The 18th international design festival opened on 27th June 2024 with the Hyères Design Parade at the Villa Noailles. To mark the occasion, Casamance became a sponsor of the event and accepted the invitation from Fabien Cappello, president of the jury and the festival’s guest of honour, to transform the venue’s former squash court.
An important cultural venue and former home of the famous Noailles couple, the villa now plays host to this international design festival, giving the opportunity over a weekend to discover contemporary decorative arts, with Casamance as this year’s patron.
The designer Fabien Cappello, who is based in Guadalajara in Mexico since 2016, uses design to explore production systems between industry and craft. This year, his exhibition at the Villa Noailles reflects this approach, transforming it into a functional and experimental space, inviting the public to interact with the objects on display. Cappello has a preference for local craft workshops for their techniques and everyday materials, such as “hojalta”, tin, which he uses to create a variety of objects. His approach aims to understand and use local resources to create meaningful functional object.
This is how Casamance’s editing expertise came to the forefront as part of the “On se rejoint à la Villa” (Let’s meet at the villa) exhibition. An enormous kaleidoscopic patchwork can be found in the former squash court, an XXL testimony to the “savoir-faire” and expertise of Casamance. Based on Fabien Cappello’s distinctive designs, our made-to-measure contract division has produced this incredible wallpaper. This custom project, printed to precise specifications on Casamance vinyl, reflects the “savoir-faire” and the technical and chromatic expertise of our teams.
The wallpaper in the squash court plays a central role in the exhibition as both a design and functional piece. The project is intended as a “design archive” including the planes of colour used in many of the artist’s projects.
“Each pattern in the wallpapers across the walls of the squash court bounces onto another surface as if it was longing to experience life in another dimension, from a wall rather than from a seat or a flowerpot."
In keeping with the Cappello philosophy, the space is multipurpose: the seating extends the floor pattern. The squash court is transformed into a visual gallery with a feeling of openness, becoming a versatile place ideal for relaxation. Intense colours were key to this project, to give the space a real identity. Not just simple decorations, they are integral elements that define and characterize the space. As for the walls, they contribute to the feeling of grandeur. The seats seem to emerge from the floor covered in the same pattern to create a visual continuity, allowing the whole room to be transformed into a unified space where the seats and floor are perceived as a one single surface.
The exhibition is open until the beginning of September.
@Luc Bertrand
