Appointment with: French designer Patrick Jouin
Where: 58 Tour Eiffel (Alain Ducasse restaurant on 1st floor of Eiffel Tower)
Date: June 9th, 2009
Time: 10am
On the agenda: Learn about Patrick Jouin’s 10-yr retrospective in São Paolo as part of the Year of France in Brazil

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I have been living in Paris for ten years and until last month I had never climbed the Eiffel Tower. Somehow I just never got around to it. I wasn’t deliberately avoiding it but the thought of waiting in line for hours to squish inside an elevator full of scarily-clad tourists (e.g. the kind who wear “I love Paris” varsity sweatshirts with mint green leggings, Birkenstocks & socks and backpacks worn over chests), and shell out the price of an excellent bottle of wine just to do so, never appealed.

Call me blasé, but I needed more incentive…

The calling came in the mail in the form of a 3-D rendering of Paris viewed from the sky. Even without the words “Le Paris de Patrick Jouin” splayed across its center, it had the prolific designer’s named all over it. The raised-type medallion was an invitation to preview Jouin’s first monographic show, a traveling exhibition that kicks off in São Palo this July at the Instituto Tomie Ohtake as part of the Year of France in Brazil (Brazil is returning the favor after being featured in France in 2005).

The show features approximately 150 Jouin objects and offers a peek at future projects, like the 100m2 experimental “Extreme Wow Suite” that his Paris-based agency, Jouin Manku, is working on for the luxury hotel chain, W.

I first interviewed Jouin in 2003, only five years after he started his own agency. He was just starting to generate buzz for his groundbreaking interior architecture for Michelin-starred chef Alain Ducasse’s restaurants (Plaza Athenée in Paris, The Dorcester in London, Mix in Las Vegas).

But it was his revolutionary Solid series, a collection of chairs created using 3-D rapid prototyping, or stereolithography, a technology that allows you to build objects out of drawings, that cemented his reputation as one of the most innovative and industrious designers of his generation.

“We did the count. You run across a Jouin design in Paris every 350 meters. From publicity signs to bike stands, he’s contributed over 46,000 designs to the urban landscape,” says Valérie Guillaume,* curator of design at the Pompidou Centre in Paris and organizer of the retrospective exhibition.

In the ten action-packed years since opening his own design firm in 1999, Jouin has proven himself to be a master of many mediums. He’s also demonstrated that no project is too pedestrian for his burgeoning britches. When he’s not adding to his compendium of masterpiece interiors for Ducasse (including the 58 Tour Eiffel) he can be found designing municipal toilets for the city of Paris, for example.

So if you can’t make it to a Ducasse restaurant anytime soon, the best way to “experience” a Jouin design is by going to the loo on your next trip to Paris.

Q&A with Patrick Jouin

How does it feel having a 10-yr retrospective at such a young age?
I don’t know what to say. Even though I always feel that I’ve done nothing and that time rushes by too quickly, when you look back you can’t help noticing that much has been accomplished. Despite that, I always have the impression that we could have done more or better, and that we’re not organized enough.

Do you look back and wish you had done certain designs differently?
Yes and no. It’s better to move forward even if you make mistakes along the way. My ego gets hurt less these days when I see the errors that I’ve made because it’s all part of the process. The important thing is to apply those lessons to future projects. I don’t live thinking that I should redo something that I messed up in the past, I should have just been better the moment that I did it, that’s all.

Tell us more about the W hotel suite project?
In addition to showing the past projects, we’re going to give a hint of things to come to show how a designer works. So we’re presenting this room. For its design we thought about the future of accommodation and new ways of living in a hotel room 5-10 years from now. There are new ways in which the space is organized from an architectural perspective, as well as new services linked to technology and new services that have been entirely invented.

Which four designs stand out most for you as key moments in your career?
1.    The Velib bike stands for their rapport with the public.
2.    The Solid series for its use of stereolithography.
3.    The YTL Residence in Kuala Lumpur for its relationship between space and design.
4.    The NightCove alarm clock for its use of electronics.

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Exhibition details: “Le Paris de Patrick Jouin,” on view at the Instituto Tomie Ohtake in São Paulo, Brazil, from July 29 – September 27, 2009.

Scoop: Valérie Guillaume, curator of design at the Pompidou Center in Paris is working on another Patrick Jouin exhibition for early 2010 at the museum. The show will take a behind-the-scenes look into Jouin’s creative process, and will include private visits to his Paris studio.

It’s only my fourth post but I already have a confession to make (and no, it’s not about the cutie above).

One of the reasons why I’m doing this project is to satisfy my longstanding curiosity for people who pursue unusual professional paths. I have never been blessed (or cursed, perhaps?) with a burning career calling, but I am fascinated with those who are—especially when their shtick is super obscure.

Working as a journalist has served me well in this department. Interviewing someone is like having a giant question pass printed on your forehead. From challenging and quirky to just plain personal, you can ask your subject just about anything.

For me, the ultimate “jackpot conversation” is when I walk out of the experience with a juicy slice into someone’s life and a completely new window into the world.

That’s how I felt after my visit to Avenel L, a year-old workshop and design firm dedicated to the art of woodworking.

It wasn’t because the space was ravishing (see above!) or packed floor-to-ceiling with gorgeous handcrafted furniture, but because after two hours speaking with the boys behind the studio I realized that I had unearthed something much larger and exciting than I had expected.

Without sounding overly dramatic, Avenel L reassured me that France (which has been suffering from a bad case of mild depression for at least a decade) was on some kind of self-healing path via its kids.

Picking up, dusting off and reviving some of France’s vanishing crafts, young artisan-designers are propelling the country’s weighty handmade ”heritage” into the 21st century with beauty and bravado.

What’s interesting about this new creative wave is that it’s not simply about preserving aging skills, but using them to anticipate the aesthetic tastes of tomorrow.

Avenel L is in many ways the most striking example of this movement that I’ve yet to see. It should come as no surprise, really. The founder of this fresh-faced trio is the award-winning “ebeniste’” (cabinetmaker) Ludovic Avenel. In 2007, at the ripe old age of 23, Avenel won the outrageously prestigious Liliane Bettancourt pour l’Intelligence de la Main, an award given each year to a French artisan in a specific field.

His masterpiece Empreinte (Imprint)—a duo of virtually-identical art deco commodes created using two sets of materials, one modest (cardboard & aluminum) and one luxurious (mahogany & shagreen)—showed off his sleight of hand savvy and technical dexterity.  It also helped him score the 50,000E cash award to jump-start his own company.

Avenel didn’t need to look far for qualified designer-craftsmen to join his team. All he had to do was recruit two of his friends from his Alma mater, the Ecole Boulle, France’s Harvard of artistic crafts. Like Avenel (now 25-yrs-old), Christophe Bret (23) and Steven Leprizé (22) had also been afflicted by the rare-for-France entrepreneurial bug.

Had all the dust in the studio clouded their minds or was something shifting here in France?

“There’s something changing in the world of artistic crafts, especially for designers our age,” says Bret, who looks like he should be playing Game Boy rather than giving an insightful analysis into his cohort’s professional ambitions. “If you look back only ten years ago, most of the graduates from Ecole Bulle went into restoration right after school. The emphasis was on technique, not original form. A new generation is looking for ways to merge the artisan with the artistic,” adds Leprizé, who has coined the term objects functionnels artistiques (functional artistic objects) to describe their work.

Wood is at the heart of the Avenel L design philosophy. Everything—from custom-crafted commodes overlaid with fragile shagreen (160,000E), to embossed leather  jewelry boxes (4,000E)—begins with the sturdy stuff. It’s what warms the designs and grounds their daring, sculptural shapes in the real.

Bound by a common commitment to innovation and quality, what sets Avenel L apart from most other design studios is their ability to handle every facet of conceptualization and fabrication.

That kind of A-to-Z expertise doesn’t come cheap, nor is it achieved overnight, so you won’t be hobbling out of the studio with a cabinet on your back. Make an appointment, speak to the kids, tell them what you like, they’ll design it, built it, and send it your way. An original work of furniture art made by baby-faced craftsmen who are helping to heal the French psyche? Try topping that!