When design is synonymous with magic

Sometimes, designers take a step to the side. Accustomed to combining form and function, and hand-in-hand with artisans, they raise the poetic bar, moving toward the frontiers of art. Such will be the case of two spectacular installations on view at Paris Design Week. The Japanese designers at Invisi will take over the courtyard of the Hôtel de Soubise, headquarters of the Museum of the National Archives in the Marais, with their truly unprecedented wooden constructions. Both a unique work of art, a design piece, and a musical instrument, their Ko-Tone Spyral Xylophone will appear in the form of a spiral made from wooden slats, fanning out to human height. You place a wooden ball at the top, and Presto! It slides down the small steps carved with the greatest of care so that the sound of its bouncing plays Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, a cantata by Jean-Sebastian Bach. It all takes only thirty seconds to enchant listeners. Without any source of energy, not human, nor electrical, the music plays thanks to the forces of gravity alone. The purity of the wooden spiral, so patiently assembled, is an allegory of a dreamt-of life, where humankind would live in perfect harmony with nature. This Japanese firm specializes in sound for films and advertising. This time, they wanted to emerge from the commercial sphere to explore other dimensions. In this courtyard, you’ll also be able to experience their new Echo Stratum sound banks, which record surrounding activities and rebroadcast them in the form of sound clouds…
Musée des Archives Nationales, 60 rue des Francs Bourgeois 75003 Paris. 

Artisan glassblower Emmanuel Barrois, on his end, will make a stunning demonstration of the mastery of his art with his Réflexions installation. Within the gardens of the Palais Royal, he will construct scaffolding made of 6000 meters of transparent prisms intermixed over a height of 15 meters. Its construction will be visible starting on September 7th and be completed on the 14th. All-glass, it weighs seven tons and has no ambition other than capturing the light for a moment of beauty and poetry. Emmanuel Barrois never says no to beautiful madness. Working in the Auvergne region in a massive workshop, he works using both the most traditional techniques and the latest cutting-edge ones. His virtuosity has led him to collaborate with the biggest names in architecture, such as Frank Gehry, Kengo Kuma, Norman Foster, Christian de Portzamparc, and Olafur Eliasson. For him, glass is a solid form of light. His fragile and monumental kaleidoscope is a tribute to builders and to our amazing individual capacities, a manifesto for optimism around mankind’s ability to produce beauty.