I am Guillaume Bloget, an independent designer and my studio is based in Paris. I studied design at ENSCI les Ateliers in Paris. For my diploma I worked on a bioclimatic mountain refuge in collaboration with the physicist Jacques Bourgoin, former research director at the CNRS. This project started my interest in architecture and technical invention. Then, I continued on this path by working for architects such as Zaha Hadid, Jacques Ferrier and Dominique Perrault. In 2018, I created my own design studio to fully express my vision.
We started this project at school and we wanted to make a collection of ordinary objects in order to understand the meaning of these familiar shapes. How did these archetypes come to be? What are their stories? This bias did not exist in the design press, so we thought there was a place for this collection.
It was also an opportunity for us to go into factories. Places that are not always easy to access. One of the underlying ambitions of the project is to understand the phenomenological dimension of the evolution of objects.
We want to continue to bring the project to life with new issues, exploring typologies that can gradually evolve the editorial line. We also want to function as a publishing house and make new books. It is a good pretext to continue learning things, meeting people and travelling with friends.
I teach design one day a week at a public preparatory school for art and design. The rest of the week I work in my studio on rue de Charenton, either alone or with an intern. From time to time I travel to Italy and Switzerland to follow the progress of projects. The routine can be summarized as: coffee, mail, drawing, modeling, model, telephone, in the evening often a walk in my neighborhood to breathe, at best a concert, effective to refresh the mind.
I make sure that my activity is sufficiently profitable to continue. I have to keep up with the progress of projects on a daily basis and keep up with partners to maintain a balance. Also, I try to follow through on every idea that seems interesting, even if it is modest. It can sometimes take several years before it comes to fruition. My goal is to bring every good idea to market. I would also like to bring more transparency to the origin of objects when they are purchased and I am currently thinking about a "transparent" label whose graphic system would allow you to understand at a glance what the production of the object represents in terms of ecological impact, sustainability and ethics. This principle is widespread in the food industry, but much less so for products.
I made the first prototype of the lamp when I was at the ENSCI, the project was a pretext for getting into the technical complexity, the mechanics, the electricity...
The starting idea is that light is an immaterial phenomenon, the materiality of the lamp is of little importance, what is needed is a quality of light and a fluid interaction in its management. "Type" lamp stems from this observation, it is a domestic projector articulated by a magnetic ball joint. The switch and the diffraction system are located at the point where the hand is placed to direct the light. With a single movement you can create a precise lighting atmosphere. This search for fluidity is very important in my work, the objects induce gestures, there is an almost choreographic aspect to take into account in their use.
Haha, not really. I won a small amount of money that allowed me to reimburse the costs invested in the prototype.
I made the prototype in 2016... It was already designed in 2015. In 2019 I presented it to Federico Palazzari, director of the publishing house Nemo, a subsidiary of Cassina. Several projects were abandoned during development, sometimes at very advanced stages, the Type lamp is the only one to have passed the production stage. The development of the lamp was long but ultimately successful. In keeping with the idea of modular light, the Nemo engineering team had the idea of adding a diffraction angle function. We kept the same interaction as for the dimmer switch, a gesture of the pivot on the cylinder axis.
One of my best collaborations! I spent 3 weeks in a superb workshop on the edge of a lake in the Morvan with a genius of materials and techniques, Antoine Rivière, the owner. Everything is possible, each project represents a technical challenge for him. There are no presuppositions about how things should be done as long as they are materially possible. For a designer like me, who tries to do the most with the least, it becomes easy to work within this limit.
The object we created was born out of a real game of ping-pong between our ideas, to come up with the most adequate solution in this context.
This residency allows me to create a prototype over a period of 3 weeks, all materials and techniques can be used (wood, metal, ceramic, cast iron, etc.). During my first residency, I made a removable shelf system in cherry wood, without nails or screws.
I am currently doing a second residency at Rhizome. I'm working on a light aluminium and cork kayak to sail on the lakes of Morvan.
The NY chair X by Japanese designer Takeshi Nii. This object represents for me the quintessence of design. It is very functional, there is nothing to add or take away, it has a raw elegance, without mannerism. It was designed in the 1950s, it could have been designed today, it will never age. So this is proof that design can create lasting objects.
Published on 31 September 2022
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