Design and eco-design. “The facility must no longer be gasified.”

Going around in circles… This is now a healthy pastime for many designers. This shows the exhibition Design × sustainable × the art of desirable, responsible living ! At the French Design Gallery in Paris. This event is the continuation of a study carried out by Le French Design by Via, which examines the mechanisms at work between manufacturers, publishers and designers to make their activities more responsible.

This work has produced inspiration notebooks that enable an understanding of how professionals in this field are attracted to eco-design, this way of developing a product, considering its impact from the moment of its creation to the end of its life. And among the tools to lighten the footprint of furniture and other accessories that furnish the home is the circular vision, that is, how to recycle and use art and waste to fit into the framework. the virtuous goal is to get out of the linear equation “extract-transform-discard”.

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But that’s not all. “Of course, the choice of materials is central to the design of a design object, and the choice of recycled materials is obviously very positive. But at the same time it is also necessary to minimize the quantities used and to reduce transport, therefore having a more local strategy”, develops Jean-Paul Batt, French design director of Via. And that’s still not enough. “Thinking about the lifespan of a product is at the heart of everything. Today, the designer can no longer design the temporary, the quickly damaged and obsolete, continues Jean-Paul Batt. So he should focus on quality. A quality product does not lose value over time. On the contrary, it wins, so we don’t put it in the trash, we pass it on and resell it. And when it’s too worn to serve, it should be easily recycled. This implies the possibility of dismantling it to separate it from various materials, which will then have other uses. For this, we will prefer screws with glue, solid wood, which can be cut into the veneer, which does not provide a second life… All this must be installed from the drawing.

Room map

Elise Fuen, one of the leading designers in the field of waste utilization (her graduation project at École Boulle was about the reuse of scrap paper), summarizes this approach as follows: “The facility should no longer be a gas plant.” Uncovering this cry from the heart? “Now I imagine creation away from any fixed scheme and in the spirit of simplicity. The choice of recycled or natural materials is a given, proof. I now add a philosophy to this foundation low tech to be as little material as possible, lightness, everything that facilitates transport and use. My creations can be disassembled, stacked, moved easily. I have never made a 300 kg marble table! I’m not forbidding it, but right now I don’t want to design any more clever systems like soliflores branches that fold to fit better in the box.

The designer has a responsibility to the planet

Sam Baron, designer

Elise Fuen has also taken on the Tour de France know-how and is producing signed limited series with French workshops. “I don’t see the point of having containers manufactured at the end of the world and shipping containers across oceans when we have incredible technology at our fingertips and men and women struggling to bring it to life. This is one of the environmentally responsible issues of tomorrow, to move these gestures so as not to lose them.

Art and material

The same desire to catalyze eco-design by designer Sam Baron. “This is not a recent problem, but until recently we considered it instinctively. There was, for example, a wave of cardboard furniture. It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t strong…so it wasn’t really environmentally responsible. I did a lot of research on the subject in the 2010s, but without finding a solution. My approach has finally matured, and I now believe that eco-responsibility should be understood not only through the material, but through the way it is implemented. As soon as the designer picks up his pencil to give shape to an object, he must ask himself how it will be made, transported… disassembled, what will become of it when it is no longer usable. The designer is responsible for the planet. We need to calm down consumption, make it more thoughtful, but at the moment, environmentally responsible products are still too expensive. But there are many innovations. All we have to do is capture it. Changing one’s way of doing things takes effort, it’s frustrating, but it’s also what makes our work interesting.”

It is with this energy and in this state of mind that Sam Baron recently designed his Nuages ​​rugs for the Portuguese brand Gur. “I used cotton rolls from a local industry, with the task of creating from a limited selection of colors,” he explains. When we are part of the economy of resources, we always open new creative horizons. So were the chandeliers I just signed for Diptyque. They are made 60 km from Paris, by a craftsman who restores construction wood and turns it. Sam Baron has also partnered with design publisher Noma, which clearly demonstrates its eco-responsibility. “I’m very proud of the Pedra candlesticks I made for Noma with sedimentary earth that sits on top of the marble and is released. When I was interested in this stone, the lady of the quarry told me: By their weight, by their presence, these objects have become icons, when they are made of pebbles that have nothing sexual at first glance. The Noma website states in big and bold letters that Pedra candle holders are made from 99.6% recycled materials. Because at Noma, we don’t mess with numbers.

Object life cycle

“Measuring the impact is essential for us,” explains Bruce Ribay, co-founder with Guillaume Gallo of this hard-line B Corp. We approach it from the design stage and very seriously. From the first drawings of designers, we involve the specialist firm Coopérative Mu. It analyzes the product life cycle upstream and in collaboration with manufacturers. Depending on the results, we ask for changes. The influence is, of course, related to the raw materials, but also to the places of production (for us, 75% of it is produced in France, and the rest in Europe), with reversible fasteners that allow easy disassembly and repair. . We also try to avoid chemicals. Finally, we come to professional integration workshops. Our goal is to push the levers in terms of eco-responsibility and ethics as much as possible.”

Beautiful and durable. Noma Loyalty

This commitment benefits their partners. First, to designers who, if they wish, have the opportunity to follow a training module on these issues, and who can also be inspired by Noma’s enormous library of eco-responsible materials, which has 300 links and is regularly enriched thanks to constant vigilance.

We firmly believe that eco-responsible design should be highly desirable. It is through this that the consumer will move to a more responsible purchase

Bruce Ribay

Subcontractors are also being pushed in the right direction. Noma’s demanding specifications force them to improve their process. “All stakeholders in Noma’s projects are united around one idea: to make ‘beautiful’. We firmly believe that eco-responsible design should be highly desirable. It is through this that the consumer will switch to more responsible purchases, Bruce Ribai believes. Of course, there is also the question of price. It is true that we make high-end furniture and objects, but not art prints, we do not release two signed copies for 80,000 euros. That is not our mission. Our ideas must be feasible on an industrial scale,” concludes Bruce Ribai.

Lifetime of works

Although structures involved in A to Z eco-design are still rare, many initiatives are emerging. This is what the exhibition “Design × sustainable × desirable, responsible living art” shows. The thirty pieces presented show an effort to combine responsible inventions, aesthetic qualities and also forward-looking visions. “The designer is forward-looking, he has more than any other antenna that allows him to capture the evolution of the practice,” enthuses Jean-Paul Batt. To extend the life of his creations, he will consider how we can modify them to adapt to new settings or uses. So we will only change the cabinet frontends when we want to update it. The table will become a desk. The seat will move up and down as needed. And that’s not all, the durability of the products, the ability to remove them for easy cleaning will allow you to intensify their use through rental or sharing systems. So let’s hope that with the advancement of eco-design and the ability to pass on, transform and reinvent one’s own furniture, the era of the disposable couch and the abandonment of couches on the sidewalk will soon be over. It’s urgent!

“Design × sustainable × the art of desirable, responsible living !”, until 13:00 July at the French Design Gallery, 120, avenue Ledru-Rollin, 75011 Paris. lefrenchdesign.org

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