Tangible 2026 - Chiche ! Le design au Sud

Like a challenge being thrown down, the exhibition title encourages us to make, try and dare to do things differently. Through the work of ten designers based in south-eastern France and invited by Marseille Design Méditerranée, this question of challenge takes shape here in different forms. In a world crossed by political, economic, ecological and social crises, design is no longer merely a matter of objects or aesthetics. It becomes a way of acting, responding and committing.

Several projects in the exhibition illustrate how design contributes to and plays a part in better resource management, drawing in particular on the available and easily accessible stock of materials to transform rather than produce, tools to reinvent rather than discard, and skills to revive rather than forget. Design thus invites us to make do and do things differently, instead of making more.

In Marseille and along the entire Mediterranean coast, city and nature meet, intertwine and often collide. But today, we face an everyday and inevitable challenge: finally considering and respecting what we once wished and believed we could control. For the designers presented in this exhibition, the task is to imagine interstices in which human and non-human species, and life more broadly, can move, meet and live in harmony and symbiosis.

Design has precisely the power to create connections, open spaces for dialogue and bring care where it may be lacking. As some of the exhibition’s pieces demonstrate, it then becomes a tool for caring and doing things together, within contexts that are as varied as they are unstable.

Design also engages with sensations and emotions; it is rooted in what we feel in order to suspend the turmoil of everyday life, awaken the senses and tell, with greater intensity and accuracy, the story of our relationship with the world. In a Mediterranean context shaped by light, matter and sharing, these experiences take on a particularly distinctive, sometimes spiritual dimension here.

Design does not promise ready-made solutions. It proposes trying, shifting perspectives and meeting the challenges of our time in its own way. So, dare we?

Cécile Coudreau, co-curator of the exhibition

An exhibition conceived by Cécile Coudreau and Fabrice Pincin.
With Astérolide Design, Aurel Design Urbain, Mélissa Baranger, Antoine Boudin, Louis Lefebvre, Lingua Franca Studio, Stéphane Lamalle x Christophe Menassier x Stéphan Muntaner, Géraud Pellottiero and Céline Thibault.
And the winners of the René Ragueb Prize, Célia Charles and Asia Cresto.
With BAM Studio for the graphic design.