A Foldable Home
Amélie Pichard’s Welcome Home installation at Maison&Objet’s trade fair explores the home as a transient, ever-evolving space (image: Anne-Emmanuelle Thion).
Everything in Amélie Pichard’s Welcome Home installation at Maison&Objet’s trade fair is lightweight and easily moveable: from Clément Pasquier's shower screen made from bricks of obscured glass on wheels to Studio Low's daybed made from hills of brown foam. “This house comes with no instructions,” the exhibition text reads, introducing a space with no walls that appears to be under construction. “One can inhabit it for a while, then close it, fold it into a bag, and take it elsewhere.”
As art director of Maison&Objet’s September 2025 edition, Pichard has created an installation that responds to the fair’s theme of “Revival” by displaying a vision of design as nimble, permeable, and continuously evolving. “[These objects] challenge and question what design can be when we stop putting it on display,” Pichard writes. “When we break down the barriers between disciplines and get them talking to each other.” Her curation cheekily mixes tradition and modernity, placing a Rodin sculpture alongside Non Sans Raison’s porcelain tableware designed to look like fast food packaging, and combining Policronica’s elegant wooden chair with Trône’s futuristic toilet. The majority of the objects in the installation, however, have been selected from different exhibitors participating in the fair, and chosen for their ability to adapt to small spaces and transient lifestyles while maintaining either a high level of craftsmanship or an endearing eccentricity.
The installation features lightweight and easily moveable pieces, such as Studio Low’s foam daybed (image: Anne-Emmanuelle Thion).
Pichard’s emphasis on adapting to close quarters is echoed throughout Maison&Objet’s Design District, an area of the fair focused on emerging talents. French collective Hall Haus, who acted as this year’s artistic directors of the section, debuted a new stool, folding chair and shelving system made out of yellow aluminium with circular cutouts designed to mimic the Olympic logo. “The goal of our new stool is to be the price of a Nike AirMax,” says cofounder Sammy Bernoussi, explaining the collective’s desire to make their designs accessible for people with lower budgets and less space. Meanwhile, in Future On Stage, an area of the fair that spotlights new companies, designer Milla Lack debuted Drobe, a suitcase which doubles up as a wardrobe, comprised of three sections that act as drawers and small bars for hanging clothes that slide out of its handle. Over in Maison&Objet’s Rising Talents Awards, meanwhile, designer Moritz Walter displayed a lamp with a shade that adjusts to create either a reading light or a diffuse glow, and a wooden dining room chair designed to provide enough back support for working from home. “Especially for flats and small living environments, we don't have enough space for too many objects,” Walter explains, “so I try to combine things.”
Walter’s most striking design is a series of orange ceramic heaters shaped like room dividers. “I wanted to create something that you really want to have in the living room – it’s kind of sad that these warmth-giving objects are hidden away behind curtains,” he explains. The ceramic pieces sit on an electric panel to warm up before being placed around a space to heat small sections for up to two hours. “Heating whole rooms is not very efficient because you heat spaces you aren’t even in, and it doesn't really work for everybody – some people like it colder, some people like it warmer,” Walter says, adding that switching the heating supply from gas to electricity will help to pave the way for the use of renewable energy. The design is echoed in Eng Piplard’s hot water bottles made from natural materials such as terracotta and stoneware, which were one of Pichard’s curatorial picks. While Walter’s heaters have a sleek industrial aesthetic, Piplard’s pieces resemble stones that have been strung together like coils of prayer beads.
Haus Otto’s rug is made of padded cushions designed to look like a cartoonishly large section of woven cloth (image: Maison&Objet).
Designed to distribute heat on specific areas of the body or throughout the home, Piplard’s pieces demonstrate the tactility and adaptability favoured by Pichard’s curation. “These objects are at once functional and unusual,” Pichard’s exhibition text reads, words that fittingly describe pieces such as Airborne’s chainmail armchair and Anne Kreig’s angular, teapot-shaped carafe. “Though they seem simple and familiar they soon invite reflection – whether through their form, their function, or the stories they carry.” This eclecticism and flexibility carries through in the work of Haus Otto, another winner of this year’s Rising Talent Awards, who exhibited a fuzzy wall hook that squeezes objects between folds of fabric, and a lime green carpet made from a chain of padded cushions. “It’s a playful object where you can have a power nap or relax closer to the ground,” says Patrick Henry Nagel, cofounder of the studio, explaining that its design was inspired by woven cloth. “It’s called Zooom Rug, because it’s like an oversized, cartoon textile.”
The chain-like appearance of Haus Otto’s rug resembles the modular bread the studio created as part of FARM, a collaborative project which explored natural cycles and sustainable materials through a residency based near Lake Constance. Made from curved baguettes designed to hook together, Haus Otto's bread chains share the same joyful, doughy aesthetic as their rug. “At first glance, farming and design are really different,” Nagel reflects. “But design can learn a lot from agriculture: all the things that are really important at the moment, like design for disassembly and circular design, are things that agriculture already does. So it’s kind of seeing agriculture as a role model.” Studio Œ, who were also honoured in this year’s Rising Talents Awards, made a similarly playful take on the daybed while participating in Haus Otto’s FARM project. “We found a leftover material on the farm,” explains Lisa Ertel, cofounder of Studio Œ, explaining that the studio started filling cushions with husk. “It’s the outer hull of grains that often gets thrown away, but it’s actually a traditional filling material which is a little bit forgotten.” The duo’s daybed has the same arched back as the hammock they first designed out of husk-filled cushions on the farm, but it is attached to a metal frame to create a more permanent piece of furniture.
Studio Œ’s daybed designed to resemble a hammock, with cushions filled with leftover husk from Haus Otto’s FARM project (image: Maison&Objet).
Yearning for nature is a theme throughout Pichard’s installation, which includes pieces such as Ilex Studio’s glass vases that expose the roots of acorns as they grow, and Charlot & Cie’s pleated parchment paper lamps that look like blossoms, adding softness to a space where all the windows look out onto mundane views. “Bedroom with a view they said!” reads one of the Post-It notes Pichard has scattered throughout the exhibition to comment on aspects of the home, this one stuck next to a projection of cars driving down a motorway. In contrast to the rootlessness of Pichard’s living space, Gerlach & Heilig, another duo recognised in the Rising Talents Awards, creates work that revives the lost processes of a particular region. “There’s a green colour in glass objects from the Black Forest, and we realised it reflects the geology of the region,” Lenn Heilig says, explaining that the local sandstone is rich in iron, which turns green when heated. The pair created vessels that reference the region’s history as the birthplace of champagne bottles, made by blowing glass into moulds with indented bases. “Since the temperature of glass ovens is much lower nowadays, there are all these speckles because not all of the stone brine melts,” Heilig adds, gesturing to the vessels, which are covered in flecked patterns. “So it gives a contemporary view on how this object would be nowadays.”
Gerlach & Heilig’s glass vessels reference the Black Forest’s history as the birthplace of champagne bottles (image: Gerlach & Heiling).
Despite its emphasis on lightness and ephemerality, Pichard’s installation includes many examples of objects that resemble heirlooms, including Bosc Design’s high-backed chairs that use traditional woodworking techniques to preserve the inky bark of chestnut wood, giving the impression of ancient thrones. This emphasis on heritage also appears in the work of Rising Talent Award winner Gabriel Tarmassi, whose wooden sculptures and cabinets are created using traditional craftsmanship methods. “These are the moments where I feel most in contact with the wood,” Tarmassi explains, describing techniques such as hand-chiseling surfaces and applying natural beeswax finishes. “I think we kind of lose that cultural dimension when we lose our awareness of these ancient practices.” Using local wood that would normally be used as firewood, Tarmassi creates pieces with peaks and valleys that resemble rippling water. “My work is very much inspired by natural dynamics in nature – it’s not about depicting something specific, but rather abstracting the universal language of landscapes,” says Tarmassi, gesturing to a cabinet whose doors resemble sand dunes.
Pichard’s installation celebrates impermanence and adaptability while also commenting on the realities of cramped spaces, disconnection to nature, and work blending into the domestic sphere (image: Anne-Emmanuelle Thion).
Pichard’s installation is full of ambivalence – though it celebrates impermanence and adaptability, it also evokes a modern sense of loneliness. Opening with a bed made out of a plank of wood stacked on top of piles of paper, the space appears to be inhabited by someone whose work life has invaded uncomfortably into the domestic sphere. Ceramic cigarette butts, used cotton buds and orange peels made by JJ von Panure are littered throughout, giving the impression of an inhabitant with little time to take care of themselves. The exhibition seems to approach modern life with a hefty dose of realism, something which is reiterated through its poster, which features an AI-generated teapot that was later turned into a real-world object by ceramicist Blumen. The growing influence of artificial intelligence, the lack of affordable homes that provide enough space or connection to nature, and the teetering imbalance between work and life are limitations Pichard aims to work within, rather than deny. By creating objects that evoke the natural world, answering space constraints with multifunctional pieces, and balancing technology with handcraft, Pichard and Maison&Objet’s up-and-coming studios turn constraint into revival.
Words Helen Gonzalez Brown