Deployed flush with the floor, and even on the walls from the 1990s onwards, Pierre Paulin's carpet-seats become one with the space and spread within it.

Reminiscent of oriental garden rugs and Japanese tatami mats, whose uses the designer discovered in 1970 during a trip to Osaka and then India, but also reflecting a dream of a modular flying carpet (evidenced by a drawing from 1966), these hybrid pieces of furniture gave shape to a "floating" living space and a new, horizontal Western lifestyle. Composed of a coated canvas tarpaulin and a wool rug, their raised corners, which form backrests, create a self-contained environment. Developed from 1972 onwards according to a geometric grid based on the principles of origami, they are the essential elements of the Pierre Paulin Program, which remained a project until its realization in 2014, five years after the death of its designer.

After the Villa Lemoine, an iconic modernist box-house built near Bordeaux by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, and then the white Yukigaya House by Yoshio Taniguchi in Tokyo, the pieces imagined between 1969 and 1972 as part of this modular residential program are exhibited in the building full of curves designed by the famous Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer for Château La Coste, in Provence.

"HABITABLE LANDSCAPE"

Allowing everyone to be "the architect of their own interior" by combining different elements according to their desires and needs, and offering
With its multiple configurations, this modular furniture creates a random, undulating, and shifting "habitable landscape." A bespoke living space promoting a new art of living, six models showcase the possible configurations of the modules, while the exhibition features Model 5 from the Paulin Program. The undulating lines of the Niemeyer Pavilion respond to the sensual "free forms" imagined by Paulin to open up the space. Beyond the modular shelving systems, from the Tapis Siège (1968) to the organic modules of the Ensemble Dune (1970), the pieces bear witness to Paulin's eminently modern, non-static vision of space: like a giant origami, the floor folds and articulates itself to allow one to sit upon it…

Other highlights of the Programme include the famous Big C sofa and its matching armchair, and the Moon Table with its irresistible curved lines.

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