The Monocle Minute
On Design

This week we turn the spotlight on the French capital, where Grace Charlton weighs in on its rising cultural cachet and we indulge in a spot of 1980s-style excess at Design Miami’s new Paris edition (pictured). We also ponder the city’s appeal as a design destination with the event’s CEO and check out Thema, an all-new rival fair with a focus on sustainability – before flipping the channel to look back at a pioneering portable TV from the 1960s.

For Design Miami’s first Paris edition, 27 exhibitors have been invited to showcase their wares in the city’s 7th arrondissement. Among the highlights is local gallery Ketabi Bourdet, which has arranged its booth as a 1980s-style smoking room, exploring the era’s affinity for bourgeois excess. “I wanted to celebrate the creativity of that time after the minimalism of the mid-20th century,” says Paul Bourdet, the gallery’s co-founder. The curation of objects evokes the period’s postmodern sensibilities, with plenty of chrome, dark tones and geometric playfulness: here, you’ll find a steel mirror by Philippe Starck, an industrial-looking coffee table by husband-and-wife duo Paolo Pallucco and Mireille Rivier, and a chair by Japanese fashion designer Rei Kawakubo.

In the opulent setting of the Hôtel de Maisons, an 18th-century mansion where the late German designer Karl Lagerfeld once held apartments, the contemporary furniture sits in dialogue with its surroundings, giving the showcase a distinctively Parisian flair. “It’s an extraordinary moment to be a Paris-based design gallery,” says Bourdet. “There’s real energy in the city. I’m very proud to witness it and participate.”
designmiami.com, ketabibourdet.com

While Design Miami is a globally recognised brand, Thema is an all-new fair that is seeking to cement its position on Paris’s design calendar. The inaugural edition, which runs until Saturday, hopes to lead the way when it comes to sustainable design fairs and proposes a more ethical approach to luxury, either by celebrating long-lasting pieces from the past or working with designers and artists who are committed to innovative and responsible production methods. Established by Michaël Hadida, Thema has gathered an impressive roster of brands, designers and galleries in the Hôtel de Guise in Paris’s 7th arrondissement. “In the extremely polluting fashion industry, sustainability has been a big topic of conversation for some time,” says Hadida. “But in design, we’re still figuring out what the prerequisites should be.”

Thema’s participants, including Australian designer Kym Ellery (pictured top, on right), London-based Wonderglass (pictured centre) and French designer Olivia Cognet (pictured bottom), were asked to comply with eco-friendly requirements based on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. In practice, this has meant facilitating the transmission of craft traditions to future generations, creating furniture with longer life cycles, researching sustainable materials and more. For London-based gallery Monument, run by Leah Forsyth-Steel and Victoria Spicer, it extends to challenging perceptions of vintage design. “Giving some love to tired furniture by restoring it is something that needs to be embraced more,” says Forsyth-Steel.
thema-fair.com

Jennifer Roberts has been the CEO of Design Miami since 2015 and oversees the fairs that take place annually in Florida, Basel and now Paris, under the auspices of the French Ministry of Culture. Roberts is responsible for the development of exhibition programmes, satellite events and collaborations. At the inaugural edition of Design Miami’s French outpost, which runs from today until 22 October, we caught up with Roberts to ask her about Paris as a design destination and what to expect from this year’s fair.

Why did you choose Paris as the newest city for Design Miami?
Many of our partners and our exhibiting galleries are from the French capital. Design Miami also takes place in Basel, so expanding to Paris seemed like a natural evolution. It’s something that we have considered over a number of years. The city is more vibrant than it has been in a long time, with many sporting and cultural events. There really isn’t a better place for a design fair such as ours.

How do you choose the galleries that exhibit at the event?
Galleries apply with the pieces that they plan to show. These go through selection and vetting committees, before internal reviews take place and the exhibitors are chosen. So many of these dealers are experts in their fields; they have conducted extensive research, acquired archives and created markets with the material they possess. Galerie Jacques Lacoste, for example, has an incredible and rare Jean Royère Polar Bear collection complete with a sofa, an ottoman and armchairs in a vibrant red.

How does the Paris extension of Design Miami differ from the original fair or the one in Basel?
It’s interesting to see how shows take on the personality of the locale. If they didn’t, why would you travel to see them? You need a sense of place. The venue for the Paris edition of the fair has been particularly successful in this regard. The Hôtel de Maisons is a beautiful 18th-century mansion and even has a labyrinth in the garden for guests to visit. It’s fun to see design in a setting that isn’t a fair booth as it changes the context of the pieces on display.

Until Sony released this television set in 1960, the consensus was that the market for portable devices was small. According to consumer surveys, Americans believed that TVs belonged in front of the living-room sofa and nowhere else. But Sony’s co-founder, Akio Morita, followed his instincts and launched the TV8-301: a black-and-white transistor TV with an eight-inch (20.3cm) screen that came with a handle and weighed 6kg. It was the first television manufactured by the company, which went on to dominate the sector.

Though it was cumbersome by today’s standards, it was still revolutionary: the first TV that was truly portable, it made it possible to watch your favourite shows out on the patio or even at a picnic. With the world now awash with tiny screens, some might wish that Morita had never kick-started the trend towards ever-smaller and lighter devices. But Sony’s success story is another example of the limits of market research – for people rarely know what they want until it’s right in front of them.

To coincide with Design Miami in Paris and Thema, Italian design studio Giopato & Coombes is showcasing its latest lighting sculptures on Rue Bonaparte in Paris’s 6th arrondissement. The DAL – Drawing a Line exhibition, curated by Milan- and Seoul-based Valentina Buzzi, combines the creations with a series of works by South Korean artist Lee Bae. The lights, which are intended to be suspended and seem to defy gravity, were inspired by calligraphy and have been manufactured with the technical rigour and expertise that is indicative of Italy’s Veneto region, where Giopato & Coombes is based.

The free-form nature of Lee’s “Brushstrokes” paintings complements the curvature of the lights and, despite coming from markedly different cultures, there are many similarities to be found in the exhibitors’ approaches. “The importance of materials and working with artisans is something that Giopato & Coombes and Lee Bae share,” says Buzzi. “Every piece has its own story and requires time and care to create.”
giopatocoombes.com

London-based architect William Smalley’s first book, Quiet Spaces, is less a monograph than an architectural survey. He has teamed up with photographer Harry Crowder to document both his own works and other projects that have inspired him. Smalley’s Bloomsbury flat is presented alongside Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa’s home, while a Smalley-designed château in the French Alps complements a 16th-century villa in Veneto by Andrea Palladio. “It just seemed like a natural thing to do,” says the architect of his decision to present his work alongside those of others. “The book shouldn’t just be about me. Architecture is a continuum that all buildings are a part of. I’m always looking for the strands that tie them together.”

Published by Thames & Hudson, the book features 185 images shot mostly by Crowder. The works are united by the notion of “quietness”, with the domestic spaces on show offering moments of calm. “These projects seemed to share this sense of visual serenity,” says Smalley. “It’s something that I endlessly look for and quite rarely find. So when it does happen, I want to record that.”
thamesandhudson.com