The Inside Track, Connecting the Indian design community Maison et Objet Paris announces Franklin Azzi as the designer of the year, signaling an uninterrupted schedule to the September 2020 edition of this iconic fair.
French designer Franklin Azzi is a man who wears many hats. His work has been influenced by architects, artists, musicians, literature and a variety of other creative agents ensuring that his own work is never formulaic and instead always infused with new energy and creativity.
The Paris-based Azzi has a significant variety of works and pursuits. His projects encompass everything from urban planning to interior design. He also engages in sculpture and organises exhibitions with a focus on promoting emerging and confirmed artists.
Amongst his prominent works is a stretch of expressway directly on the Left Bank of the river Seine in Paris which has been transformed into a 2.5km-long pedestrian promenade. In addition his firm is also a part of the Nouvelle AOM collective (along with ChartierDalix and Hardel Le Bihan Architectes) selected to transform Paris’s iconic Tour Montparnasse skyscraper and the district around it.
His other recent projects include the transformation of a postal sorting office in Lille into a cultural venue, the creation of the Nantes Fine Arts School in a former storehouse, and the crafting of the Beaupassage-Grenelle lifestyle and housing complex in Paris’s 7th arrondissement. With each, his approach was the same: “to respect the past while celebrating the future”.
Currently on the drawing board are a Mama Shelter hotel in Dubai, a multipurpose building on the ChampsElysees, a temporary structure that will house a restaurant and bar on the roof of the Galeries Lafayette department store on Boulevard Haussmann; and boutiques in New York and Shanghai for the Chinese fashion brand EP Yaying.
At Maison&Objet this September, Azzi will share his expertise via a 300 square metre temporary exhibition on the theme of the workspace throughout the ages.
“I don’t see how we can imagine the future without analyzing the past,” he mentions. Azzi will present his vision in a scenic, immersive presentation that will largely consist of images and films. The space itself will be largely mounted using structural elements recycled from previous editions of the fair. “I don’t want our installation to simply end up lying in boxes afterwards”, he explains.
Stay tuned for another edition of Maison et Objet Paris in September 2020. It promises to be exciting, enriching and engaging as always.
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