Going Beyond the "Industrial Utopias" of a Revolutionary Designer (EXCLUSIVE)
What are today considered Pierre Paulin’s most revered works were originally radical concepts never able to be mass-produced in his lifetime. As his son Benjamin Paulin describes them, they were "industrial utopias," deemed too costly, too complex, or too experimental for production.
The French furniture designer’s wavy-shaped modular Dune sofa or his snaking low-hung Déclive recliner, for instance, remained unsellable until Paulin, Paulin, Paulin stepped in.
Created in 2008, a year prior to Pierre Paulin’s passing, the family company has been carefully following Pierre’s original plans, creating limited-edition runs of his genius furniture that never saw the light of day. The company calls these "late first editions."
Now, almost two decades after the company launched, with Paulin’s designs having a celebrity-backed renaissance and retrospective exhibitions popping up with increased regularity, the company is starting a new chapter in the preservation of the designer’s legacy.
Paulin, Paulin, Paulin is releasing its first re-editions using designs that originally made it to production.
“We now feel confident enough to open up a little more, and to allow some of these pieces to live outside of our own direct editions,” says Benjamin Paulin who founded the company alongside his wife, Alice Lemoine, and Pierre’s wife and business partner, Maïa Wodzislawska-Paulin. “For us, it’s about opening the doors a little further and meeting people where they are.”
A trio of Pierre Paulin designs is releasing in this initial drop. There’s the Tongue Chair (1967), a floor-level wave-shaped seat that’s in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. “It’s one of my father’s most important works, the culmination of his research into tubular structures, molded foam, and stretch fabrics,” says Benjamin.
The Blub Blub Sofa (1972), where individual seat modules can be wrapped in different colors and textiles, will be released alongside the tongue chair on September 4. They join the Groovy armchair (1973), already available on Paulin, Paulin, Paulin’s website, one of Pierre Paulin's many sculptural tubular structures covered in soft stretch fabric.
Unlike the rest of Paulin, Paulin, Paulin’s items, this trio of re-editions won’t arrive in highly limited quantities. They were originally designed to be mass-produced, and mass-produced they shall be.
“Even though they are still handcrafted and finished in our workshops, they can be produced in larger numbers than our late first editions,” says Benjamin. “They will never be ‘IKEA-priced,’ but they can open the door for new collectors.”
Inspiring new collectors to dive into the world of Pierre Paulin is something Paulin, Paulin, Paulin has been highly successful at.
The Dune Sofa has proven especially popular, a modular low-hung seating system that forms bulging peaks reminiscent of mountainous landscapes. The undulating sofa has gained newfound fame online, its status propelled by sightings in the homes of Justin Bieber, Frank Ocean, and Peggy Gou.
“In recent years, we’ve been fortunate to see his designs embraced by a younger generation, musicians, artists, and cultural figures who connect with his work,” says Benjamin Paulin. “I think there’s an eternal youthfulness in his way of thinking. The youth of today meets the youthful spirit in which these pieces were created.”
The brightly colored, organic shapes of Pierre’s furniture do have an undeniably whimsical, youthful appeal. However, that is only one half of what makes his pioneering work so significant, there’s also a deep-rooted practicality within all his futuristic and unconventional forms.
“My father never liked to talk about ‘creation.’ He preferred the word 'discovery,’” says Benjamin. “For him, design was about solving a problem, improving something that already existed by using new techniques. He didn’t see himself as a creator, but as a discoverer.”
That problem-solving can be most clearly seen in Paulin’s modular sofas, able to be moved and manipulated to one's liking and environment, as well as his distinctly curvaceous chairs that were always ergonomic in form.
Look beneath the hood of his designs, and there’s more innovation to be found. Paulin often used tubular metal frames with molded foam and stretchy textiles to create his furniture, making them lightweight yet strong and allowing him to create such meandering shapes.
“His vision of design was rooted in innovation and in a genuine desire to be of service, to make people’s lives better,” says Benjamin. “Aesthetics, in a way, were almost accidental, the natural outcome of finding the best solution to a functional problem. Of course, that 'accident' depends on the sensibility of the designer, and my father had a deeply artistic sensibility. That’s why his solutions were often infused with poetry.”
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