Fiona Sibley meets the Hidden Art exhibitors at 100% Design 2003
Image: Stretch Light by Francois Lefranc & Christopher Wright. Photo: Stephen Brayne.
Since coming to the decision not to design any more airports, Francois Lefranc and Christopher Wright, two architects-turned-designers, have turned their skills to designing furniture and lighting that combines pleasure with function.
“We are both interested in problem-solving and using modern materials in an interesting way,” says Christopher. Take the Stretch Light, their first joint venture after solo design careers, each spanning about five years.
“We wanted to have a stretched tube of fabric whose frame would be invisible. What we arrived at was two ovals of opal Perspex at the top and the bottom, pulling apart a tube of fabric. It gives a glowing column of light, and also a different glow from the base and the top. It’s a very simple form, using two materials and standard lamp frame technology.”
Francois describes his new Spin Chair as “a slice of a sofa”, a significant departure from the conventionally upright aspect of a rocking chair. “My first sketches were of a small fun item, which then became more generous in appearance, to become a low, deep seat.” Everything about this chair suggests comfort, the curvature of the runners developed to produce a low, gentle rocking motion.
As with many of his previous designs, Francois chose a synthetic material, polyurethane coated polyester, for his first piece of upholstery, while the Stretch Light gets its stretch from Lycra. “I don’t like the mythology about authenticity that people associate with natural materials,” says Francois. “People associate leather with quality but there is just as much craftsmanship in working with new materials, which are more interesting.” Francois worked closely with Velaton Ltd to create the chair, a partnership formed through the Hidden Art Design and Manufacture Project.
A previous example of Francois choosing to do things differently happened when he entered the product and furniture design scene in 1999 with a chair called Indulgence, marking his decision to swap architecture for the marginally less secure workplace of a design studio.
“I came into it thinking that graphic design is much more evolved than product design, much more blunt and abstract as a form. If you do something two dimensionally, the message is made by something you read rather than its shape,” says Francois.
“The design of Indulgence came from abstracting the shape and putting the meaning onto the surface,” he says. Onto this iconic, minimal form of a chair, Francois then wrote his visual concept on the surface. Red and white stripes evoke the idea of leisure, like a raspberry ripple coloured deckchair on a beach.
Two lights, Escapism and Angel, adopt the same minimalist principals, a flat plane - “the most unshapely light I could think of” – giving way to visual decoration. Escapism offers a tongue in cheek take on traditional escape signs; Angel delivers a single halo of pure white light.
Opting for a two dimensional aesthetic for furniture when three could perhaps offer more possibilities might seem slightly perverse, in a dubiously hollow age of culture via the TV-screen. But as Picasso once proved, finding a smart way of twisting the two is visually pioneering.
Apart from sharing a space at designersblock three years ago, this is Francois and Christopher’s first show together.
September 2003