Alistair Taylor-Young

Hardcover | 24.77 x 2.54 x 31.43 cm | 216 pp

Abrams | 2021 | 9781419752827

This lavish volume is a photo-essay of exquisitely composed tableaux featuring Patrick Norguet's furniture and product designs. Sometimes paired with the human body, sometimes resembling the human body, and others standing in contrast to it.

Norguet's sense of colour, formal reserve, elegant purity, and steadfast quest for comfort, is the direct legacy of the canons of Nordic design, challenged by a fair dose of humour that embodies the object.

Norguet's career took a lasting turn in 2000 when Giulio Cappellini noticed his famous Rainbow Chair, which is now featured in the collection of the MOMA in New York. Since then, he has been drawing for major designers such as Capellini, Poltrona Frau, Cassina, Tacchini, Hermès, Tolix, Artifort, Pedrali, and Ethimo.

“Whom for? What for? How?” By answering these essential questions, Norguet assumes the defining role of the industrial designer, nourished by a practice he experiences as an exploration of different forms of company cultures. “Without going as far as to imply that my work is political, my ultimate goal remains the creation of a product that functions. A fair, honest product in line with the sociology of its era.” 

Norguet primarily sees design as a collective and innovative approach in which his assembled creations come alive. Through this beautifully produced book he shares the birth of 60 of his creations as a poetic and dreamlike storyboard which, chapter after chapter, questions the relationship between the table of laws and the semantics of the object world.