Matali Crasset - Works

An innovatively designed monograph on the work of Matali Crasset, one of France’s leading product designers. The book retraces her last twenty years of career. Ranging from simple items to architecture, Matali Crasset's work engages its end users by asking questions, like a sociologist would, on the role design plays in their everyday lives and human interactions.

A graduate of Ateliers-ENSCI in 1991, Matali Crasset has kept her interest in new technologies from time she's spent with designer Denis Santachiara. Once she came back to Paris, she has worked for five years with Philippe Starck, becoming Tim Thom's manager, the integrated design structure of the Thomson Multimedia company. Then in 1996, the VIA gave her free rein to create her home furniture project called W at Hôm.

Her house-workshop, which she set up in 1998 in Belleville in the middle of small gardens in a former printing works, is conducive to reflection and research. She creates transformable items offering original solutions hailed by critics for their functional, poetic, imaginary and recreational character. Among the innumerable creations, we can cite: the hospitality column Quand Jim monte à Paris or the sofa play area Permis de construire pour Domeau & Pérès; the metal structures and removable Table Trays & Shelves for Aiki; the Ierace pendant lamp for Artemide; the suspension Evolute pour Danese; the psyche and the lantern Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend for Meta/Mallett; the “furnished” Open Room n°1 for Established & Sons; the Guest Room for Campeggi; the pastry ustencils Essentiel de pâtisserie for Alessi.

Matali Crasset's projects follow one another and branch out according to the encounters. She works with actors as distinct as the hotelier who wants to develop a new concept (Hi hotels in Paris and in Nice or Dar Hi in Nefta, Tunisia), the museum that wishes to transform itself (SM's in s'Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands ), or even the Department of Cultural Affairs of Burgundy who wants to place contemporary chandeliers in the Saint-Bénigne cathedral in Dijon.

In each exhibitions, Matali Crasset looks for a space of reflection and experimentation different from industrial design and multiplies the opportunities to collaborate with artists, in particular Peter Halley with “Nature morte à habiter” at the Thaddaeus Ropac gallery where she exhibits regularly. She creates many scenographies for private companies, Hermès, Première Vision, or for institutions, the Mobilier national, the Biennale of Saint-Étienne, the Salon de Montrouge.

Français
24x28 inch
300 pages
700 colour illustrations
bound in dust jacket