You work on installations and across a broad range of mediums. Is that something you consider important for designers today?
I often work on displays or scenograhy [exhibition design] for museums, fairs and exhibitions. I like to work with different things - from tiny to very big. I happen to work they way, but that's not to say another methodology wouldn't work. Everybody does their own thing and finds their own way to do it. I really like the idea of diversity. I didn't necessary set out to work like this. People might ask me to work on something specific and little by little I started to design products, and then I might be asked to do a space. It could be for a temporary project or a more permanent one. I really like this way of working, because you constantly change your contacts and you have to keep thinking in different ways.

Can you tell me a little about the installation project you recently worked on for the Milan Furniture Fair.
It was nice this year because the fair was outside the city, in a new venue. I worked on a display that was part of a series of exhibitions and installations shown in a space called the Triennale di Milano, in the city. I worked on the exhibition design for this installation called Il diavolo del focolare for Cosmit. In Italian this means 'the devil of hearth and home'. It was based on the idea of the evolution of women and the evolution of our domestic sphere. It was more an art exhibition involving artists from around the world.

You started your career quite differently having initially trained in Marketing. How did you get into design?
I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do, so I ended up doing three years of marketing. During that time I had an assignment that was based on the re-launch of a perfume. Part of the exercise was to design the bottle and the packaging and I found this to be the most exciting part. Not only to think about the package, but to reflect on the kinds of products people end up with. Then I decided I needed to find out more about design and how I could do that kind of work. I enrolled in a really good school called the Ecole nationale superieure de creation industrielle and I realised that it was possible for me to become a designer.

It must be helpful to have a marketing background given how important it is for a designer to understand their market.
Yes, but also for the methodology because the process is very important. Sometimes you can get lost and you have to find a good direction with your client and stick with it. The next stage is to find the energy and the creativity in order to develop the project further. So it's helpful to know about marketing during this process.

Tell me how you came to work with Philippe Starck.
At first I decided I wanted to work in Italy in the studio of Denis Santachiara. He is a designer whose work is similar to mine. We have the same sensibility in a way. While he prefers to create a kind of magic-effect which I don't, we both like to use technology and to bring a little poetry to objects. So I worked with him for a year and it gave me a lot of confidence. I saw that you could work on projects but also design more unusual objects. You could push the boundaries and go a little bit further. So with this new confidence I returned to Paris and wrote letters to three design firms. One of those letters was to Philippe Starck and I was fortunate that at that time he was looking for people. He had just embarked on this big adventure with Thomson Multimedia, a huge electronics company, and because I was really keen on technology, I was asked to work on this project.

Was he fun to work with and did you learn a lot from him?
It was a real adventure. As a new designer, it was like a fairytale for me. I had the opportunity of working with technology for mass-produced objects for a large company like Thomson Multimedia but also to be part of the Starck team. More and more I was working with him in different ways. I worked on many projects but one day a week we were also able to talk about what we could do in the future, which is what design is all about. At Thomson we had 120 projects to draw a year, it was huge! It was not possible for Philippe Starck to draw them all. So he would give directions, sometimes, just a quick sketch so most of the time the team was able to contribute their own ideas. There was a lot of freedom and it was a real cultural revolution in this company. There was always a lot of work but also a lot of experimentation and optimism - a feeling that we could change things. It's an amazing opportunity for a designer to have such freedom and to be able to express their own creative ideas so early in their career. Normally, it doesn?t work like this. It should, but it never happens like that.

Your designs are about pushing boundaries a little and gently challenging people to re-think how they live life and go about their daily business.
I'm interested in thinking about other possibilities. Not necessarily to change the world, that's not my goal, but to present another alternative for living. That alternative might be more contemporary and it might reflect a greater awareness or fit more with what we have in our heads. I'm interested in trying to reduce this gap between what we are thinking and the tools or the structure we have around us. You might do this in a very basic way, through daily objects, or in a more experimental way, like doing a hotel or an entire new global concept.

What is it like working on a global concept like a hotel where you are designing almost every aspect of the visitor experience?
The most difficult thing with these kinds of projects is to find a good partner. I never take my portfolio or show my work. I rely on people's curiosity about what the designer might be proposing. They usually come to me to discuss it further. I feel this is the best way to work. I never wanted to do a hotel before. It came about through discussions with a couple of clients who had seen my work. They could see that I was already working with space even if that was designing new pieces of furniture. This relationship has continued and we are working on a very different project in Tunisia. It's another adventure. The original hotel continues but it's almost like it is giving birth to these little babies. People who are interested in this hotel now want to have a space which captures the same spirit. For example, I was asked to do a salon de toilettage - a pet grooming shop in Nice for a client called Carole Heleine. She was not particularly interested in contemporary design. She was actually into techno music and had participated in a program at the hotel and liked it. I'm so pleased when something like that happens. The idea is to make a small step and for this client she has changed her way of living.

When you are working on this global concept, like the hotel, exploring ideas of hospitality and the notion of welcoming someone, how might this manifest in the finished design?
If there is one global concept for a project like a hotel it would be to remove this notion of status. When you are interested in status you are asking people to build a wall. For example, if a four star hotel was concerned with status you might have this huge lobby. This huge lobby is saying to you that you are a very important person when you arrive in it. My idea is to remove that, to make you be more yourself, to feel a little more comfortable and willing to try something else. The idea was not to walk in the same way as with other hotels. Initially, you might feel surprised because you are in a different situation but very quickly you find your own way. The people who are welcoming you are very kind. Then slowly, you get to understand how it works because you can see the functioning of the space. Even if you are in an experimental room you have a kind of logic of space. As soon as you understand this new logic then you can see that you have all of the same services but organised in a different way. You see for yourself what it means to be contemporary. The idea was that in fact. People are afraid of going into art galleries, afraid to shop for a sofa in a contemporary furniture shop - they feel a little intimated. So the idea was to create a place where you can explore spaces as an individual, say in your room, and then to share your experiences later with other guests. When you are in this hotel, everyone gets a very different room. When you are at breakfast and when people arrive, couples or individuals, they are ready to discuss how their room is organised, to analyse or discuss. This kind of micro-consciousness then could then change things little by little.

Because you have a more philosophical approach to design how do you get ideas or inspiration?
I don't really have a process for coming up with ideas. I'm not the kind of designer who analyses where I am going or the material I am using. I'm more interested in observing the ways people behave. I think that design is a kind of applied anthropology. When I'm travelling abroad I look at how people behave and the kinds of basic rituals they perform. I then make comparisons, like a mirror, with what we are doing and little by little I get some clues or ideas. I often work on displays for fairs or small bars or things like that. It might be for four days only but I use this time to try out different configurations and get a response or feedback from people. When I get good feedback and I think it brings something good to the user then I might use it for the hotel. It means that when I bring an idea to the hotel project, I have experimented with the notion before. It's a kind of long process which is inspired by behaviours and by the way people move and act. It's not only the concept of a design which you remember. Sure, you remember the place for what it was, but you also remember the people you met and the experiences you had there. Good moments in our lives are often defined by these kinds of events.

Your work has an almost child-like quality to it and a strong sense of imagination and play - especially in your use of colour and whimsical shapes.
In the beginning of my career I was a little afraid that people wouldn't take my work seriously. People were always saying that it was playful so I would panic thinking, 'oh my God, I'm only doing 'ludique' things?. But in fact I discussed this with a friend who is a typologist and she explained that 'ludique' means to experiment with the world around you by playing. And I thought if ludique means this, then in fact I am doing this. I agree that we as adults need to experiment also, not only children. The world is going so fast that we need to get access to all this change. So it's not only for kids you know, as adults we need to have the structure with which to experiment. And I really like this idea now because it allows me to remain curious and to try new things.

How would you define what a designer does?
As I do so many different things, perhaps the link for me between all these things is that it's like taking the hand of somebody and leading them to a more contemporary way of thinking. Just to live your life with a sense of today and the idea of gently changing people's way of thinking and giving them access to things they don't have access to most of the time.

What is the most unusual product you have worked on?
A very nice project I worked on recently was a video clip for a new group called Liquid Architecture. It will be shown at my exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York. The exhibition is concerned with my relationship to sound and music.

Tell me about the future bathroom concept you worked on.
It was for a Dutch company and it was a vision of how the bathroom could evolve in the future. It was called Update/Three Spaces in One: Phytolab 2002, Chlorophyll bath, a bathroom project commissioned by Dornbracht Bathvisions. It was based on the idea that after concerning ourselves too much with appearance perhaps in the future we will look more at how we feel in our bodies. So we won?t need the mirror anymore. And the idea that you could, little by little, learn who you are and use nature much more than we are doing right now. You have to learn little by little the benefits that nature can bring to you. The more you know yourself then the more you know how to use nature and the better you feel. So the bathroom could be the ideal structure to do that. Little by little you get this knowledge, a little bit like our grandmothers were able to do. They would look to plants when they had some small medical ailment, such as feeling dizzy or a headache or whatever. They had to have a very good relationship with nature and that was what this installation was all about. I really like the idea of coming back to nature, of touching nature. Because as humans we are constantly creating these artificial environments, so the idea behind this projects was ? what are we doing with this artificial world? How are we guiding it? How are we qualifying it? In a way, I think designers feel a greater urgency to analyse these notions and to find new directions in respect to these questions.

Do you think that growing up in a small French farming region and having access to a more simple or natural life influenced the way you work?
Sure. I don't know how to analyse in which way and how it has changed my way of thinking or influenced me. But I do remember as a child having access to nature and that it was possible for me to touch and to transform my environment. It was like a huge playground with a kind of generosity to it. You just had to go out into it and then you could use your own imagination to build stories and you had everything you needed to make things possible, to make the structure of the story. It was very rich in a way and with a lot of freedom to invent in very different ways. Also with every new season, your relationship with nature would change. I think young children in the city today behave in different ways and have different support structures. I remember my childhood being very hands-on.

I'm interested in breaking the rules. It is when you break the codes that you have access to a lot of possibilities. Like the way that the house is organised for example. I had a very simple upbringing and so I was doing this all the time. My family were not very rich, they were into very simple things and I think that this was a good education. I grew up in another culture. Just to give you an example, reading in my family meant you were wasting time. When you were reading you were not doing something in the field or whatever. I had to gain access to this other culture and I was really greedy when I came to Paris to get access to all there was out there. Not just a culture of design, but art, cinema, etc.

Other than design, what are you passionate about?
Design is mixed in with my private life. It's very complex to separate my work life from my private life. What I really like is to be with my family and with friends and to just exchange, to take the time to just live. I don't have a kind of hobby except to go abroad and to visit places and meet different people - and basically just to have the time to do it and to relax a little bit.

Is there one thing you would love to design?
No, I never work or think like that. Because what people propose to me is much more interesting than what I might have thought about designing at any time. I?m happy to just float from one proposal to another. It?s nice, I really like that. It's not that I don't have a dream but I really am more interested in meeting people, finding new partners to go further with, to stretch the possibilities that are out there.

Matali Crasset delivers the keynote talk for Sydney Design 06 at the Powerhouse Museum, 17 August 6.30pm, with a special introduction by Fleur Watson, Editor of Monument. Book now.

Sydney Design 06
Matali Crasset
HI Hotel
Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, New York



TAGS
+ Sydney Design 06