The french interior designer Joseph Dirand was elected once one of the Creator of the Year of the Salon Maison & Objet. Here are the reasons to love him.
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Since Joseph Dirand moved his agency to the top floor of a building, near the Place Saint-Georges, he hovers. Is it because it dominates the roofs of Paris or because it no longer touches land because of its shipyards in chaos? In any case, the interior designer has taken the height. And importance. With his beard and his look of bobo, Joseph embodies this new generation of decorators, both cool and intelligent, as much fond of contemporary art as fashion. His radical writing, with its unmistakably black and white graphics, seduced Paris as much as New York, London or Tel Aviv.
Joseph Dirand: It’s a go-getter
His diploma from the Paris-Belleville School of Architecture in his pocket, Joseph Dirand went to offer his services to India Mahdavi, then arm of the interior designer Christian Liaigre. She advises him rather to launch alone. What he does, then he is only 23 years old. He followed the little projects, the friends’ apartments, the trendy boutiques, until the day he came across a large American producer, who first entrusted him with his apartment in Paris, then his house in Ramatuelle, and finally Loft in New York. Here he is, at least abroad. As often, France will take more time to trust this young talent. He owes the sharpness of his eye to his father, Jacques Dirand, photographer of archi and deco, disappeared in 2009. Today, Joseph says to observe architecture “through a viewfinder”. He conceives his spaces initially mentally, by association of images. His brother Adrien then photographed all his new projects. A nice way to pay tribute to their father, who would have dreamed of being an architect. “Jo”, as his relatives call him, likes nothing less than working with family and teaming up.
Joseph Dirand is above all an architect
Which gives its spaces a somewhat austere, but extremely percussive appearance. The spirit of its place is defined by the volumes, the lines, the chosen materials. There is dramaturgy in its interiors, never to be seen. “My job is not very far from the cinema, each of my workshops is a new scenario,” Joseph said. Passionate about contemporary art and photography, he only owns furniture ‘Architect: a table and chairs of Prouvé, armchairs of Pierre Jeanneret, the stool in the form of wooden box of Le Corbusier. So many simple and timeless pieces.
Joseph Dirand, a visionary fed by the past
He knows the history of architecture and styles so well that he knows how to draw inspiration from it and rewrite it in his own way. With a certain sense of purity and minimal. “The past is no longer frightening,” he says, “but it is a weight that I have freed myself from now on, I search through the epochs without limit, and I love it.” His preference goes to the classical architecture of the eighteenth century and the 1930s and 1940s. “But each of my projects meets a context by exceeding it,” he explains. For his hotel in Mexico City, he did not want to create a hacienda, but a modern building with, inside, very fifties furniture. For the restaurant of the Palais de Tokyo, he drew his inspiration from the Viennese architect Adolf Loos, who also adheres to vertical lines and high heights. The black, always, and the dark green will come to give a luxurious and beautifully vintage cachet to the place. A mirrored façade should reflect the room, trompe-l’oeil way, and give it depth. And surely a good deal of magic. With Dirand, “science fiction” often appears at the turn of an angle or a corridor. To better blur tracks and eras.
Joseph Dirand loves luxury without fuss
Everything is tailored to your needs. From cremones to door handles to switches, nothing is left to chance. Ebenists, gilders, painters, ironworkers, marble-makers or embroiderers are put to contribution, to give the best. Like the great nose and the great chiefs, the architect likes to work only the finest raw materials. Snob, Dirand? Rather obsessed with perfection and the “absolute truth of things”. This need for excellence is accompanied by a constant search for formal simplicity. “Less is more”. The formula of the architect remains timeless; And Dirand, one of his best current heirs.
Source: Coté Maison.