Louis Vuitton brings an unrealized residential lifestyle collection by the late modern master Pierre Paulin to life in an evocative exhibition in the Design District—just in time for Design Miami.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Pierre Paulin on a trip across the US to show his project to modern furniture design company Herman Miller.
Many design aficionados who lived through the 1970s remember the decade as the end of the modernist era as we knew it. Some regard this period as the turning point that led to the degeneration of the high-minded principles that fueled modernism as a dominant influence on our ways of living for more than five decades. Others see it as a creative period when industrial design icons like Ettore Sottsass, Gaetano Pesce, Paul Evans, and Pierre Paulin were at their most prolific—and inspired.
Thanks to an exhibition called “Playing With Shapes,” envisioned by the creative forces at Louis Vuitton and presented at the Palm Court in the Design District, old- and new-guard modernists alike can get a glimpse of an essentially unknown yet visionary project of the era that offers food for thought for a new age of design innovation. Conceived in 1972 by the iconoclastic furniture, interior, and industrial designer Pierre Paulin, a French master of the time, this multifaceted yet never realized collection of modular furnishings, storage elements, and accents sheds light not only on the genius of the renowned designer, but also on the conceptual thinking of leading designers of the day.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
A 1972 mock-up for furniture designer Herman Miller, showing the different modules of the project.
Though the project was never brought to market, it remained one of Paulin’s favorite creations. And now, more than four decades after the project was shelved, Louis Vuitton has sponsored the manufacture of the elements in the collection—true to the scale and materials of Paulin’s original vision.
Tapped by the revolutionary furniture manufacturer Herman Miller, Paulin was commissioned to create a cohesive system of components that could adapt to a more fluid modern lifestyle— allowing everyday people to craft and deconstruct their environments at will, reconfiguring the elements as needed as their families expanded or contracted, or circumstances changed over time. With all of his designs, his first priority was always comfort, according to Paulin’s son Benjamin. “The pieces had to make sense to be useful,” he says. “When you look at [a piece of his furniture], you could think at first sight that it is a very fanciful and free design, almost an artistic act, but it isn’t. My father used to consider himself, with a little bit of humor and provocation, as the comet tail of functionalism.”
At the same time, these elements were also intended to ease the inner psyche of their owners by allowing them to control their surroundings and cocoon themselves within their personal refuge by keeping at bay the excesses of the information age that were beginning to emerge at the time.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
A view of “Playing With Shapes” presented by Louis Vuitton at this year’s Design Miami.
The drawings and models Pierre Paulin produced for this lifestyle system of components, which are now among the Pompidou Center’s collections in Paris, merge notions of beauty, comfort, simplicity, and ease in a system that could be mass-manufactured to bring function and form to a wide range of modern dwellings.
Among the most intriguing of the 18 elements in this collection are the petite déclive, an articulated recliner, and the Tapis-siège, a lounge seat that emerges from the carpet. The designer intended to take advantage of the strengths of new materials, like plastics and resins that had been developed during WWII, which stretched possibilities for the sculptural form and durability of his furnishings and components.
Pierre Paulin’s innovations are a testament to the enduring power of principled modern design. And if he were alive to know his cherished project would be brought to life and seen by the international art and design cognoscenti in Miami this month, he’d surely relish the fact that each element was made to meet the exacting standards of another legendary and groundbreaking French icon of design. “Playing With Shapes” runs from December 2-7 at Palm Court, Miami Design District, 140 NE 39th St., Ste. 326.