Born in 1974, Mathieu Lehanneur is entering the year of 2024 with a bang: selected as Designer of the Year by Maison&Objet, his Olympic torch will be the fulcrum of the opening ceremony on 26 July along the Seine, for the Paris Olympics of 2024. The French designer will also be celebrating his 50th birthday, summing up a career of success across the last three decades.
“30 years ago, when Maison&Objet began, I was just getting started as a design student. Even before I had designed anything, my aim was already to get into the fair,” says Lehanneur, who by mixing art, design and technology in his projects has become one of the rare designers who has achieved total creative freedom, launching his own brand.
He definitely had a promising debut: his degree thesis on therapeutic design, during his years of study at ENSCI-Les Ateliers (Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle), became part of the collection of MoMA New York. Today the Factory, the studio-workshop recently founded by the designer, is the headquarters in which he designs, experiments and assembles, following his inborn curiosity about nature and science, a continuous drive for perfection and an appetite for research that are combined in a unique aesthetic approach.
From the S.M.O.K.E. lamp, which suggests a sinuous, fleeting cloud of smoke captured in a glass ball, to the furniture series Ocean Memories, which “freezes” the movement of waves of the sea in marble, Lehanneur’s natural preference for experimentation is fully perceptible: “in a world overflowing with objects, all the materials utilized have existed since the dawn of time,” he explains; “I like to play with them, to make them express something slightly different. I want to create magic, but in the real world certain little tricks are required to make the magic happen.” Hence the work in close contact with scientists, engineers and artisans, which Lehanneur gathers around him to generate collaborations and discussions, seeking perfection in his “magical games.”
Maison&Objet offers him a special space in Hall 7, where Lehanneur has created Outonomy, an installation that speaks of “flight, take-off, breath, life,” he says. An abstract space dominated by the color yellow, the same hue as the curtains in industrial plastic which Lehanneur has chosen for his Factory.
“The history of civilization and architecture is punctuated by attempts, solutions and proposals for isolated houses: the igloo, the hut, the chalet, the yurt. The challenge here is to combine our needs with today’s technologies. Far from being nostalgic, or from any attempt to return to the past, Outonomy tries to answer a question: what do I really need?”
