Villa Noailles has been organizing the Toulon Design Parade since 2016, little sister to that of Hyères, which celebrates its 15th anniversary this year. Respectively centered on interior architecture and design, these two areas come together in this festival which had a very special flavor this year. After the cancellation of the 2020 edition, it was so much to find the creators and share with visitors what design is today and what it may be tomorrow. The jury, made up of 10 personalities, was chaired this year by Karl Fournier and Olivier Marty, founders of Studio KO.
Henri Frachon: Special Mention of the Jury (Hyères)
A graduate of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle (ENSCI), Henri Frachon also has a background as an engineer and physicist obtained respectively from the Arts et Métiers and the Claude Bernard University in Lyon. The designer, already winner of the Audi Talents 2020, sees contemporary design as a set of complementary factors. At the same time inventive, timeless and practical, it does not exclude a sensitive approach offering rhythm, accuracy but also dissonance. Through his designs pierced with holes and devoid of their classical functions, Henri Frachon focused on the very essence of this absence of matter. “I questioned what the holes are formally, what characterizes them, what they bring, what makes them beautiful” . A project that lets you see much further than the surface itself.
Arthur Donald Bouille: Audience Award (Hyères)
After starting his studies with a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Design at the National School of Visual Arts in Brussels, Arthur Donald Bouillé obtained a Master’s degree in industrial design at the National School of Industrial Design in Paris. Medalist a few years ago in the annual competition organized by MIT in Boston for the development of an indoor air purifier, the designer has since taken a deeper interest in “the exploration of the mechanisms and strategies of living things as well as the ethical or ecological questions that they suggest” . This is how the exchange with researchers took a prominent place in his creative process to propose “new ways of considering our relationship to living things and technologies” . A no-brainer for those who transform borders into interdisciplinary/environmental/conceptual encounter zones. Through his project rewarded by the festival, the designer wanted to “question the ways of caring for and supporting cancer patients through the intermediary of transitional objects, projection media that make it possible to exteriorize, to bring to light distance a fragment of the disease” . A project which, thanks to the involvement of scientific and philosophical research, can be described as therapeutic and transitional according to the words of the creator.
Johanna Seelemann: Special Mention Eyes On Talents X Frame (Hyères)
Born in Germany, Johanna Seeleman developed her “fascinations” during her bachelor’s degree in product design at the Academy of Arts in Iceland and then her master’s degree in contextual design at the Design Academy of Eindhoven in the Netherlands. A global fascination that has led the designer to speak at conferences and events such as Deutsche Design Week, to exhibit in London, but also in many Nordic countries. But the one who in 2019 was selected for the “ICON Design – 100 Talents to Watch”, had never won a prize before that of Villa Noailles. Particularly interested in “the exploration of products and materials that seem commonplace in Europe” , the designer “likes to unearth paths and hidden contexts and to propose alternative scenarios or possible futures” . Johanna Seelemann’s sensitivity to materials and their impacts in a society that is nonetheless sensitive to environmental causes leads her to question the “possible adaptation of our systems and the use of resources to constantly changing tastes. »
Terra Incognita thus aims to place plasticine (a prototyping clay) at the center of the material. “In design we say that form follows function, but it also follows fashion and trends. This new medium would therefore offer the possibility of reshaping the object ad infinitum. In short, an aesthetic and evolving project!
Cecile Canel & Jacques Averna: Grand Jury Prize (Hyères)
Winners of the “tailor-made +” residency at the Institut français and residents of the Ateliers de Paris, Cécile Canel and Jacques Averna exhibited their creation combining dynamism and mechanism at the Design Parade in Hyères. Both graduated from ENSCI les Ateliers, and previously graduated respectively from the Beaux-Arts de Toulouse and the Ecole Boulle, these two designers adhere to a design that “comes to rub shoulders with technical, material and social realities, while keeping elegance and cleverness! “. This is how this duo became interested in store signs “responsible for a lot of light pollution and energy consumption”. To remedy this with elegance and cleverness, the designers have seized the force of the wind to bring these everyday landmarks to life with its currents.
Anna Talec & Julie Brugier: Special Jury Mention (Toulon)
Anna Talec and Julie Brugier are both DSAA graduates, specializing respectively in fashion and environment at the Duperré school in Paris, and in object design at the Boulle school in Paris. Anchored in the idea that the contextual approach has now become inevitable, the two designers make the different factors of a place a set of elements to take into account. “Our projects are always anchored in territories full of know-how” , allowing them to claim “a sober and lively design” . First call for projects carried out by the duo, the theme allowed them to highlight a plant attached to the Mediterranean territory: hemp. Ecological, the designers have therefore transformed it into a domestic object within their space called the Villa du cueilleur. A lean-to which, with its wooden frame and its primary functionalities, offers a “frugal” result according to the creators.
Clemence Plumelet & Geoffrey Pascal: National Furniture Prize (Toulon)
For these two graduates of the Design Academy of Eindhoven in the Netherlands, this award is the first to be won. With their vision of contemporary design based on the exchange of know-how and generational memories, the two young designers approached the Mediterranean theme from several angles during their encounters. “The Mediterranean and its warm and swaying atmosphere […] comes in a project that we wanted to be rich in saturated colors and sophisticated materials” . But from travel to encounters, the project has been enriched to lean towards “more accurate materials, in keeping with the atmosphere that resides on the coast” . In the end, the project revolves around a space fulfilling the function of a lounge bar. The evocation of a poolside where the place and the objects animating it come into discussion. The result of a collaboration whose inspirations, both cinematographic (Jacques Derray’s swimming pool) and photographic (the shots of Slim Aarons) sign a space with a playful allure and timeless style according to the creators.
Edgar Jayet & Victor Fleury Ponsin: Grand Prix Design Parade Van Cleef & Arpels + Special Mention Eyes On Talents X Frame (Toulon)
“In the dark, you can feel the wind, everything in this room breathes, you can let yourself go for a nap” , such is the project described by its creators, both students at the Camondo school in Paris. If for Edgar Jayet, design must mainly go through sensations and transdisciplinarity, Victor Fleury Ponsin for his part makes room for inter-creative dialogue and the understanding specific to each material. Two complementary approaches to contemporary design that have enabled the young winners to create “a project around memories and sensations”. The siesta, a Mediterranean institution, is transformed here into a worked space. “Our room is inhabited by shadow and traversed by the wind” . This is how moistened stone, plaster and a veil are enough to create a place free from glare and heat. The siesta, a habit of life materialized in a space where the long and hot afternoons subside in the calm of a rest.
Marc-Antoine Biehler & Amaury Graveleine: Visual Merchandising Prize (awarded by Chanel) and Audience Prize (Toulon)
“Questioning the existing, listening to the story of a need, anchoring and adapting to a place in the most natural way possible” . This is how today’s design resonates for Marc-Antoine Bielher and Amaury Graveleine. Graduates of interior architecture and object design at the Camondo school in Paris for the first, and interior architecture and space design at the Ecole Boulle in Paris for the second, the locality of knowledge and materials represents for them a response to needs. It is therefore a fact that “the beauty of the craftsmanship offers a more human architectural response” . If the Mediterranean is an evocation of the seaside, the duo has for its part chosen to register in the land. Holiday memories of their own, sometimes from shared moments? Between friends or family, sometimes readings of Pagnol or films, a project was born combining freedom and carefree moments experienced as a child. A project where a parasol and table inlaid with olive pits recall this Provençal atmosphere with humour.
Tom dufreix
