Parisian trend forecast for 2013

If you’re looking for a new year’s resolution for your home this year, go back to the roots of life and living, suggest the trend forecasters at Maison & Objet, the premier home design show in Paris. They observe that in spite of our preoccupation with the art of living, we still long for a better quality of life.  Technology and all the collateral gadgets at our disposal have given us a certain control over our lives like never before but it has become a dematerialized, virtual world which leaves us wanting and in search of a certain harmony that is more anchored in reality. Practically like zombies ruled by our smartphones and tablets, there is a need for us to disconnect so that we can feel more alive. Vivant is the prescription of Maison & Objet’s Trend Observatory for these troubled times. They sense a new vitality “perfecting the riches of Nature” through designs that are recomposing a bio-inspired world. The home, after all, is a living organism and is central to this revitalization. In this process, there is a rediscovery of “the primal force of original fodder,” as articulated by Nourritures Premieres. Pionnieres explores the different phases of emotional comfort obtained by making Beauty a priority. Renaiscience has high hopes for rebirth through exciting experimentations in the new fields of science.

Nourritures premieres

By Elizabeth Leriche

To make our interiors more alive, Leriche wanted to go down to the basics of what gives us life. Contemplating the essence of life, what struck her was that “to be a living thing, we need to nourish ourselves, we need to eat, to have food.” She thus took primal food, in its most literal sense, as an inspiration. “Ancestral Foods are becoming the raw materials of an aesthetic that makes your mouth water,” Elizabeth Leriche says as an introduction to her take on the Vivant theme. Leriche wanted to show how we can transcend these raw materials that feed us, turning them into poetic objects, art objects. Geke Woukers, for example, turns leafy green vegetables into delicate goblets and bowls. Madalena Ambrosio builds her towers with bread sticks that reach out to the heavens. “It’s about finding guideposts, finding our roots, in order to move forward. I think we really need solid foundations in order to confront these new technologies, this virtual world that surrounds us in our everyday life.” We have become so alienated that we have to reconnect. “We are increasingly going to need to get our hands dirty, to feel materials.” Hence her trend itinerary speaks of sensuality, tastes, textures, colors and even scents. You can almost hear bees buzzing around a hanging lamp from MGX glistening with a honeycomb pattern that you would want to dip your fingers into for a taste of that golden goodness. Nathalie Lete’s porcelain meat sculptures arouse the carnivore in you and even vegans will surrender to rib-eye cut pillows made of upcycled lace and passementerie from Tania Kostianowsky’s garments.

Pionnier

By François Bernard

For Bernard, to have a revitalized home, we have to be pioneers again and reconnect with material things. “There is a nostalgia for what it means to be an object,” he declares cryptically in an interview. Although a lot of the pieces that he curated for this trend itinerary may have a retro look, he qualifies that there is no obvious reference to their being vintage: “On the other hand, there is a nostalgia for making; for making things — a nostalgia for working with one’s hands. Working with one’s hands makes you happy!” DIY objects abound here and there is a montage aesthetic that is emerging: “Like with pieces of wood. I saw things, I glue things. I put wood together and that gives a certain aesthetic to the things around us.” This DIY aspect heralds a new attitude that champions autonomy and the accompanying emotional satisfaction. “Craftsmanship is reactivating the grace of making things. It’s a biodynamics of creation in harmony with nature and humanity.” Bernard also observes that there is a return to wool, cotton, linen and other natural, tactile fabrics that were the basics of yore. “There are soft textures, scratchy ones, it’s very physical. These natural materials give life to simple, timeless objects of luxury. At the same time, it anchors us to something very real — it gives the objects a certain vibrant energy.”

Renaiscience

By Vincent Gregoire for Nellyrodi

Vincent Gregoire looks to the sciences for a rebirth in the home: “This is a time of revolution. There has never been so many upheavals in the sciences, in technology, the economy, culture.” In response to this, we can either be paralyzed by anxiety or  be proactive by experimenting and testing. “In the strange laboratory of our times, ideas inspired by nature as revealed by the microscope are invigorating design,” Gregoire observes. In his trend itinerary, uncontrollable nature abounds with designs that lie somewhere between dreams and nightmares. There are aesthetic explorations in the world of infinitely small micro-organisms, with a “convulsive, fascinating, alarming proliferation of globules, gaseous states, x-rays, entangled fibers and molds that are animating a world in constant mutation.” There is also a focus on the bizarre, like things seen in the strange lab of a mad scientist, what Gregoire calls “an intriguing alchemy that is distilling the lines of a bio-phantasmagoria.” But in these “tortuous aesthetics” we can see that the science of metamorphoses is activating a vital force that seeks a potential rebirth. Errors and defects which are inevitable in experiments are materials for creative innovation. “There’s life there, there are flaws, mistakes, improbable things. But chance is what gives rise to all of tomorrow’s interesting things. So we are living in exciting times — our day has a lot of parallels with the Renaissance.”