Designer Focus | Philippe Starck

Wild man, free spirit, just plain crazy, call him what you will, we think he’s genius!

All of his designs are consistent in their eccentricities, you may chuckle when seeing them for the first time but you will always walk away with a little more respect for Mr. Starck. Often copied, never duplicated, Starck pieces speak volumes of the designer’s lust for life and devout passion for aesthetics and function.

Starck was born in Paris on January 18, 1949. He studied at École Nissim de Camondo and opened his first design firm, specializing in inflatable products, in 1968. Starck’s vast repertoire includes commercial and residential interiors, watches, toothbrushes, electronic devices, lighting, and furniture, to name a few.

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Here’s is a small selection of what we retail in way of Philippe Starck designs. Click to view our current selection of Starck products on our online showroom, informshop.com.

Starck products on informshop.com

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Designers – Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec

Although they remain largely oblivious to the press about them – they’ve never had a press kit and don’t have business cards – the french brothers are said to be heirs to the design throne of Philippe Starck. They’ve already garnered many awards and design for lines like Cappellini, Magis and Vitra, as well as for brands like Issey Miyake. Born in Brittany, Ronan, the elder, left for Paris to study design, and once he set up a studio, Erwan came to work and help his brother with the technology aspect of designing. After a few years of signing designs independently, they realised it would be more productive to work together.

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Cloud shelving system from Cappellini

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Kvadrat showroom in Copenhagen, with Steelwood chairs and Kvadrat Clouds

Working together seems to work well for the two, who have a studio in St. Denis, a suburb north of Paris; at any one time they have about twenty projects on the go. Their designs tend to focus on the user, so that the products adapts to the customer, and not the other way around. This is true of the Cloud shelving system which can be stacked ad infinitum, and the Algues, pieces of plastic stems that can be linked together endlessly to create large screens, and still again with Joyn, their office system developped for Vitra. Joyn starts with a basic long white table with optional storage, lighting and screening elements.

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Vegetal chair

Their newest piece from the Bouroullecs that we have in store is the Vegetal chair, a piece from Vitra. Based on a 19th century American practice of trimming shrubs into chairs, the brothers wanted to design a “grown-chair”. It took many permutations and four years of development to finally release the chair, which weighs in at on 5.5kg, and is UV resistant, so it’s perfect for indoor and outdoor. There is a lovely little video that Vitra made to show the mutations of the Vegetal chair. See it here.

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Papyrus chair and Paniers coffee table, both from Kartell

We have many of the Bouroullec’s designs in store, so feel free to come in and see!

www.bouroullec.com

Top portrait of Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec by Nicole Bachmann for Vitra.