MSz: My experience began while growing up in a family of artists, followed by learning the ropes in engraving and typography at the Estienne School (1971–1974), plunging into the world of work in a carpentry firm, evening classes at the Boulle School, opening my own carpentry company and antique furniture restoration workshop, designing and producing my own line of furniture and finally, in 1978, meeting and working with Kwok Hoï Chan, an eminent 1970s designer who has since passed away. From then on, I became aware of what design is and set out to learn as much as I could through travel and encounters all over the world.

Being a designer probably boils down to analysing historical, technological and contextual aspects of a project. Furniture and objects are the focus of my study. I approach this work as an anthropologist, a sociologist, an engineer, even as an artist despite not being one. I am someone who is always candidly questioning the use of objects and their presence among us. And just as persistently, I spend my time weighing up the solutions proposed in the furniture and objects I design. This has been going on for more than forty years now, without any definitive answers. Furniture is an almost ideal bridge between intellectual thought, art and commercial crafts. It is also omnipresent in daily life: houses around the world are cluttered with furniture. Their owners are to blame. It’s the same everywhere.