Design Parade 10

In its tenth birthday, Design Parade has taken Varois Cork under its wing, inviting the festival’s ten competition winners to experiment with this age-old material.

As a location for a design festival, Villa Noailles is a hard to beat. Designed by the French architect Robert Mallet-Stevens in 1923, the modernist villa sits atop the lush hillside overlooking Hyères, a medieval town on the Provence coast. Each summer this stylish setting plays host to Design Parade, which recently opened and runs until September. This year the festival celebrates its tenth birthday, which it is celebrating with some retrospective displays alongside its design competition centrepiece.

Design Parade 10 — **Top**: Hors pistes by Christophe Machet. Photo Geoffrey Buthey. **Above**: FrouFrou, Anne-Charlotte Piot & Maureen Barbette. Photo Anne-Charlotte Piot & Maureen Barbette

This juxtaposition of old and new runs throughout Design Parade. Spread throughout the villa are exhibitions from both emerging and more established designers. Upstairs these include “Villégiature”, a display of work by the Parisian designer Pierre Charpin from the 1990s to today. This is a two-part exhibition: drawings, photographs and paintings adorn the walls of a former squash court inside; outside, on an platform above a glass-covered ex-swimming pool, are around forty products, including chairs, lamps, vases and shelving, whose different functions are united by their elegant playfulness and astute use of colour. This is true whether the product is for one of the big brands that Charpin works with, like Alessi or Ligne Roset, or for Galerie Kreo, the Parisian gallery that is one of the driving forces behind Design Parade.

Villa Noailles, 2015 — Seche Cheveaux by Samy Rio. Photo Samy Rio

One of Design Parade’s most commendable features is its support of previous competition winners. “Impulsions” is an exhibition of work by young Swiss designer Laura Couto Rosado, who won the festival’s Grand Prix in 2014. On display are the fruits of the three-part prize: an unusual faceted mirror resulting from a grant from Galerie Kreo, and two vessel-based projects, following residences at both the Cité de la Céramique de Sèvres and the International Centre for Research on Glass and Visual Arts (CIRVA) in nearby Marseilles.

The value of these residencies is demonstrated in one of the other displays upstairs, which looks back at a decade of the Sèvres residency, and which features ceramics by designers including Brynjar Sigurdarsson and Michel Charlot. As the exhibition text made clear, it isn’t just the designers who benefit from this collaboration; Design Parade has helped rejuvenate the image of Sèvres, one of many European manufacturers that have struggled in recent years. The problems Sèvres has faced are echoed on the villa’s ground floor, which includes a spotlight on cork production in the surrounding Var region, whose market has shrunk due to the rise of plastic wine corks. This year Design Parade has taken Varois Cork under its wing, inviting the festival’s ten competition winners to experiment with this age-old material.

The results of the cork collaboration are displayed in the villa’s vaults, light and airy despite their basement location. “Concours” showcases recent work by those shortlisted from Design Parade’s 270 entrants from 34 countries: Ying Chang, Max Frommeld and Arno Mathies, Marlène Huissoud, Maxime Loiseau, Christophe Machet, Arnout Meijer, Anne-Charlotte Piot & Maureen Barbette, Samy Rio, Philipp Weber, and Els Woldhek and Georgi Manassiev. They were selected by a jury headed by Charpin, and which also included Fabien Cappello and Nathalie Du Pasquier, who both have interesting exhibitions at the festival, Couto Rosado, and other industry professionals.

I found the selection of designers interesting. This was partly about nationality; perhaps unsurprisingly, half of the designers are French, with the rest from mainland Europe and just one British designer, Chang. More curious were the common themes and approaches that united the designers, many of which have been in circulation for a few years now. These include sustainability and craft, expressed through experimentation with materials and manufacturing processes. This was seen for example in From Insects, a collection of vessels in which Hussaud worked Propolis like blown glass, and Machet’s Hors Pistes which transformed flip-flops into a colourful roofing material, and which won the Public vote. In a similar vein was Rio’s Bambou beautifully presented collection of hairdryers and speakers with CNC-milled bamboo handles, awarded this year’s Grand Prix. I was particularly taken with one of the projects that didn’t win a prize, and which departed from these common themes; Meijer’s Every lamp series, whose striking optical effects suggested a new vocabulary for industrial design. Next year it’d be interesting to know more about the judging criteria used, particularly if the award becomes more popular and more non-French speaking designers submit work for consideration.

Judging can’t have been an easy process – the standard of the whole of this year’s Design Parade cohort is impressively high. This is true of the festival as a whole; from the designers included in the exhibitions on and offsite – such as Cappello’s solo show in the nearby Tour des Templiers – to the display systems and branding, Design Parade exudes design quality. This is something to hold onto as the festival matures, and for larger, and less elegant, festivals to bear in mind.

until 27 September 2015
DESIGN PARADE 10
10th International Festival of Design

Design Parade 10

In its tenth birthday, Design Parade has taken Varois Cork under its wing, inviting the festival’s ten competition winners to experiment with this age-old material.

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