Interior architecture and design meet again this year at the end of June in Toulon and Hyères for the Design Parade, organized by the Villa Noailles. Zoom in.

The festival, founded and directed by Jean-Pierre Blanc and chaired by Pascale Mussard, has managed in just under two decades to become a
perfect springboard for the new generation, and to establish itself as the standard-bearer for new contemporary creation. Design Parade Hyères was created in 2006, with the ambition of highlighting emerging talent in the field of design through a competition that brings together the public and professionals. Exhibitions, fashion shows, conferences and workshops are organized around this major design event, focusing on the latest trends.

Design Parade Toulon, inaugurated in 2016, continues in the same vein, moving into the realm of interior architecture. Both events, organized by the Villa Noailles, Robert Mallet-Stevens's masterpiece, offer a weekend-long opportunity to discover a broad spectrum of the decorative arts.

DESIGN PARADE TOULON

In the heart of Toulon's Ancien Évêché, a building steeped in history, this eighth iteration continues to offer increasingly immersive and poetic narratives. It was chaired by Marion Mailaender. The Marseille-based designer, who founded her own interior architecture and design agency, creates objects, scenography and residential, hotel and commercial projects. This year's Grand Prix, presented by Van Cleef & Arpels, was awarded to Willie Morlon. The Placo Studiolo project is a Mediterranean dream palace room, designed not with precious materials, but only plasterboard, polystyrene insulation and building site straps. The graduate of the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles offers two levels of interpretation: "purely decorative, encouraging us to contemplate the meticulousness of the work", and "a critical approach to the relationship between a material and its use, as well as its mode of production".

The Visual Merchandising Prize, awarded by Chanel and 19M, went to designer-scenographer Romain Joly and visual artist Lisa Bravi. The former is a graduate of the École supérieure d'art et design de SaintÉtienne, while the latter is a graduate of La Cambre in Brussels. With the Mistralou project, the creative duo plunge us into the intimacy of a reading room in the heart of a Provencal villa, where the mistral, the powerful wind characteristic of the region, sweeps through and makes the furniture, fashioned from buttons and textiles, dance.

The Prix Mobilier National and the Fondation Carmignac endowment have rewarded Anaïs Fernon for her âtre d'eau. A graduate of the École Boulle and the École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Versailles, Anaïs Fernon invites us to refresh ourselves in a small space near a window, where the sun and the breeze invite us in. His À la fraîcheur de la situation project reinvents the Provençal pearl curtain with two successive materials: a fireproof mosquito net, adorned with mirrored aluminum tassels, and a curtain made of linen cords and terracotta bars, dripping with water. The Audience Award went to Clément Rouvier for On Air. This Camondo School graduate has created a musical paradise. More precisely, a "haven woven of notes inspired by the Rolling Stones at Villa Nellcote in Villefranche-sur-Mer", the mythical place where the band created the double album Exile On Main Street. Here, the studio-sanctuary is transformed by Mediterranean asperities, where instruments, born of raw materials from the coast, wait to be made to resonate. Fossilized guitars, bamboo lithophone and light-catching cymbals, surrounded by brick fragments, reenchant the melodies in a visual score that transcends time, between past and present.

Other finalists include Le Banquet Solaire by the sea, by Brussels-based architects Juliette Simeone and Amélie Dandoy. This fiery décor, separated by a fire-like curtain, explores the interplay between heat, local materials and Mediterranean architectural forms. This pretty table, scorched by the sun's rays, draws on Félix Trombe's solar experiments of the 1970s. Here, sand turns black, cutlery melts and the Mediterranean is transformed into a sea of silver, flames and ashes.
ALL INSTALLATIONS ARE ON EXHIBITION AT THE ANCIEN ÉVÊCHÉ DE TOULON UNTIL AUTUMN 2024.

DESIGN PARADE HYÈRES

This eighteenth opus was chaired by Fabien Cappello, founder of his own design studio, based in Guadalajara, Mexico, and of a household goods brand. In his practice, the French designer uses elements of vernacular culture, materials and techniques often overlooked or little considered. As always, the jury was made up of architects, curators, art directors, editors, design journalists and the winner of last year's Grand Prix.

This year, the top award went to the Décor par le sable project by Sacha Parent and Valentine Tiraboschi. This creative duo "blends the skills of staff, porcelain and foundry with a process of generating form by flowing sand". The pieces presented are sand ornaments transposed into objects made from noble materials, such as candleholders, dishes, mirrors and capitals. The aim of this collection is to put nature back at the heart of the production of the artefacts that surround us.

The Prix Tectona, a garden furniture brand and partner of the event for the past two years, was awarded to French-Swiss Gabriel Hafner, an ECAL graduate. His outdoor table is designed with "a sturdy wooden frame and a woven wood and textile tablecloth reminiscent of the beach mats of our childhood". The candidates were asked to create a 1/5-scale outdoor prototype on the theme of "a summer meal", with the technical constraint of using metal or a natural, rot-resistant material.

The Public Prize was awarded to Juliette Rougier for her Alto project. This young graduate of the École des Beaux-Arts de Marseille is interested in object design, at the crossroads of industry, art and craft. Here, she uses cane from Provence, a herbaceous plant used to create reeds for wind instruments. Her approach is to recover all the burnt and discarded cane, which she then reintegrates into a new creative process that reinvents marquetry.
ALL PROJECTS ARE ON EXHIBITION AT VILLA NOAILLES UNTIL SEPTEMBER 1, 2024.

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