Redefining Design Between Past and Future
Friday 5 September —
14:00
- 14:45
The Talks — Hall 6
Description
Is design timeless? Do exceptional pieces transcend eras? Can one create without historical references? How can we reinvent the past while enchanting the future?
Far from wanting to erase yesterday, some designers and galleries boldly take up the challenge, drawing on a rich legacy of materials, forms, and objects to imagine the future.
Participants
Edgar JayetInterior Architect and Designer
David AtlanCo-founder & Artistic Director - Sceners Gallery
Jonathan Haddad Co-founder & Artistic Director - Sceners Gallery
Danièle GerkensJournalist
Edgar Jayet
Interior Architect and Designer
In 2021, after being awarded the Grand Prix Van Cleef & Arpels, at the Design Parade Toulon, Edgar Jayet founded a studio of interior architecture and design between Paris and Venice. Both speculative and operative, the studio’s work is born of thoughts before being embodied in matter and space. Firmly believing that contemporary creation cannot be conceived independently of its past, the studio seeks to position its projects in continuity with History and traditional techniques — building a cultivated dialogue between our clients and high craftsmanship. All interior projects and collections stem from the values held by the studio : committed to offering spaces and pieces that do not compromise when it comes to quality and technique and continuously push craftsmen towards excellence.
David Atlan
Co-founder & Artistic Director - Sceners Gallery
Coming from a background in finance, David Atlan nurtures a relationship with art and design that blends intellectual rigor with instinctive passion. A discreet collector, he has spent over a decade assembling an exceptional corpus of 20th-century pieces—where functional gestures are imbued with expressiveness, and furniture becomes sculpture. For him, the value of a work lies not only in its rarity, but in its ability to transform a space—to introduce tension, poetry, and presence. This exacting standard is at the heart of Sceners Gallery, which he co-founded alongside Jonathan Haddad. Together, they envisioned not merely a gallery, but a place for storytelling—where each piece, from Prouvé to Zalszupin, Nakashima to Jeanneret, is staged not for what it represents, but for what it evokes. Many of the works on display come from his personal collection, revealing a curatorial vision that is precise yet resolutely non-dogmatic. David Atlan embodies a new generation of enlightened collectors: attuned to form and history, but above all to the emotional resonance of objects. His presence within Sceners ensures the gallery remains grounded in a spirit of research, coherence, and boldness—far from fleeting trends, and close to what truly matters.
Jonathan Haddad
Co-founder & Artistic Director - Sceners Gallery
Trained in music, Jonathan Haddad developed early on a keen sensitivity to harmony, rhythm, and composition—principles he transposes with rare finesse into the realms of design and spatial experience. A self-taught curator and committed interior architect, he creates scenographies of striking visual clarity, where each piece engages in a thoughtful dialogue between material, light, and memory. By co-founding Sceners Gallery in Paris, Jonathan envisioned a space that defies convention: neither a traditional gallery nor a period room, but a living environment where works interact, challenge one another, and continually enrich each other. Beneath a glass roof, in the industrial volumes of a former toy factory, he orchestrates subtle juxtapositions—between the austere lines of Rick Owens, the baroque details of Carlo Bugatti, and the silent radicalism of a Japanese vase. His approach is rooted in a deliberate principle of duality: between softness and brutality, refinement and rawness, signature and anonymity. This tension forms the core identity of Sceners and defines his curatorial eye—free, erudite, and deeply contemporary. Jonathan lives and works between Paris, Antwerp, and Tel Aviv, and belongs to a generation of creators for whom transversality is not a stance, but a given.
Danièle Gerkens
Journalist
Editor-in-chief of ELLE Décoration, ELLE à table and Art & Décoration, Danièle Gerkens has a degree in Economics and in the History of Art and Religions. Born and raised in Africa, she has worked as a journalist for ELLE magazine after various experiences: copywriter at Publicis, consultant at UNESCO, cook at l'Arpège with Alain Passard... She is also the author of several books including "Zero Sugar", an investigation published by Les Arènes.