project oneself, and quickly, to immerse oneself, because the technological tools have long changed our relationship to time. Virtual visit in preview of the physical visit of a showroom, NFT creation in addition to the edited object… the new entrepreneurs cover their tracks and test projects in the metaverse before editing them, use social networks as worlds inspiring.
It is this fusion of worlds that Maison et Objet has chosen to highlight, through the theme “Meta-sensitive” which will carry its September edition, and infuse the Paris Design Week.
In fun mode
A desire to highlight new energies, explosive aesthetics, to observe new uses after this reappropriation of “home” which marked these years punctuated by different confinements. The “cocoon” of the habitat evolves slowly towards a still protective but more joyful framework, with plump shapes, in the development of a fantastical aesthetic… irrigated by the passages between the worlds: like the collections of Pink Stories, PolsPotten, Mojow or the Italian Saba (which already offers its sofas in the form of NFT).
House and Object: talent scout
If Maison et Objet seeks to reflect the living heart of society in its choice of “trends”, the show has also decided to accentuate its desire to highlight young creation. Alongside the Rising Talents Awards (in September devoted to the Dutch scene), the Future on Stage label will shed light on young publishing houses.
At the same time, Paris Design Week – particularly in the Factory section – will echo this resolutely “phygital” era, presenting projects dedicated to the material, whether in its valorization by the gesture or from the angle of ecological innovation, in a promise of staging using digital design.
An edition that promises to be generous, enthusiastic, eclectic, in a “need for meaning and emotion” : expectations are created, it is up to exhibitors to respond to the public’s desire to be surprised.
Nathalie Degardin
September 8 to 12
Home and Object (Exhibition Center – Villepinte)
Paris Design Week
