CURVED IDEAS, FREE FORMS
Laid out flush with the floor, and even on walls from the 1990s onwards, Pierre Paulin’s seat carpets are one with the space, and spread throughout it. Reminiscent of oriental garden rugs and Japanese tatami mats, which the designer discovered in 1970 during a trip to Osaka and then India, but also dreaming of a modular flying carpet (attested by a drawing made in 1966), these hybrid pieces of furniture gave shape to a “floating” living space and to a new, horizontal Western way of life…
Composed of a coated canvas tarpaulin and a woollen rug, their raised angles act as backrests, creating an environment in their own right. Developed from 1972 onwards according to a geometric grid based on the origami principle, they are the essential elements of the Pierre Paulin Program, which remained in the planning stage until it saw the light of day in 2014, five years after the death of its designer.
Following on from the Villa Lemoine, the iconic modernist house box designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas near Bordeaux, and Yoshio Taniguchi’s white Yukigaya House in Tokyo, the curvaceous building designed by renowned Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer for Château La Coste in Provence is the setting for the exhibition of the rooms designed between 1969 and 1972 as part of this modular residential program.
“AN INHABITABLE LANDSCAPE”
Allowing each person to “be the architect of their own interior” by combining different elements according to their desires and needs, and offering multiple configurations, this modular furniture creates a random, undulating and shifting “living landscape”. Six models illustrate the possible configurations of the modules, while the exhibition showcases the Paulin Program’s Model 5.
The undulating lines of the Niemeyer pavilion are matched by the sensual “free forms” imagined by Paulin to open up the space. In addition to the modular shelving systems, from Tapis Siège (1968) to the organic modules of Ensemble Dune (1970), the pieces testify to Paulin’s eminently modern, non-static vision of space: like a giant origami, the floor folds and articulates so that you can sit on it…
Other highlights include the famous Big C sofa and matching armchair, and the irresistibly curved Moon Table.
Château La Coste
2750, Route de La Cride, Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade