E. Xylo

Inspired by the myriad possibilities offered up by the tree trunks left from the safety felling carried out over the 2012-2013 winter in the Historical Park, Patrick Jouin has designed some most unusual seats at Chaumont sur Loire, gracing the pathways criss-crossing the Domaine here and there and providing uniquely charming rest places.

Everything began back in 1977 for this unquestionably spiritual son of the Centre Pompidou. Patrick Jouin was 10 at the time and his parents would embark on a formative journey by taking him to visit this museum that was attracting all sorts of criticism – both good and bad. The sense and strength of this institution left such a lasting impression on Jouin that he decided to enrol in the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle (ENSCI). In 1999, the year in which the Centre Pompidou reopened and presented the star exhibition “Les bons génies de la vie domestique” (the good spirits of home life), Jouin founded his own agency.

For Patrick Jouin, “the beauty of design lies in the immense chain that links us, from the user to the manufacturer, from the past to the future”. Through ties that are both cultural and managerial, Jouin seeks to combine experience and know-how with his teams, his industrial partners and extensive clientele – a source of collaboration: “Design is my life. This research makes me feel fulfilled. With others, designers, architects, lighting specialists, manufacturers, craftspeople, sponsors ... the finished product is a witness of these moments as much as it suffices in itself”.

Designed in close partnership with the designer and his team and those at the Centre Pompidou, Jouin’s exhibition “La substance du design” (the substance of design, 2010) shines the spotlight on the method behind a work by presenting some twenty projects through material and visual platforms that symbolise the production of the Agency. Alain Seban, President of the Centre Pompidou, highlights: “It’s definitely Patrick Jouin’s cerebral convolutions that we want to be able to follow through these utterly diverse creations and which, we have the sense, have in common the rigour, determination, high standards and taste for perfection that become so quickly apparent in his extraordinarily gentle, precise and calm manner of speaking.”

Patrick Jouin’s landmark dates

Born on 5^th June 1967 in Nantes – Science A levels – 1986 Graduated from the ENSCI - les Ateliers – July 1992 Designer at the Compagnie des Wagons-lits – September-October 1992 Designer at “tim thom”, THOMSON multimedia under the artistic guidance of Philippe Starck, then designer at Starck’s agency – from November 1993 to May 1999 Creation of the Patrick Jouin ID Agency – 1999 Alain Ducasse’s Restaurant at the Plaza Athénée, Paris – January 2005 “Maison & Objet” Innovation Prize for NightCove de Zyken – 2007 “La Substance du Design” Exhibition at the Centre Pompidou – 2010 Prix Compasso d’Oro – 2011

Patrick Jouin joined forces with Sanjit Manku in 2006 in the Jouin Manku agency. A quite unique pair – multicultural and ambitious, halfway between architecture and design – Patrick Jouin and Sanjit Manku invent a new profession at the crossroads between industrial production and the longstanding tradition of craftsmanship.

By merging their experiences, conceptual and experimental approaches, they have seized the opportunity of forging a dynamic partnership that does away with the boundaries between objects, the interior and structure.

One of the agency’s fundamental values is to reinvent oneself afresh with each new project by working on a global concept from the ceiling to the teaspoon or from the staircase to the door handle. Each project always has its own bespoke furniture creations by Jouin, published by Cassina, Murano Due, Ligne Roset, Cinna, Fermob, Kartell or Alessi. Atmosphere, sensation, humour, poetry, sensitivity, discovery and unexpected encounters ... each project is a combination of creativity and risk-taking.

From 2007, their agency designed the restaurants “Le Jules Verne” and “58 Tour Eiffel” at the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the “Chlösterli-Spoon” of snow at Gstaad, the “Dorchester” in London, the “Gilt” in New York Palace Hotel and the “Mix” at Las Vegas, for which the agency won the Travel + Leisure Design Award for “Best Restaurant” in 2006. At this point, projects began to branch out into hotels, like in Saint-Tropez for the Benkiraï Hotel or Paris with the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, into luxury jewellery on place Vendôme in Paris or the Prince Building in Hong Kong for the shops Van Cleef & Arpels, or into a 3,500 m² private residence in Kuala Lumpur.

Taste and attention to technique and innovation are what characterise the agency’s production. Sanjit Manku and Patrick Jouin complement each other from their respective creative worlds that each listens to what the other has to say – with the focus less on sharing out the work than on “working together” thanks to the strong conflicting ties that bind them together. Patrick Jouin taps into the movement of the contemporary world to find formalisation matter where Sanjit Manku is not in the same frame of mind – heeding his own voice to carve out a secret pathway instead.

The agency also works with the most prestigious museums across France and worldwide, such as the Musée du Quai Branly for which in 2007 it created the Photoquai displays, those for the Set in Style exhibition for Van Cleef & Arpels at the Copper Hewitt Museum in New York or to present the agency’s work at the Instituto Tomie Ahtake in Sao Paolo for the year of France in Brazil in 2009, at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2010 and at the MAD in New York in 2011.