Pierre Charpin’s benches at the MUDAC and the Musée de l’Elysée
The French designer’s winning designs for the Plateforme 10 competition
On October 15, 2020, the prestigious jury of the Platforme 10 competition for the creation of benches for the mudac and the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne chose to reward the work of Pierre Charpin.
. The designers were asked to create a bench without a backrest, with few materials, whose manufacture does not require technical tools, which can be moved easily and using local and natural materials with the notion of sustainability as a guideline.
As usual, Charpin's creation is radical with pure and clear lines. For this bench, he worked with solid oak, sublimating the raw material with large sections of wood.
Formerly a reception hall for Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) locomotives, Charpin was inspired by the essence of Platform 10's premises by reappropriating the visual language of the railroad. The bench is indeed reminiscent of the shape of railroads, with each element fitting together perfectly.
“I wanted to make an object that has a presence, but which knows how to be, at the same time, discreet”
Charpin explique « Je voulais faire un objet qui ait une présence mais qui sait se faire, en même temps, discret ». Ce pari est réussi : le banc s’intègre complètement dans l’architecture, il marque par sa présence tout en s’effaçant au profit des œuvres exposées.
Le banc sera installé à partir de novembre 2021 au MUDAC, seul musée romand consacré exclusivement au design et aux arts appliqués contemporains, et au musée de l’Elysée, propriétaire de collections uniques de plus d'un million de phototypes dont plusieurs fonds photographiques complets tels ceux de Sabine Weiss, Jan Groover, René Burri ou Charlie Chaplin.
