Tangible 2026 - Tout autre chose

At its simplest, design could be defined as the meeting of a use and a material. The history of craftsmanship has nurtured this meeting, making tools effective and the use of certain materials essential. Wood and straw for seating, metal for lamps, glass or ceramic for vases, for example.

Industrialisation, which gave rise to the profession of the designer, enabled infinite technical combinations that optimised the potential of the materials used, but also established certain dominant and efficient processes. Ultimately, certain standards became embedded both in production lines and in the collective imagination.

But what if we started again from scratch, exploring materials contrary to their usual properties and uses, shifting what they are confined to? We could then imagine a paper vase or a plasterboard lamp. A felt urn or a mycelium seat. We can experiment and innovate, but also let poetry in. These materials become something entirely different, as here, with works by eight designers, artists and craftspeople who shift the boundaries of their practice as well as those of the materials they use.

Emma Bruschi
Emma Bruschi is a French textile designer trained at the Geneva School of Art and Design (HEAD). From a farming family in Haute-Savoie, she develops in Marseille a practice at the intersection of fashion, crafts and rural heritage. Her work focuses on rye straw, which she grows and harvests on the family farm before transforming it using traditional craft techniques. Inspired by domestic know-how, folklore and the farming world, she creates clothing, jewellery and objects where memory, nature and contemporary creation meet.

Sybille Berger
Sybille Berger graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle in Paris (ENSCI-Les Ateliers). She obtained a Master’s degree in textile design there in 2010, then completed her education in 2015 with a Master’s degree in industrial design. After an initial experience working with Inga Sempé, Sybille joined the Bouroullec studio, where she worked for seven years. Today, Sybille Berger teaches design at the Beaux-Arts de Marseille. Textile and objects intersect at the heart of her approach, in a constant interplay of techniques, transfers of codes and changes of scale, guided by the revalorisation of materials.

Carlès & Demarquet
Founded in Marseille by Romain Carlès and Paul Demarquet, the Carlès & Demarquet workshop has developed since 2020 a practice at the boundary of furniture, sculpture and art craftsmanship. Both trained as cabinetmakers—the former at the Compagnons du Tour de France, the latter at École Boulle—they share a desire to move beyond the traditional codes of their profession and make wood a true field of experimentation. Entirely handmade in their Marseille workshop, their pieces assert a constant dialogue between craftsmanship and contemporary creation, nourished by the Mediterranean imagination.

Côme Di Meglio
A visual artist, Côme Di Meglio develops a practice at the intersection of sculpture, installation, performance and collective experience. A graduate of the École nationale supérieure des Arts décoratifs de Paris in 2014, he lives and works in Marseille, where he explores relationships between living things, organic materials and forms of sharing, as in his mycelium pieces, conceived as spaces for welcoming, contemplation and encounter. His work originates in observing territories and the resources that make them up. Plants, earth, food and light become the materials of works designed to be crossed, inhabited or experienced.

Marion Mailaender
An interior architect and designer, Marion Mailaender has developed for more than twenty years a distinctive practice moving between architecture, design, scenography and object creation. A graduate of École Boulle, she founded her studio in Paris in 2004 and has built a body of work that eludes categories, driven by the same attention to uses, materials and the narratives spaces can produce. Born in Marseille, she now divides her life and work between Paris and the Mediterranean. This dual geography deeply informs an approach that rejects categories, moving naturally from a hotel to a plasterboard lamp, from a restaurant to experimental furniture.

Baptiste Meyniel
Baptiste Meyniel’s work is built on a constant back-and-forth between drawing, gesture and material. A graduate of ENSCI – Les Ateliers in 2017, he develops a practice in which forms gradually emerge through experimentation, allowing materials, tools and know-how to guide the creative process.
Since working at JAD in Sèvres, he has collaborated with craftspeople and leading manufacturers, notably Cirva, where he conducted extensive research into glass between 2019 and 2022. His work now extends to washi paper, wood, metal and natural fibres, always with particular attention to the qualities of the materials themselves and the gestures that shape them.

Sarah Viguer Cebria
A textile, materials and object designer, Sarah Viguer Cebria is based between Marseille and Valencia, Spain. Her work is developed at the intersection of craftsmanship, anthropology, bio-based materials and collaborative practices. Trained at École Duperré, the Beaux-Arts de Paris and then through the Transdisciplinary Design master’s programme between Paris and Barcelona, Sarah Viguer completed her education with a master’s degree in design sciences at Aix-Marseille University. This multidisciplinary approach informs a practice in which creation is in constant dialogue with research, and design becomes a tool for exploring territories, know-how and local resources.