CAMBRIDGE - It's chilly, foggy, and the sky appears ready to spit drizzle, but Erwan Bouroullec has requested outside seating. {bull} "Do you mind?" he asks, already headed for the door. "So I can smoke. I'm French, I need to maintain the stereotype." {bull} Aside from looking Gallic with a cigarette perpetually positioned between his fingers, the wiry Bouroullec also acknowledges that he and his older brother Ronan also look like "university-type people." In the world of design, where larger-than-life personalities become as ubiquitous as the products they design, the Bouroullec brothers have maintained a relatively quiet profile. They prefer to let their streamlined designs steal the spotlight. The brothers, who work as a team, design furniture for Vitra, Kartell, Cappellini, and Ligne Roset, and have staged multiple museum exhibitions since teaming in the late 1990s. They are widely regarded as the most important figures in French design since Philippe Starck. {bull} After speaking at the Harvard Graduate School of Design last week, Erwan chatted about his acclaimed plastic algae, famed sleeping cabin, and the dangers of Alessi kitchen accessories.
Your designs feel very optimistic, as if you and your brother had an ideal upbringing in Brittany. I don't have much respect for a cynical approach to design, or a joking approach to design. It's easy to be cynical about design. Now you see a lot of people like Marcel Wanders making jokes in design. When you make a joke, you need to have a base. You should be transforming or expanding an idea. If the design is already existing, the joke isn't really saying anything. I have less confidence in that kind of approach.
So design whimsy isn't your cup of tea? I think it's fine in a museum, or an exhibition, but to bring this to a product is a real nightmare. A good example is all the Alessi objects for the kitchen. They're not bad objects taken in their own context, but as soon as you bring them inside a kitchen, they really become like a disease. They're too much. They ruin the ecology inside a house.
Does that mean that you're thinking about other objects people may have in their homes when you're designing? We don't have such clear rules. We just have this way of trying to avoid what is unnecessary. We have a language. Usually when we make an object there are not 10 materials, there are one or two. We're not minimal, not simple, but we're concentrated on what we have to do. By taking out everything that is not necessary, you get an object that isn't overpowering. Sometimes it doesn't work. We made algae ("Algue," in French) for Vitra, and I'm really proud of this piece. Nothing existed like this before. It's a series of small pieces of plastic, and people can use it to design their own curtain or art. But sometimes the results can be incredibly horrible. It's like giving someone a pen and paper. Sometimes the drawing is good, sometimes it's horrible.
How is Boston seen in the design world? Or is it seen at all in the design world? No, not really. But for me, there are really no geographical boundaries in design. Boston doesn't have a special design vibe, but the town is incredibly beautiful. There are all these wood houses. While I understand that it's houses covered with vinyl that looks like wood, I don't mind. From a design point of view, I've seen some incredible houses. When I'm in a town, I'm looking at all the trees and the houses. It's not at all about spending time inside of museums.
