Machine for Living
Words by Nicole Stock
Photography Studio Bouroullec + FLC ADAGP
Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec are fêted as two of the most exciting and talented designers working today. A recent exhibition of their designs held in one of Le Corbusier’s iconic Unite d’Habitation apartments in Marseilles places their work in the midst of design history. Nicole Stock interviewed the brothers at their studio in Paris.
Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec are making silence. Their products – room dividers, chairs, and lamps – are all quietly simple, each uncannily deft at embracing and articulating a single idea. “We try to make the designs silent enough, simple enough to integrate into people’s lives,” Erwan explains.
Silent may seem an odd way to describe their work, after all, these quiet ideas have created a roar in design circles over the last decade. The pieces themselves also recoil at that labelling; they are far from bland or invisible. More often than not their designs are bold and colourful, sculptural shapes, organic growing kinetic ideas that invite or rather, require interaction. But like the brothers themselves, there is no trickery clamouring for attention here. Quietly, doggedly, the brothers have created one of the world’s most successful and innovative design studios.
In ten relatively short years, their studio has collaborated with some of the biggest furniture brands, like Vitra and Cappellini, as well as art-design gallery Kreo in Paris, dabbled in architecture, designed chairs, lights, vases and bathrooms; all varied, eclectic projects but all with a similarly pared-back aesthetic and sharp wit. u
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