Enter the newest addition to the TERMINO universe: TERMINO Dialogues. Our new series of conversations with interesting minds, from all walks of art, design and otherwise, discussing all matters of practice, life and creating.
To begin this exciting series, we spoke with a pair of interesting designers living and working in Paris: Marlon Bagnou Beido, cofounder of @warm.weekend, and Mathias Vincent-Palazzi, cofounder of @niveauzeroatelier. Thanks to their non-personally named practices, the pair have been able to flexibly work together on a diversity of interesting residencies and projects. One such project manifested in a working aluminium boat, commissioned by @rimowa; and it's through this project that we learned about these guys and knew we had to talk to them. Hope you enjoy :-)
I first wondered how the pair met.
MARLON: We started working together for a residency like three years ago. We were merging all our approaches and interests from the first time we met.
I was then curious how they themselves would describe their practices.
MATHIAS: Maybe non-specialised would be would be the way to understand it. It relates very much to the position of practitioner. Or 'designer', or whatever you want to call it. I feel it's interesting to be able to look at situations, to put things in relation to a very conceptual approach and be at the same time capable of tackling spatial and functional problematics through a very hands-on approach.
We have this tendency when we work together to find specific places where we can go to and work with in a very in-situ way. It's something that is quite central in the way we approach our projects. Like, how can we just leave our place and find new inspiration and new things that can trigger a practice related to a specific site.
I then asked to hear about the duo's collaboration with Rimowa.
MATHIAS: They wanted us to do an object in aluminimum with this Rimowa sheet. We could do a chair, we could do a table, but we have a friend that has access to a lake in Eastern Berlin, and so we could just make a boat and we could ride it there. Would be much more fun.
MARLON: For the boat I think that our main inspiration was like an aluminimum boat that you will more likely to find in Brittany. And how you can reinterpret archetypes that exists in some specific place.
I was curious if Marlon and Mathias had developed any personal design philosophies or personal principles for their practices.
MARLON: We try to not have sort of a 'school of practice' and are mostly driven by the context and how we can integrate something. Because of course, by studying design, you come across some references that lots of people have, and if you can separate yourself from those clouds of reference, you get into some stuff that's sort of getting a bit more personal. And I think that fascination can really happen on daily objects rather than on practitioners.
We try not to be too fascinated by the style of something but rather try to understand what was the approach behind a specific project and why it leads to these certain shapes.
MATHIAS: We don't have some specific fascination for one shape or one style or one color or one material. And we don't use that much ornament, even though it could be the case someday, at the moment, it's not the case. And we're not doing shape just for the sake of shape. Or we're trying not to. We have this kind of approach of trying to limit an object to what is needed.
Thanks to Marlon and Mathias. You can find their links below.
Niveau Zero Atelier (co-founded by Mathias).
Warm Weekend (co-founded by Marlon).
