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Patrick Jouin: elusive beauty


Patrick Jouin

Patrick Jouin (b. 06/05/1967) is a famous Parisian designer, and winner of many international awards. He started with Philippe Starck, designed restaurants for Alain Ducasse (including ADPL and le Bar at the Plaza Athénée Hotel in Paris), and designed parking lots for Velib Parisian city bicycles. Today he is rebuilding the Montparnasse train station and designing folding chairs from a minimal amount of material.


His furniture and lamps were published by such famous companies as Ligne Roset, Cassina, Alessi, Puiforcat, Kartell, etc. His Solid collection is in the New York Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). In 2006, exactly ten years ago, Patrick Jouin founded the Jouin Manku studio together with the architect Sanji Manku.



Patrick Jouin

The studio team employs more than twenty professionals, and each project is an event. João and Mankiu have a distinct style. Open to new materials and modern technologies, they offer their own version of French purism. Their dialogue with old architecture always looks organic. They have a great sense of retrofuture, their silhouette is time-tested, but supported by high technologies of the 21st century.


Patrick Jouin

Patrick Jouin

Patrick Jouin and Sanjit Manku created a unique hotel in the Abbaye de Fontevraud buildings. On the border of the French provinces of Anjou, Touraine and Poitou, the town of Fontevraud is located - a point of attraction for travelers exploring the treasures of the Loire, where there is the Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Lazare with its thousand-year history.



Patrick Jouin

Patrick Jouin and his partner Sanjit Manku spoke about how to combine the monastic spirit with current interior fashion: “Guests should have a feeling of contact with a rich history. As a result, 54 rooms with high ceilings appeared in the two wings of the monastery building and in the Libyan Pavilion, some of them on two levels, in each of which special attention was paid to lighting and acoustics. An ideal place for solitude, meditation and quiet contemplation.” 


Patrick Jouin

There is a lot of technological light, hidden and revealed. Tall floor lamps with copper lampshades, wall lamps-cones, asymmetrical designs - all this is the fruit of collaboration between three groups of professionals: Joao and Mankiu drew and designed, engineers from L'Observatoire International carried out the calculations, and the Brossier Saderne factory carried out the metal work.


One of the pioneers of rapid prototyping using 3D printing and the author of notable objects in the spirit of modern bionics, he, like many today, balances on the fine line of retro and futurism. He is inclined to aestheticize the subject, to express, first of all, its sensual essence.



Patrick Jouin was one of those invited by the Italian brand Kartell to take part in the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the iconic Bourgie table lamp, which Ferruccio Laviani first created for the brand in 2004. Patrick Jouin painted the luminous inscription “The future is a present from the past” on a matte black lamp, which, perhaps, perfectly characterizes the thing.


Patrick Jouin

Patrick Jouin was born in Nantes in 1967. As a teenager, he managed to go through many career options, but eventually ended up at the Paris ENSCI (Ecole Nationale Supérieure de l'Industrial Design). “80s boy, I'm bathed in the musical bath of punk and the beginning of new wave. I am a Joy Division fan and still listen to it several times a day. I need this guitar that sounds so weird, it inspires me and I never get tired of it.” Immediately after graduation, Juan received an offer of cooperation from Philippe Starck himself and spent five years under his wing. He opened his office in 1998. In 2010, Juan had a personal exhibition at the Pompidou Center.



“I only draw in red Sennelier notebooks. I always have one in reserve. This is a very special paper that I feel comfortable sketching on. I already have fifty filled notebooks. However, you know, design is always careful about drawing. The drawing doesn’t have to be too good, design is first and foremost a project.”



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