school. A succession of projects and exhibitions took him through to 1997, when he launched an exhibition at Neotu Gallery and showed his kitchen at the Salon du Meuble in Paris. David Toppani made the prototype.
Erwan produced some pictures and the technical plans. He was the first person to work with Ronan. He was still a student, and was approaching the business of design step-by-step. He was doing an assistant’s job on Ronan’s drawings. Concurrently, Erwan was designing the « Lit Clos ».
Sure, we’re brothers. We have a similar underlying culture, but we haven’t experienced the same things at the same time. We’re quite different, and we’ve had to learn to work together, at the same table. It’s a permanent dialogue, striving towards a common goal, and you don’t get there without a fight.
Giulio Cappellini met Ronan when he saw the kitchen. For about twenty years his company has delivered unique products, unique procedures: radical choices, daring, courage. The structure is typically Italian; far from any kind of large-scale industrialization, it’s based on a network of small subcontractors. The region where he’s based is like a beehive, the cradle of all the big Italian brands.
It all started there: on the one hand there was the Italian flexibility that gave us a lot of leeway in developing our projects, and on the other there was Giulio’s keen, demanding and protective eye. The kitchen was the starting point, after which we brought out the « Hole » collection and the « Lit Clos», amongst others.
The « Disintegrated Kitchen » and the « Hole » collection contrast with, or partially complement, one another. The kitchen presents a new typology in terms of a particular market. It simply suggests breaking away from both the idea of the made-to-measure and the integrated. Conceived as a piece of furniture, it is based on an idea of flexibility: building simply, far away from the wall, like a table that you put down and then take with you when you move. The « Hole » collection was more traditional, in terms of its simpler typologies: shelves, a console, a table.
The « Lit Clos » is based on a similar principle to that of the kitchen. It works on an unfamiliar scale, closer to architecture, but also employing the logic of furniture, as an element that is autonomous in relation to the more general infrastructure of the house.
David Toppani was the first to make prototypes of our projects. David is well removed from the industrial style of production, he formalizes our drawings according to an adept logic that helps to give shape to an idea: that is the germination of a future project.
Giulio Cappellini led us to our first industrial reality: open, daring, communicative. Confident in the choices he makes, he took us a long way, to a place where profit is more complex than a best-seller."

Extracts from the book “ Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec” released by Phaidon in 2003.

e surprising.
In art, generally speaking, a work is autonomous. But with an ordinary object, once it's out of the factory, it has to seduce within a context that is no longer within the designer’s control. And besides, mass production in a global market is a complex terrain. By virtue of being reproduced and distributed on a worldwide scale the object imposes itself, through its very distribution, in an authoritarian manner. You have to understand that for an injection press that produces a plastic chair in a few tenths of a second, the expensive thing is stopping the machine.
The « Combinatory Vases » are based on a double game: producing, in eight moulds, a set of pieces that have no function in isolation; combining those pieces to assemble a vase, the number of configurations is almost infinite. It’s a way of producing a certain diversity in series, to try to escape authoritarianism, to hand the job over to the user.
Habits of sugar consumption vary considerably from one country to another. The foreign distributors who were interested in « Coffee Cup n 4 » collided with this reality: the space reserved in the saucer to present the sugar corresponds to a format that is principally used in France.
The bottles made for Issey Miyake are the most proliferous objects that we’ve designed. The cosmetic sector is the most industrial environment we’ve encountered so far. "

Extracts from the book “ Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec” released by Phaidon in 2003.

k in a kind of house of cards.
The « Outdoor » armchair for Ligne Roset folds away, and can be used outside. Everything is based on a principle of sewing and hinges which, when you unfold it, forces the seat and the back into a curvaceous shape, and when folded back again lets them revert naturally to the state of sheets. The seat and the back are cut from sheets of plastic that are then inserted into the sewn part, a bit like the visor of a baseball cap. The base is articulated so that it can be folded. Here, comfort is based on the torsion of the sheets that fold beneath the body’s weight. A sense of reassurance and safety is derived from the fabric, a technical material intended for sport, hyper-resistant to everything. This sheet–based construction isn’t without its problems: its thinness and absence of volume don’t match up to the typical idea that people have of comfort.
The « Safe Rest » is a daybed that also exists in double depth. Here the principle is very simple. The structure is made of two arched tubes that form the outline. These tubes are connected by perpendicular crosspieces. The whole is covered with a fabric that folds underneath the couch, where it is strapped and stretched like a corset. This cover is a sewn sandwich, composed of canvas on the underside, foam, and wool blanket on the topside. The seams, parallel lines five centimetres apart, have a structural role.
The « Spring Chair » is the first seat we designed for Cappellini. Its manufacture is quite traditional in Italian industry: a shell covered with foam, then with fabric. What guided us here was the idea of a system: add two elements, make four different typologies from them. Comfort was of prime importance. The foot-rest is articulated on a spring that responds to the movement of the legs. The head-rest is adjustable, as is found in cars.
The « Hole Chair » was also designed for Cappellini. First, the aluminium sheets are cut out by laser, then stamped and folded. This laser cutting produces two-dimensional elements that are the flat versions of the feet, the seat and the back. At the level of the seat, the stamping creates a slight hollow, and for the back it creates a protruding lip over the rim of the window. The folding lifts the back, and also serves to shape the feet. Each fold and stamp is structural, reinforcing, line by line, what started out simply as a featureless metal sheet. Finally the seat is soldered and painted.
The « Samouraï » armchair applies the idea of disassembly that occurs in suits of armour. Each piece addresses a part of the body of the seat. But, quite unlike armour, each yoke (of rubber-fabric sandwich) has its own flexibility. "

Extracts from the book “ Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec” released by Phaidon in 2003.

now-how in terms of sewing, pleat and
pattern. The collection is the result of a discourse between these two
directions.

ings for a few months. These sketches covered more or less all the elements that can be found in the workspace, and others that we planned. Our apprenticeship in the office environment involved a lot of coming and going: our propositions led to further discussions, which refined our perception, and then we produced new designs, and yet more.
During the following year, numerous prototypes were substituted for the sketches. The scale tests confirmed intuitions, or revealed impasses in certain directions. Eventually we settled on the idea of the big table.
The project was originally constructed around its ambition, and subsequently around the problems it threw up. As we went about confronting this reality, the project with Vitra took shape. This process is an uncertain path in which you discover the particularities of each person and each thing; in which you learn that industrial reality is not universal. A factory is a market, a tool, a history. All of these aspects have their own characteristics, each having an impact upon the project: a good project is the successful alchemy of an encounter."

Extracts from the book “ Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec” released by Phaidon in 2003.

auris made utilitarian ceramics, which flooded the market in the South of France. As the century advanced, this ancestral technique shifted from an almost industrial level (in terms of quantity and destination) to a craft-based output. Old photographs show the streets of the village covered with plates and bowls left in the sun to speed up their drying.
There are strong similarities between sketches and the speed of pot-turning: when the drawing doesn’t work you screw the piece of paper up into a ball: likewise, when the object that’s just been turned on the wheel is a failure, you crumple the clay up into a ball. The drawings that we brought with us from Paris were quickly forgotten in the Vallauris studio. Thanks to Claude’s fast way of working, we outlined our ideas and transferred them instantly to the wheel, in the way you would use a sketchbook. When he turns the clay, it’s enough to ask him to pull or push a bit to make the shape develop.
While turning pots imposes certain rules and traditions, the techniques themselves haven’t evolved much for thousands of years. Claude is so skilful that the range of possibilities is very extensive. The days spent in that studio watching the clay being turned have brought into being objects that oscillate between testimony and formal invention.
If it’s important for us nowadays to work in a field that extends from industry to craft, it’s because this project has made us aware of the fundamental richness in the diversity of means of production.

Cutting

On the wheel, the piece is wet, the clay is still soft. It’s almost finished, round, symmetrical. Then comes the moment when a turner adds a handle or a spout, or pushes the sides to distort them.
Using a knife, Claude Aïello takes the jug, that at this stage is more of a bottle and with two cuts incises a T-shape. He separates the two lips of the T, then brings them back together to shape the spout. Finally, he uses a little water to bind them and stretch the new rim.
Once again the knife, and this time just a single vertical cut. Two trunks are divided to form two bowls, two stools. Then the pieces dry. Before they are placed in the kiln, the turner pares off any bumps and corrects the verticals. Then he fires them."

Extracts from the book “ Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec” released by Phaidon in 2003.

through their own chain of stores, the context is quite clear, while for others, like Teracrea, distribution is based on department stores that are often characterized by their diversity. In spite of everything, throughout the whole of the project, we pay a lot of attention to the issues of commercialization. Often simple rules are laid down, connected, for example, to ease of storage. Sometimes, through a more elaborate scenario, and our efforts to understand and respond to the wants and desires of consumers, a project can evolve into a truly useful solution.
We designed the « Aio » collection for Habitat: a porcelain dinner service, complete from the cup to the plate. Fairly traditional in its craftsmanship, it aims to provide a certain practical quality. Using a system of standardized diameters, it allows the user to stack up different saucers, plates and bowls to create monolithic cylinders. The design is purposely kept fairly simple, in an inversion of what is traditionally the case with refined porcelain. Perhaps this collection is more for everyday use, less precious.
The Authentics « Fruit Bowl » is an attempt to refine a simple, inexpensive object. One of the concerns of Authentics was to be as distinctive as possible within the very competitive market of plastic objects. Often the quality and price are pretty much identical from one manufacturer to another. Our design was based on the use of two contrasting plastics: a translucent, grained polypropylene and an opaque and shiny ABS. Not much, just doing a bit more to mark the identity of an object distributed on a mass-scale.
The Cappellini « Fruit Bowl » rests on its slats. The fruits placed in it can breathe.
Our flower pots try to propose solutions for plant life within the modern habitat. The fountain provides constant humidity to the three pots that it supplies with water. The « Hanging Trellis » suggests a wall of plants. Terracotta cylinders are suspended from straps, and metal crosspieces serve as supports."

Extracts from the book “ Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec” released by Phaidon in 2003.

of polystyrene. The sketchbook is the collection of different work contexts, from industry to craft, large-scale to small. And so, from one page to the next, one drawing simply guided by the hand can evolve from a piece in polystyrene to a well-crafted jewel.
The polystyrene « Clouds » and the jewels are both born of the same logic: they are the proliferation of a shared abstract form, like a growing plant, stubbornly repeating its structure of nodes. The clouds are designed to grow in an architectural space. Jewels rest on the skin.
The project of a wall for a shelter is based on the multiplication of a tiny three-dimensional motif. This piece, which resembles a small branch, is injected in polypropylene. Simply, with different colours and various alternate connections, we have managed to create an irregular skin. In this instance the repetition generates a certain visual complexity."

Extracts from the book “ Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec” released by Phaidon in 2003.

» is in the first instance an alcove, a hollow volume. It holds a flower and, as in religious statuary, the « Vase » is a frame in which everything is controlled: background, light and colour. It means seeing a flower, almost deified: seeing it perfectly and seeing only that.
The candles carry the history of the ritual of wine, of welcome, as an image of benevolence."


Extracts from the book “ Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec” released by Phaidon in 2003.

forms following functions (like a jug handle) goes out of the window.
Perhaps we should start with the « Parlo »: a trophy designed as the image of a victory that you must often conclude with a speech. Indeed, it is about giving a shape to something that is merely a recognition, trying to create an object that provokes a certain exuberance. This megaphone – being but a fascimile – is lined with felt like a piece of Hermès leatherwork.
The « Audiolab » is a commission for a specific kind of support. The question was quite simple: how best to allow people to hear sound-works in public spaces, particularly in art centres? Our answer was to construct a light roof from which the sound falls like rain. The ‘fridge’ on the side contains, both symbolically and practically, the machines that reassure us about the real source of the sound. The roofs contain speakers specifically designed for this particular configuration. The listener isn’t imprisoned under this rain. The gaze slips away, distracting the eye and keeping the ear alert.
Where light is concerned, the shell is no longer merely a symbolic representation. It is often the very interface that serves to soften it, or on the contrary, to concentrate it.
The « Objets Lumineux » are big lamps, formed from a plywood skeleton which supports two half-shells of translucent thermoform plastic. These shells diffract the light, softening and diffusing it in all directions. There’s this idea that technology should be invisible. Electronics follows the dogma of miniaturization, and you often expect this disappearance of technological objects towards a more immaterial use. Perhaps the oversized lamps were reacting to this myth. Giving them a human scale, a certain rather gentle presence is achieved in spite of everything.
The « Acrylic Lamps » are simply a skeleton, a formal definition of the boundaries of the light source."

Extracts from the book “ Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec” released by Phaidon in 2003.

the use of a material charged with history, allows us to go beyond a functional situation in order to attain a kind of savoir-vivre.
The « Valise » is a filing system with a lid and a handle attached. A label juts out. Between real issues of practicality and a reminder of our habitual behaviour, the « Valise » attempts to indicate a certain use: protecting, shifting and classifying.
The « Desk » is made of Corian® and leather. The Corian® is smooth, deep, rather cold. The desk blotter is made of leather, a fine sheet laid into the desktop’s surface. With this surface, the touch oscillates between hard and supple, between the plain synthetic material and the leather.
Finally, the « Glide » sofa is harder to appreciate; at first glance it seems to be overly designed. In fact it combines a number of functions, as though it had contracted within itself a living room situation: a little set of shelves, a sofa, a chaise longue. A classic typology is supplemented by its close referents, in return for extra room and a certain fluidity of behaviour.
This chapter doesn’t discuss multifunction. Rather it tries to evoke the way in which hand and body balance between the functionality of tool use and more sensitive reactions, linked to culture.

This chapter doesn’t discuss multifunction. Rather it tries to evoke the way in which hand and body balance between the functionality of tool use and more sensitive reactions, linked to culture."

Extracts from the book “ Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec” released by Phaidon in 2003.

e space. First we designed the hangers, then a support for the hangers, and so on. That process was aimed at the creation of an array of tools that would allow Issey Miyake to play with the image of his space over time. Unlike a demonstrative proposition in terms of architecture, we substituted an evolutionary system that tends to disappear behind the clothes.
It’s sometimes said that our work evokes Japan. Of course it speaks of it with an unchecked, distant gaze. But it is, perhaps, rather a western impression of simple and ethereal objects that has evoked this connection. The « Square Vase » effectively suggests a particular way of organizing the flowers one-by-one, in line with the idea that we might have of ikebana. But all these relationships remain imagined because we’ve never thought of our objects as a direct reference to Japanese culture.
We’re sometimes asked about our influences and the effects they have on our work. We certainly integrate a kaleidoscopic range of images, and the cultural situations that we’ve encountered, but it seems to us that our work doesn’t function through direct commentary."

Extracts from the book “ Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec” released by Phaidon in 2003.

t simpler for the eye and erases the details. Strangely, this has the effect of rendering it all the more undefined.
The consoles are made entirely from Corian®. This synthetic material can be glued invisibly, allowing you to create the impression of a single, carved block. The same material also forms a vase or a mirror, running from the top all the way to the base. Thus everything is unified, the table with the vase, the mirror with the console.
Monochrome is a way of connecting uses and different limitations, linking both the technological and the habitual.
The « Butterflies » are large painted boxes. They become wardrobes, shelves, a storage space. In a single colour, they first of all try not to evoke materials that would confine them to one particular purpose or another and they also set out to be a mere support when, after a few years, they are filled with objects.
The « Corian Wardrobe » is a shell, an outline. When you put clothes in it, the hangers disappear. The clothes are simply surrounded by a frame of uncertain function, without proportion.
The single-flower vase is one of our first projects. It’s a shape defined by an uninterrupted line, like a sketch.
In the beginning, a drawing is always an intention, with few details. Only afterwards does it become progressively more formalized. Monochrome is a way of remaining at a more fundamental stage of the idea."

Extracts from the book “ Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec” released by Phaidon in 2003.

e « Hole Chair ». It is made of aluminium, cut out, folded, soldered. The painted shade of the green chair disturbs the vision. It appears like a ray of light on a shining object and creates a permanent weird reflection, having the effect of a trompe-l’oeil.
The name of the « Honda Vase » is a reference to the particular paint that we used, actually originating from the Japanese company. The vase has two surfaces, one of which has no thickness: hyper-shiny and metallic. The other surface adds depth to the hollow of the object: it’s matt, it swallows light, creating a black hole.
We’re not particularly interested in decor. We were rather thrown by Sommer’s proposition: to create a motif for carpet tiles, 50 x 50 cm, to cover a floor. Certainly the result is formal, but this sequence of lines, when the pieces are placed together, causes the boundaries between the carpet tiles to disappear and the effect somewhat resembles a chess board. Here, skin serves to coalesce, to unify.
It’s almost the same game with the project for the dinner service for the Prefecture of Strasbourg. It concerns how one connects different objects that are, moreover, made up of different materials.
And then there’s the mirror, a reflection-object."

Extracts from the book “ Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec” released by Phaidon in 2003.

up an area of autonomy for the user, which isn’t there with pieces that are complicated to build. Simplicity of construction forces you to go back to simple gestures, to common sense, to a universal skill.
The « Self » shelves consist of plates moulded in ABS and polycarbonate. You put the first plate on the ground, fasten the glass sheets of your choice into its grooves, position the next plate, and so on.
The two carpets also require simple actions: you assemble little units. To get away from the traditional surface of a rug, the « Zip » uses zip fasteners. It suggests infinite length, the user decides on its dimension and colour composition. The « Tapis Grappe » is organized by simple juxtaposition. Here it can equally well produce a surface or a path, its perimeter being completely free.
As to the « Polystyrene House », it requires no skill in the sense that all the steps required are quite obvious. A priori, it can be assembled by anyone at all, with a minimum of organization. "

Extracts from the book “ Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec” released by Phaidon in 2003.

s, we gradually found ourselves coming closer to more indistinct designs relating to walls and roofs. Work on this scale actually implies a certain restraint. We are very critical of proposals that attempt to cover all the functions of a given situation.
These projects just try to create sensitive boundaries: being beside, behind, below. They aim to give the space a feeling, a direction, to make the user more sensitive to a particular place. And so the function of these places don’t belong to us.
The « Parasol Lumineux » lamp attracts people just as a hearth does when you walk into a home. The feeling of finding yourself below a roof, which is itself below a ceiling, attracts and brings people a greater intimacy. The space is created by an immaterial context, connected with that sense of ‘being below’.
The « Cabane » simply defines a perimeter, and thus an inside and outside, because it escapes typologies suggesting a particular use, returning to the simple idea of the boundary.
Our technical culture isn’t the same as that of architects. In these designs we’ve transferred a skill connected with furniture-making, in that we’re using ‘light’ techniques. Light, when you bear in mind that after all a sofa arrives complete, in a cardboard box. Light because they don’t require a particular skill on the part of the user, unlike the more traditional materials and machinery of building work. Ease of assembly is fundamental, giving the user a certain autonomy, even on this scale.
As to the « Clouds », the « Suspended Trellis », the « Cabane », it may be that our work operates on the level of a series of motifs, on the creation of various different motifs for the domestic environment. It is a simple reaction against the tendency towards uniformity in the quality of the walls, floors and roofs that surround us.
Following this path has led us to a complete yet floating house. So it remains an unanchored object, it could be located elsewhere. "

Extracts from the book “ Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec” released by Phaidon in 2003.

finition of objectives, no imperative to get a result and the studio is open to us with no time limit.
Our approach consists in seeking new ways of using glass. For the time being it isn’t a matter of object or function. We compact powder, we sew, we develop modes of assembly. We make a large number of samples a few centimetres square and expose them to different intensities of heat, compiling an index of results – methodically rather than scientifically.
Glass is a highly seductive material – you have to keep it at arm’s length when you’re working with it, if you wish to try and suggest new directions. If certain of our experiences proved to be blind alleys, others seem to carry the promise of concrete applications. Starting out from this range of procedures, we are now trying to define their use. The absence of directives makes the exercise puzzling, but that’s why its so interesting."

Extracts from the book “ Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec” released by Phaidon in 2003.

ind of market as a manufacturer. It has no factory, no terms and conditions. It’s very close to contemporary forms of art and allows unique pieces of work outside of the usual framework.
The problem facing us is much like that of the blank page, a strange situation for those of us who are attached to the idea of context, of dialogue. But this work, like the one described in the previous chapter, is actually a source of direction. A place where you wander down paths that are less well defined, but which nonetheless feeds our whole work. Having sprung directly from our sketchbooks, these designs are more suggestive than may be immediately apparent."

Extracts from the book “ Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec” released by Phaidon in 2003.

y. It doesn't mean that we produce here a work that doesn't deal at all with reality, it is more that the field of possible researches is wider.

nd a wide range of possible evolution to the showroom. The extreme easiness of the pieces’ assembling to build walls leaves Kvadrat free of changing the configuration and the atmosphere of the place.
Then, the doors themselves are conceived as self-supporting and mobile modules like « furniture-boxes » that can be moved easily. Accesses, corridors and transitions can be changed, thus making the general architecture of the space fully evolutive.

But the North Tiles system is also a new way of building walls with independant modules in the tradition of Algues and Twigs. It is the realisation of some long-incubated ideas about constructing soundproofing spaces with textile.
Conceived like sorts of scales, the North Tiles can follow infinite shapes, be they organic or geometric. Thus, the high modularity of this system allows to consider multiple applications in order to build autonomous and soundproofing spaces.

The industrialization process of the tiles is surprisingly easy and fast : 20 seconds only are needed to mould the hard foam core between 2 pieces of material. With the assembling simplicity of the tiles, anyone can consider creating variable-geometric surfaces, building walls with a soft and rythmical aesthetics and thus creating astoning places with a muffled atmosphere.

.

The main challenge under the glass roof was to counteract a strong light both direct and reverberated by the floor. Then, the idea was to create a congenial atmosphere in a monumental space by offering sheltered places favoring relaxation and meals.
The answer was to build autonomous human-sized architectures, breaching the vertical geometry of the place in order to create an atmosphere of home comfort. Bouroullec brothers thus put up two textile pavilions on the stone floor, which act as soft refuges in a sharp architecture. Delicately standing on their feet, their robust wooden structures are covered by a skin made of textile tiles which moulds their even skeleton.

The restaurant’s structure contains two long tables made of Douglas fir tree, which seem to be levitating between the two rows of Thonet chairs. Its clear colored tiles roof seems to be the meeting point between a blue morning sky and the beige Bourgogne stone floor. Its shadow protects the eaters from the strong sun, only allowing a few pointillist rays to go through its even cracks. Padded by the thick tiles which absorb the sounds and create a muffled atmosphere, it has become a comfortable gathering spot; a soothing stop in a museum trail.
In the shop, a smaller structure, recalling a market stall, displays the objects for sale. Tiles with bold colours echoes the many coloured objects, laid on the structure or hung onto it.
Dotted all around the shop, sofas, coffee-tables and children seats are here to welcome lectors who have dropped by and visitors taking a rest.

The tiles covering the wooden structures are elements of a new system of modular textile walls developed in 2006 together with Kvadrat, a textile manufacturer. After the Algues and Twigs edited by Vitra, this project is a concrete expression of some long-incubated ideas about building spaces with textile material, as they would be warm and soundproof, like Mongol yurts.
Thought up as sorts of scales, the Tiles can be assembled together by an ingenious folding system which doesn’t require any ex