Interview with Ronan Bouroullec on Palissade

What was the starting point for the Palissade collection? 

I like to call Rolf to discuss a lot of subjects and once the subject of doing a very large collection for outdoor came up. Basically, something you can let in your garden that is robust enough that it can stay for many years.

So you always knew you wanted to make the collection in steel? 

At a certain point we thought aluminum would be a better direction, it would be more light, it would be easier to move. But I quickly changed my mind. I prefer something quite heavy because when things are outside, when there is wind, when there is snow, you do not have to be delicate, you just have to stick to the floor and stay there.

Were you thinking of the natural elements when you were designing the collection? 

Not especially. When I do a project, I have a garage in Britany that has a very beautiful point of view and I always try to consider, will this object work in this very difficult landscape, because it’s so beautiful that it can’t really take on an interesting object. I think Palissade works very well there. With Palissade the goal was very clear, it has to work in a city, on a terrace and on the wall near a pub. I thought a black would be very nice for a city and green, of course, for the natural environment and the grey is more of an old memory of white and grey outdoor furniture.

I often see Palissade show up on your Instagram, but have you always been using photography in your work. 

Since the beginning I always took the pictures of the objects I design, or we design, because I like that it is a way to understand something. Immediately, the camera creates a distance between you and the objects you conceive. You are more in the mind of someone that discovers the object and I like that. For me a project finishes when I shoot it.

And then the new platform which I like, the Instagram, it is a way for me to speak about the object we design and to speak about it in life. A lot of people have a problem to translate or to understand an object well and I don’t like to take the life from objects. So I think I like Instagram in this way, it is a way to speak in a very precise way what is the spirit of this object.

And you are also very good at showing the process of a design

That’s another point, the process is quite a different subject. First, because people are less and less cultured about how things are done, so it’s important to understand that the project is not done in a week, that it takes time. And if I’m launching, the Instagram is a way to generate attention.

Do you keep the objects you design around you?

It is new for me because in the beginning I didn’t want to be surrounded by them, but now I started to accept it a bit more. I have a few of them around me and Palissade is one of them. I don’t want to be confronted with my own objects because I am never satisfied.