No one in the world of design today is going to out-climb Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec of France.
First of all, there is the matter of Ronan’s claustrophobia. He rarely takes elevators. He’s good at hoofing it up 5, 6, 11 flights of stairs, generally, whatever it takes. And accompanying him in all such climbs is Erwan, “my little brother,” Ronan teases, but also his business partner, creative partner and guy most likely to toss a little ribbing right back at him.
“It’s just a good balance,” says Erwan, the younger, who speaks quietly, like his brother, and with scant emotion but lots of focus. “We smoke a lot of cigarettes, but we have to use the stairs because of Ronan.”
The brothers’ real ascension-story, though, is in their meteoric rise as internationally acclaimed designers, mainly of modern furniture but also accessories like vases, pitchers and bowls.
In a matter of about five years, Ronan, now 32, and Erwan, 27, have managed to turn some of the most important heads in the design business; be lauded by the design press; get two books published; mount exhibitions galore; and assemble a body of work that successful designers twice their age would be proud to call their own. (They have done work for Cappellini, the cutting-edge Italian furniture-maker; Vitra of Germany; Ligne Roset of France; Habitat, the British home-furnishings house; and even Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake for whom they stepped out of their role as furniture designers and designed a shop in Paris, not to mention bottles for Miyake’s bath products — just to name a few.)
But even more impressive is the heady way that these young designers think well beyond their years — and the fresh spin they are putting on a modern aesthetic.
A French journalist nailed it when she likened their design philosophy to a Japanese haiku — strong, poetic and crystal clear.
“It’s a very particular Japanese poetry . . . a strong idea with just a few words . . . something very clear but very efficient,” explains Erwan, he being the brother more proficient in English, the two of them being in Chicago last summer (from their studio just outside of Paris) to give a lecture, which was sponsored by Luminaire in River North and attended by about 200 of the design faithful.
But we’re not talking minimalism, Erwan is quick to continue.
The spareness in form that the Bouroullecs propose is unlike the austere minimalism that dominated European design in the 1990s. Their clean forms are not cold and empty. Rather, they’re soulful and witty — and those qualities come streaming out when the excess in form is reduced.
Getting the feeling back
“Their intention is to bring feeling back to the relationship between man and the material world,” said Nasir Kassamali, owner of Luminaire, in introducing the brothers at the lecture last summer. “We need shapes and things which touch the subconscious.”
Humor, irreverence, sentimentality and objects that promote the human creative spirit — these are the things that touch the Bouroullecs. They get excited not so much by state-of-the art materials or machinery, although they “display an instinctive use of technology in every project they encounter,” says Ross Lovegrove, a veteran London-based designer.
Still, the Bouroullecs are more apt to smile at the idea of a simple, bottle-shaped vase that also could function as a pitcher when they pull a spout out of its ceramic neck.
Or by the notion that a big ol’ lounge chair actually could be a slim little thing if they focused on key comfort zones within that chair and tweaked the heck out of them. Their Spring chair for Cappellini (the Italian furniture maestro Giulio Cappellini being one of their biggest fans) features an adjustable headrest (like in a car); a leg rest that springs down and out of the way to make it easy to exit the chair; and a seemingly wafer-thin plastic seat that gets its comfort from an injection of foam and a cover of high-performance fabric.
Or, how about their concept for a work environment that taps the pleasure of a French country farm table? Their Joyn system for Vitra throws up for grabs the notion of stuffing people into cubicles and introduces the idea of a friendly communion among colleagues. People sit together at the long Joyn table. But in a nod to matters of privacy and “I want my own space,” the table can be retrofitted with fabric partitions and a slew of accessories (leather blotters, file trays, etc.) that easily slip into or slide onto the table without tools.
Or finally, there is their concept of “micro architecture.”
It’s about building landscapes (pseudo-walls and rooms) within the greater building-at-hand, be it a loft apartment or an exhibition space. And it involves objects bigger than furniture, but less profound than bricks and mortar. Things like: lightweight room dividers that work like building blocks (interlocking and stacking according to one’s desire) and even a box-on-stilts (they were inspired by treehouses in their native Brittany)that doubles as either a bed or a bedroom.
“For me, a good definition of an object or furniture would be to consider it as some kind of tool,” Erwan explains. “Because what is interesting about a tool — a hammer or a saw — it doesn’t mean anything” all by itself, he goes on. But “as soon as you use it, it becomes to have a sense. It’s a sense by the way you use it.”
Ronan has his own way of explaining the same thing.
“Painters have this piece [palette] with a lot of different colors. We like to do objects like that. Like this piece of wood with this color. So you can play.”
First there was Ronan
It was Ronan who actually launched the Bouroullec phenomenon. (Erwan was still in art school; he later joined his brother in the studio.)
In 1998, Ronan’s idea for a portable kitchen (which reduced the idea of a kitchen down to mobile pieces of “furniture”) won first place at Salon du Meuble de Paris, the French furniture fair.
But more than that, it drew the interest of Giulio Cappellini, who is almost a mythical figure among young designers, legendary for his ability to spot talent — and paradoxes that only can be attributed to creative minds.
“They are very simple on the one side [hand],” says Cappellini from his offices outside Milan. “But on the other side, they work like old designers. They take care of all the details and the process of production.”
The Bouroullecs’ process of design is similarly exquisite. The brothers work together at the same table in their studio in St. Denis. And they work on the same design, at the same time.
“It’s really a ping-pong thing,” explains Erwan, noting the volley of sketches back and forth between them. (Drawings on computer follow.)
“We speak a lot. We fight sometimes,” Ronan adds. But in the end, it’s good for the design. By the time a client sees a proposal, it has survived a rigorous debate between the siblings.
Despite their closeness, the brothers do not live together. And they do not, they say, have “very interesting places” — due to “complex love stories,” as they put it.
Which may be the only thing they have time for these days.
The Bouroullecs currently are mounting an exhibition in Cologne, Germany. Followed by another in Roubaix in the north of France. And then, come June, there’s one at MOCA (The Museum of Contemporary Art) in Los Angeles.
And then there’s the floating house in Chatou, France, that they’re working on. It’s a studio for an artist; they’re collaborating with two architects. And there’s all the new furniture products they will be showing at the Milan furniture fair, Salone Internazionale del Mobile, in April.
“We work all the time,” Ronan says. “In a sense, creation is linked to observation of human behavior and of things in general.”
