BATI FRANSA’DAKI
MELLE ŞEHRINDE
BULUNAN 11.
YÜZYIL KILISESI
ST. HILAIRE
TASARIMA FON
OLUŞTURUYOR.
THE 11TH
CENTURY CHURCH
OF ST. HILAIRE IN
MELLE IN WESTERN
FRANCE IS THE
SETTING.
variety of clients but also generated his own projects
based on his interest in the physical world. In 2006, he
obtained the « carte blanche » from the VIA, Valorization
of Innovation in Furnishing, a French governmental
organization that aims to promote French creation in
design applied to contemporary living. His funding from
the VIA allowed him to research and design on a subject
of his choice for a year. He used this time to develop a
project called Elements, a collection of objects/devices
inspired by the human body and its interactions with
the environment. The common idea of this series was
to purify and improve the general well-being of today’s
domestic environments.
Later, his scientific interests in design would lead him
to create objects such as Andréa, an air purifier that
uses indoor plants to filter air. For that project, Mathieu
Lehanneur gathered research from NASA and assumed
the role of a real scientist, leading design to adapt itself
to environmental and contemporary questions. Andréa
utilized the capability of plants as a natural filter that
absorbs chemical vapors that pollute indoor air. Purity
and serenity seems fundamental to his designs. During
a TED lecture he gave in 2009, Lehanneur presented
another of his design products, DB, basically a white
noise diffuser whose function is to cover uncomfortable
urban noises through the emission of a « white noise »
that negates these noises to the background. These as
well as many of his other designed products display his
innovative and ingenious design approach as well as his
concern for the evolution of the planet and its impact on
the environmental well being of our societies.
Exhibitions at leading institutions such as MoMA NY,
Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris, at SFMOMA in San
Francisco and at MUDAM in Luxembourg, have made him
one of the few French designers with an international
name.
TOUCHING THE SACRED
After a long period of experimental work, Mathieu
Lehanneur has recently turned towards interior design
where he accepts only projects « where there is a real
freedom of speech and creation ». Always eager for new
experiences, Lehanneur is inquisitive enough to try his
hand at the most difficult of subjects, most recently
religion and the sacred.
This was realized through the project of the
rehabilitation of the choir of a church in Melle, France,
where Lehanneur took a new direction, leaving behind
his scientific state of mind to allow space for a more
holistic form of reflection, drawn from the context of
spirituality and religion as achieved through stone and
marble.
The conversion of the choir of the Church of St Hilaire
in Melle, France, in 2010, by Lehanneur represents a
major achievement in the confluence between design
TEMMUZ-AĞUSTOS / JULY-AUGUST 20011 • NATURA 15