Mathieu Lehanneur, Designer of the Year 2024

Could French designers be on a quest to create their own iconic object? As a youngster, Mathieu Lehanneur spent many years honing his craft much like a knight of the round table... “30 years later, I’ve achieved precisely what I wanted, even exceeding my expectations,” he exclaims. And 2024 will see him become crowned the Maison&Objet Designer of the Year.

Round, square, oval... His design book may be overflowing with tables, but pre-existing silhouettes certainly don’t feature in his design vocabulary. His Ocean Memories furniture collection captures the relief of waves and currents in marble, leaving them seemingly frozen in time. His S.M.O.K.E. lamp appears to imprison a cloud of smoke in a glass bauble, its curvaceous lines a pure celebration of fleeting transparency. His Deep Time chandelier darts through the air resembling a flash of lightning. Mathieu Lehanneur gleans his inspiration from science and nature, an endless source of magic for anyone capable of taming their charm.

His most iconic object? Mathieu Lehanneur is more interested in creating magic. “In a world that’s overflowing with objects, all the materials used have been around since the dawn of time. I like playing around with them to make them express something slightly different. I want to create magic, but in the real world you need a few little tricks up your sleeve to make the magic happen”.

The designer has consequently surrounded himself with scientists, engineers and artisans to perfect his sleight of hand. An appetite for research is something he discovered very early on. Whilst completing his studies at the French National Institute for Advanced Studies in Industrial Design (Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle - ENSCI-Les Ateliers), his final year thesis focused on therapeutic design, a project now referenced at the MOMA in New York. A few years later, he worked hand-in-hand with Harvard professor David Edwards to design Andrea, an object that uses living plants to purify the air, based on tests carried out by NASA. Today, Mathieu Lehanneur is capable of balancing a one-tonne marble table top on nothing more than a few glass baubles. “It was an extremely precarious idea to begin with. I needed some good fairies to make it happen,” he comments. In this instance, the sprinkling of stardust came from a master glassmaker who agreed to help him with his research. 2024 already looks set to be a big year. Mathieu Lehanneur has just opened La Factory, the design office-workshop from which he designs, experiments, assembles and ships out everything that bears his name. He has designed the Olympic torch for the Paris Olympics. He will be celebrating his 50th birthday. And Maison&Objet will be awarding him their highest accolade.

His project for Maison&Objet
Outonomy – Hall 7

“Escape take off breathe live These are a few actions that effectively sum up the project that I’ll present at Maison&Objet in January 2024.
Without saying too much about it for the moment, the project is based on the idea of independence and freedom far from all the noise and the density Towards some other place for inventing and reinventing oneself The project Outonomy is an ecosystem of life both minimal and optimal The history of civilization and architecture is punctuated by attempts solutions and proposals for an isolated home the igloo, the cabin the hut or the yurt.
The challenge here is to combine our needs with current technologies Far from being nostalgic or an attempt to return to the past Outonomy aims to respond to the question what do I really need?”