studio muller van severen exhibits as designer of year at maison&objet 2023

Maison&Objet honor Muller Van Severen with 2023 award

Maison&Objet’s 2023 ‘Designer(s) of the Year’ award recognizes Ghent-based design duo, Muller Van Severen for their body of playful, avant garde works. The designers are no strangers to the event – they have appeared in past editions through collaborations with other companies. With this honor, the group has created a multi-room, immersive exhibit that invites visitors to intimately experience their twelve years of practice on the international design scene.

all images courtesy of Maison&Objet unless stated otherwise

Maison&Objet (SAFI Organization, a subsidiary of Ateliers d’Art de France and RX France) has brought together international voices and talents both on and offline since 1995. Through its events and online community, Maison&Objet provides a hub for designers, buyers, and the greater community to connect and showcase their works. ‘Designer(s) of the year’, among their other awards, stand out for recognizing emerging and influential players in the industry.

2023’s honoree Muller Van Severen has created a three-entrance exhibition within the tradeshow that brings viewers into the designers’ universe. Their works have a playful, yet stark, aesthetic that speak to the studio’s signature musings and speculations on the world. They have also collaborated with major brands – including vases for Bitossi, a high end rug for textile developer Kvadrat, and a standing lamp for Valerie Objects –  that are being exhibited alongside in-house works at Maison&Objet 2023. 

‘The exhibition acts as a global and immersive installation where our pieces exist as so many small autonomous architectural entities. It is a mirror of our interior but also our mind,’ says Hannes Van Severen, partner to Fien Muller of Muller Van Severen, on their designer(s) of the year show.

Ghent-based design duo plays with time & tension

In this show, the designers seek to step outside of the traditional format of a retrospective. Even though pieces date as far back as 2011, when Muller Van Severen was born, the aim of the space is to create one world in which objects exist outside of their attachment to time. In doing so, the creative pair has created an intimate exhibition with a sense of timelessness that has become a marker of their collections. 

This time bending sensibility shouldn’t come as a surprise considering the creative pair’s philosophical nature. Speculative, predictive thinking can be seen as early as 2012 when Muller Van Severen released their collection ‘Future Primitives.’ They were already thinking about a shrinking home and a user’s desire to privilege function over decoration. By suspending simple leather panels over a geometry of untreated tubular steel, the designers rediscovers interior functionality. 

In its continued quest for utility, visual minimalism has come to mark the winning duo’s output. Nevertheless, they don’t abide by the style’s seemingly inherent starkness – they defy it by playing with color and form. This ludic nature is seen in Muller Van Severen’s ‘Color Cabinet’ series with HAY. Balancing these opposites, the collections show how Fien and Hannes find delight in design’s tensions.

Drawing on oppositions, Muller Van Severen seeks to play with perception through material manipulations. In its ‘Wire’ series, metal grids form furniture that is present through its very absence. Furthermore, ‘ALLTUBES’ reimagines aluminum’s industrial nature by creating form with clever, recursive bends.

All of this play culminates in the studio’s central commitment to impart joy upon those who come across their objects. The visitors of Maison&Objet 2023 will be able to move through the intimate exhibition that frames the Belgian couple’s body of work, experiencing first-hand what earned Muller Van Severen the ‘Designer(s) of the Year’ award. 

‘We are creators but above all “manufacturers”. Our need to make, grasp, act and transform materials gives us the most pleasure. It’s a matter of sensation: interacting with matter awakens our senses and gives us ultimate joy. It is this pleasure of making that we wish to convey to the visitors,’  Muller Van Severen says of its practice.

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project info:

platform: Maison&Objet | @maisonetobjet

name: Designer(s) of the Year 2023

edition: Paris Design Week 2023

designer(s) of the year winner: Muller Van Severen