Constance Guisset, designer: "In each of my objects, there is a form of flight"

Constance Guisset, designer: "In each of my objects, there is a form of flight"

Gray exterior.It rains in Paris.Warm covers that wash the sidewalks of Cavé Street, in the 18th arrondissement, and morale morale.Not easy not to drown in the blues ... Luckily, we ring at the door of the studio of Constance Guisset.Lucie Verlaguet, the administrator, comes to open.Behind her mask, she smiles, her eyes sparkle.His sympathetic voice covers the noise of a 3D printer that works at full speed in this entrance which, at another time, had to be a Courette.Behind her, we distinguish from the light fallen from the sky, through a zenithale glass roof.There, a few meters, there is an oasis preserved from showers.

White, shelves climbing along the walls, a central table covered with models and prototypes, objects everywhere, furniture - well, a vertigo suspension - and a team of six people who are working in this atmosphere where bad weather does notnever seems to penetrate.We can guess avenues for reflection on the children's Philharmonie, the studio having been responsible for the layout of the 1000 m² and the creation of the games.We see the germs of the big mobile who will darly dress the Villejuif-Louis Aragon station.We recognize the bottle of Ginza perfume, controlled by Shiseido. On s'arrête sur des propositions pour Van Cleef & Arpels, gros client de l'agence, ou sur un chantier secret au bout du monde… C'est ici aussi qu'a été conçue l'architecture d'intérieur d'Ernest, restaurant de la Samaritaine.

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Constance Guisset, projets design et architecture
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First established at 8 years old

Constance Guisset is not yet there.The rain delayed her.And there you are.Midnight blue dress marked at the waist by a fluorescent yellow link whose weaving evokes a judo belt.The designer loves sport.She was also responsible for the newspaper of the Sports Office when she was at Essec.A business school on its CV?Not only.She also did Sciences Po, after an internship in Tokyo where she attended a deputy candidate for the town hall of the city: "A mixed experience, because I was locked up in an office", she specifies.A memory that does not prevent her from smiling, too, behind her mask.And we feel in her something malicious, even if we know that it is a work executioner.His career testifies.

Once a graduate of ESSEC and Sciences Po, she experiences her specialty in cultural management in an art gallery.She quickly knows that it is not her way.She who received at 8 years old, as a gift, a workbench, and who at 11 already had her saw to singing, regrets her modeling, sculpture, calligraphy lessons, her DIY sessions ... "I realized that'student, I had a freedom of action to do everything I wanted.But when you work, you can't take an hour to go to the carpentry.»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»Fancy creation?Yes.Independence also.She cogitates."Art attracted me.I hesitated, she says.Then, I had an intuition: why not designer?I am very technical.I have always loved math and physics.I like to solve problems, and the profession of designer is to find solutions to equations.I was not wrong.»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»

To train, she joined the Ensci-les Ateliers (National School of Industrial Creation).A full-time course that she will still share with a half-time in the agency of the Bouroullec brothers."ENSCI said that it was not possible to have another activity next to it.Suddenly, I hid that I had this position of administrator as long as possible.It was a very busy era, day and night! ”»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»

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Cascade projects

Constance Guisset, designer :

It will remain from 2003 to 2010 among the Bouroullec.Graduated from ENSCI in 2007, she begins to make a name for herself by winning, in 2008, the Grand Prix du design of the city of Paris and the Public Prize at the Parade design of the Villa Noailles.She explains this rapid recognition by a form of maturity: “I had a very clear vision of whom I was and what I wanted to do.That does not prevent the fact that I fought.I also put forward strong objects like my vertigo lamp, my levitation lamp fiat lux and my aquarium cage duplex.Following these prices, I had a few articles and I started to be approached for projects.»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»Among his first customers, the choreographer Angelin Preljocaj, who offered to work on the scenography of his solo, the tightrope walker.From this collaboration, which continues, will be born the Angelin lamp, made of paper damage.

"All my projects feed on each other," says Constance Guisset.Artistic direction, scenography, drawing, architecture, design ... These are different trades, but the facets of the same creation.When you come to see me for a collaboration, I always wonder what I can bring.I also tell myself that it is not because I have never done something that I can't try.The meeting, the person opposite are also triggers.When something and someone fascinate me, I want to go!I am deeply enthusiastic, optimistic, a little unconscious, and I like to put myself in danger.»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»

This ability to get out of the framework is illustrated by her recent project with director Amandine Gay, who asked her to ensure the artistic direction of her documentary, a story to me, released in the spring and who follows adopted people, separated fromthe childhood of their families and their countries of origin."When I met Amandine, I didn't know if I was able to do this.She provided me with a filmography.And there I understood.My role was to bring an outside look.I immersed myself in the rushes with my collaborator, Lucie Verlaguet, we exchanged on our feelings and we made Amandine a built return.A mission supplemented by the realization of posters and graphics, which is more classically expected from a design studio.It amused me a lot, and I would love to do it again.»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»But before this documentary, there were many other adventures.

The passion of the object

En 2010, Constance Guisset monte son studio, est nommée designer de l'année au Salon Maison & Objet, obtient l'Audi Talents Award, rencontre la maison d'édition Petite Friture, qui vient de voir le jour et édite sa lampe Vertigo.Hit."Like a singer who made a tube, I could be brought back only to this lamp.It could be a weight.But it is the opposite, insists Constance Guisset.Vertigo was a momentum.The craze for this suspension allowed me to develop other ideas.And above all I am not ashamed of it!It is a benevolent object that represents the rest of my work.It is a protective mini-architecture that we choose because we want to live with.And then, I always look to the future.For me, what matters are the new ideas.I forgot Vertigo.Or almost ... I have, in fact, redesigned to make it vertigo Nova, published in September 2020 at Petite Fry, and whose graphic tablecloth is based this time on a blown glass.»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»

This vertigo of the beginnings therefore already carries in it the Guisset spirit.Made of polyurethane ribbons handed on a glass fiber structure, it moves with the ambient air, seems to fly."I am obsessed with the function.Imagining a chair that would not be comfortable does not interest me.But that does not prevent me from loving the movement, real or suggested, explains Constance Guisset.In each of my objects, there is a form of flight, a mixture of geometry and flexibility.It is very clear in Vertigo as in my Oliva chair, at Zanotta, where the great tension on the feet vanishes with the seat.We have this same effect with my cape lamp and my canova table center, edited by mustache.Suddenly, we want to touch these objects, to understand them.It is a form of delight: the double power to make us happy and to hold back.This implies a method.When I draw, if I find that the object looks like a known shape, I will add abstraction.And vice versa.I'm trying to escape anticipation through the look.It is a permanent quest for the balance between rigor and fantasy, an oscillation between the square and the round, even if spontaneously I am rather round.»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»

The subject should not be trivial for Constance Guisset, who tackled it in Roue Libre, album published by Albin Michel in 2019, which tells the story of a round that feels lost in a square world.Constance Guisset, however, does not see a form of introspection, rather an experience.“After my exhibition at Mudac, in Lausanne, in 2016-2017, for which I wrote a text, Albin Michel editions contacted me to make a book for children.It started with the theme of fog, then there was that of the round.»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»This extra-design activity may explain the fact that her 12-year-old daughter calls her "big child"»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»."In general, I am playful. C'est un trait de caractère que l'on associe rarement au monde des adultes, où l'on attend de nous de rire moins fort, d'être moins expressifs dans la joie»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»», explique-t-elle en montrant le foulard qu'elle vient de créer pour la marque Bombyx Mama, et qui, grâce à des aimants, peut se porter comme une cape de superhéroïne.

Imaginary planet

Return to the office, day interior, artificial light.The phone is ringing.It's Constance Guisset.She thought a lot about her words during our interview, rue Cavé.She would like to come back to the playful.She fears that she will be confused with infantilization: "It is often said that there is delicacy in my work.And when you are a woman who makes delicate objects, we immediately categorize you like a mother, and we decipher everything through your relationship to children.Now, delicacy is a real fight.This requires in particular to cultivate its capacity for wonder.And then, I am regularly talking about my use of the color that we see as childish.However, when I draw an object, it is not in color.She comes after.This is what I showed during the exhibition at Mudac, where I staged two mirrors with the same objects, one in black and white, the other in color.And this is also what I wanted to say to the villa Noailles, in one of the spaces that evoke a machine room, metaphor for our studio: all the objects are white paper, as in the making.There is only color on the ceiling as if it were going to fall from the sky.»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»

Flashback.Grand Blue Outdoor.The heat fell on the gardens of Villa Noailles, in Hyères.Constance Guisset shows his exhibition, Villa objective!.She says she wanted to "take the public"»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»».The journey always.Still delight.She imagined in this architecture, wanted by Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles and entrusted to Robert Mallet-Stevens, a space station: an opportunity to explore the achievements of her studio.There is the machine room, but also the vessel stranded in the shadow of the old squash room.Constance Guisset plates and pins have been diverted into controller for interstellar drivers.

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Inner sun

"On the ground, there is dark matter.This is the one I used at La Scala in Milan for an Angelin Preljocaj show. Elle symbolise les projets avortés, terreaux des projets à venir»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»», décrypte-t-elle.Further on, the swimming pool was converted into an imaginary planet where the objects completed and edited, like the modular sofa Pierre Frey, are gathered around a large puddle, like animals coming to drink. «Ici s'exprime toute la joie qu'il faut mettre en œuvre pour faire sortir les créations de terre»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»», annonce Constance Guisset à un public néophyte et conquis à qui elle explique aussi que le cœur de son métier est finalement de concevoir des décors.

It's not over ... Behind a door, there is the ancient gymnasium transformed into an explorer office.Understand the designer.Photos, prototypes (like these drop lights that fall from clouds intended to alleviate noise), creations ... mix like so many sources of inspiration, reflections.More than in the imaginary office of Constance Guisset, the visitor is in his head, in his brain irrigated by the Norman light that she loves so much and which, she underlines with a wink, is very similar to that ofMarch.This light which, no doubt, fuels this inner sun which it regularly invokes and which lights up its path towards new stories.

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