"Design by Design" A whomb to sleep, red lips to sit...

A whomb where to sleep, a lips shaped couch to sit on, an odd couple in rags, the "Design by design" exhibition, opened on september 26th at the Grand Palais in Paris, is revisiting two centuries of domestic appliances creation on a journey flavoured with surprises and humor.

Since the sixties and the post-modern impact of the eighties, the word ‘design’ has been in trouble. Prey to individual interpretations and long banned from institutional language in France, the word has undergone such inflation that it has become synonymous with “well drawn” or even “trendy”.

Design by design brings together objects and household furniture from the Industrial Revolution to the present day. Rather than follow a chronological arrangement, which is too complex these days, it juxtaposes and draws parallels, triggers surprising short circuits and sparks dialogue between things. This dialogue is enriched by a set of broad essays in the catalogue touching on design and art, fashion, architecture, film, comic books, humour and novels.

The exhibition starts with formal comparisons: straight lines and geometry, curves and biomorphism, playing with form until it teeters on the brink of imbalance, deformity, formlessness. A library stepladder-stool designed by Joseph Hoffman in 1903 compared with a work by Sol Lewitt, or a wooden sofa by Dannhauser (1825) next to a corrugated cardboard ‘bubble’ chair by the architect Frank O.Gehry (1979) raise questions about the relationship between form and technique. The chairs Thonet designed for a neo-rococo drawing room became the famous “bistrot chairs”. Marcel Breuer’s ‘Wassily’ chair (1925) owes its shape more to nomadic fantasies of bicycles and nineteenth-century camping chairs than to “good design”.

Three monumental pieces anchor the circuit: Zaha Hadid’s Iceberg bench, Womb House by the Van Lieshout studio and a Visiona by Verner Panton.



Purchase tickets
online










Visitors information
www.rmn.fr/galeriesnationalesdugrandpalais

Galeries nationales du Grand Palais
3, avenue du Général-Eisenhower - 75008 Paris
Tél. : 01 44 13 17 17 (serveur vocal)
Fax : 01 44 13 17 19

Open
Everyday except Tuesdays.
Closed on 25 December
and 1 January.

Hours
From 10am to 8pm;
from 10am
to 10pm on Wednesdays
and Fridays;
from 10am to 6pm
on 24 and 31 December.
Tickets office closes
45mins before closing time.

Access
M° 1,9,13: Franklin-Roosevelt
ou Champs-Élysées Clemenceau.

Admission
10€; concession: 8€ (13-25 years, large families,
job seekers).
Free for children under 13.