Paris Design Week 2020

Rinck’s Popup at 21, Rue Bonaparte
COURTESY: Rinck

AS PEOPLE IN Europe and America return tentatively to work after the summer holidays, the design world in Paris is throwing open its doors. The interior decorators’ bi-annual trade shop window, Maison&Objet, like so many other trade shows and fairs in this pandemic year, has moved online, but Paris Design Week itself, marking its tenth birthday, has coordinated a multi-location in real-life celebration of everything to do with interior design and the home.

The city is split into zones – Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Opéra/Concorde/Étoile and Les Halles/Marais/Bastille – for socially distanced walking tours. Visitors can drop in on the launch of new collections, discover the studios of artisans and designer-makers, spot young talent in graduate displays and attend talks and workshops in shops, showrooms, galleries and public spaces.

Pouenat, ‘Metamorphosis’ collection’ designed by Humbert & Poyet, 2020
COURTESY: Pouenat / PHOTOGRAPH: @jpvaillancourtimages / PHOTO STYLIST: @alessandro__moriconi

Among The Design Edit’s highlights is a solo show by designer and interior architect, Pierre Gonalons, in the eighteenth-century apartments of the Prince of Soubise, today the home of the National Archives Museum. He has selected newly released pieces by manufacturers including the Enamels of Longwy, Masiero and Mineral Expertise to bring contemporary glamour to this grand space. Here is your chance to see inside this magnificent, rarely accessible building.

Pierre Gonalons at Hôtel de Soubise, museum of the National Archives of Paris
COURTESY: Pierre Gonalons

The French company Maison Pouenat—founded in 1880 — specialists in metalwork, will launch a new collection, Metamorphosis, a first collaboration with the Monaco-based architect and design duo, Christophe Poyet and Emil Humbert. Humbert&Poyet’s sleek furnishings are inspired by the Art Deco movement and designs from the 1950s and 1970s.

Left to right: Emil Humbert, Jacques Rayet (CEO of Maison Pouenat), Christophe Poyet
COURTESY: Pouenat / PHOTOGRAPH: @jpvaillancourtimages / PHOTO STYLIST: @alessandro__moriconi

Rinck is another venerable company, specialists in interior architecture and cabinet-making since 1841, who retain extensive workshops of artisans with many different specialist skills. They are launching a new chandelier in their Félicité Collection, a characteristic blend of eighteenth-century and art deco influences. This will form part of a display entitled ‘At Home With a Connoisseur’, created together with curator Julia Van Hagen, within the charming Galerie Bonaparte in Saint-Germaine, once the home of legendary French decorator, Madeleine Castaing.

Rinck, ‘Chandelier’, 2020
COURTESY: Rinck

Even the Eiffel Tower has been recruited to champion the city’s creative talent – hosting an exhibition, Metal and Design. This is curated by the government institution, the Mobilier National, and selected from the more than 650 iconic designs created since 1964 by the ARC (Mobilier National’s own research and creation workshop), in collaboration with renowned French designers such as Pierre Paulin, Philippe Starck and Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance.

Inga Sempé, ‘Round meeting table’, 2017
COURTESY: Le Mobilier National

Lockdown has reminded us how much our domestic spaces contribute to our wellbeing – and while some of us have been prevented from working, many of the designers and makers who enhance our interiors have remained busy through the pandemic. Here is a chance to discover their latest work, in some of Paris’s most prized locations.