Franklin Azzi, Designer of the Year September 2020

His projects range from town-planning commissions to the design of a door handle, and have included some 60 boutiques worldwide for fashion designer Isabel Marant, the transformation of a warehouse into the Nantes Fine Arts School, and the creation of the Beaupassage-Grenelle lifestyle and housing complex in Paris’s 7th arrondissement. Named Maison&Objet’s Designer of the Year, Azzi will present his vision of the workspace through the ages at this September’s edition with a scenic, immersive installation consisting largely of images and films.

You claim not to have a set style. What is the importance of aesthetics in your work?

It’s not the first thing I think of when I start to work on a project. I can quote one of my peers, Renzo Piano, who gave a conference recently where he pointed out that in antiquity, the notion of beauty was equated with good. A beautiful building was one that was appreciated by its users and for me, beauty is very much linked to the happiness it confers. I believe that a form should never be gratuitous. It should be justified by at least five technical constraints. Three decades ago, we considered architects to be artists. I’m thinking of the generation I very much respect, like Jean Nouvel and Christian de Portzamparc. And when you’re an artist, you have to develop a style that’s instantly recognizable. Today, I have more the impression of being an “architect-technician”. For me, it’s important to have a very profound analysis of a project and to avoid a “Wow!” effect in order for buildings to stand the test of time.

You have said that you believe there will be no new buildings in the future. Why?

I’m more or less convinced of the fact. Of course, there will still be some, but there will no longer be hardly any demolition. One of today’s catchwords is “recycling” and the more time goes by, the more certain I am that we should not squander all the energy used in the construction of a building by razing it. Each building has its own DNA and I have a passion for trying to understand its architect’s intentions when I rehabilitate one. Nowadays, when there’s a choice between demolishing and preserving, I prefer the latter option.

One of your most renowned projects has been the transformation of an expressway directly on the Left Bank of the Seine into a pedestrian promenade. What were the main challenges it presented?

The site, which runs from the Orsay Museum to the Quai Branly, was very restrictive, due to the fact that it’s more and more complicated to anticipate a rise in the level of the Seine and that we know that objects on its banks can act as barrages and intensify flooding. Thus, we had to be able to remove anything installed in the space of 24 hours. It was also a project that was conceived initially for a temporary period. Why? Because there was a fear that closing the banks of the river to cars would provoke too many traffic jams elsewhere in the city. Hence, we were asked to keep the tarmac roads so they could be put back in service, if necessary. We chose to create street furniture made from solid wood, which consists of beams laid on top of each other. It was a very technical process and it took us six months of studies to work out how to put them together without them warping with the water or weather. It was quite innovative and a similar approach was subsequently adapted for the High Line in New York. Finally, for PR effect, we were asked to install the project in the space of just one week. For that, we decided to work with event-planning companies, who have the ability to react very quickly.

I’ve read that you spend quite a lot of time on Google Images. Why?

Like many people of my generation, I have a voracious appetite for images. Just as other people take tutorials, I need to look at more than 1,000 photos on a topic in order to get a deep understanding of it. What particularly interests me with Google Images in comparison to Instagram is the fact that you often don’t have an artist’s eye behind them. They’re undoctored and without a filter. They provide me with raw material for my projects.

By Ian Phillips