With the current situation going all over the world, how are you doing? Has the pandemic impacted your work? What do you do to stay productive?

From my experience, I live in the south of France, in a natural landscape, 20km far away from Nice, and 700km from my team in Paris. During quarantine periods and current situation, professionally speaking, for me nothing’s changed since I’ve been teleworking for 10 years now with collaborators, and over 5 years with remote team communication apps. So, we are working as usual, maybe a little bit busier with one-on-one communication with my team to support my industrial partners for e-launches and strategies for new perspectives.

The team is working from home and it’s been an interesting experience for them. We have to learn to differentiate work, family, and leisure time. This unusual moment certainly affecting our individual consciousness and life priorities. We are working to focus on our quest for holistic approach and desirable essentials. Design and architecture will support this transformation.

I am most creative when sharing a spontaneous discussion with interesting, intelligent, and discerning people. I immediately imagine situations and things like a movie in my mind. In this way, working is fun game. I have to say, I miss this kind of interaction with other people. Sharing is the essence of life.

As a designer, what’s your typical workday like?

I have to admit, I don’t have a typical day. l like to start with sports early morning when it’s sunny. Riding a bike, skiing in the mountain, swimming, or paddle boarding in the sea. I’m lucky to live in an area where mountain plunges into the sea. A day that starts with these is a good and creative day with a clear mind and positive energy. And then, I will stay outside and sketch with a notebook, a pencil, and my touchpad, noting some inspirations and sharing them with my team.

That’s the best way to let my mind floating in empathy with the project I dream about. I like to work on a lot of projects in different fields almost simultaneously and share them with my team through call or video conference.

What inspired you to become a designer?

In my childhood, I experimented and built by myself things and objects that slide, glide, or fly. I wanted to become an inventor. I started studying aircraft engineering when I discovered that design provides larger landscape to invent new scenarios and to be more creative. I started designing submarine, fragrance bottles, or architecture like ecosystems. I’ve always been inspired to work on innovation, but not just as technical point of view, but to make our life experience better in a smart and sensitive way. When I started to think that I have to spend more time for me and my family than flying over the world, I moved to Saint-Paul-de-Vence and collaborated to design furniture with my Italian neighbours.

We all get a little inspiration from somewhere. What or who really inspires you in your design?

Everything is inspiring: everyday life, people, conversations, situations, trips, science, technology, cultures, art — like everyone, I am influenced by a large number of inputs that goes through a decantation process in my sub conscience. I am really sensitive to what we feel in real holistic and relevant approaches: where individual experience, social practices, feelings, and symbols are as much important as the function or an intelligent production process.

Would you say you have a design signature? If so, what would it be?

My work is to develop a progressive and conceptual approach that merges the stakes of individual fulfilment, collective harmony in symbiosis with the world, and economically profitable. That’s what I propose in architecture or mass industry. I prefer smart contextual approach with a vision than any stylistic recipe.

In the field of furniture, my concern is to provide competence, elegance, and timelessness for our modern way of living. A holistic approach, that includes life scenario, sustainable engineering, best synthesis of industrial reduction and/or quality handmade production.

A journalist told me that my work is “organic minimalism”. I’m not sure I really understand that, but I would rather say: a quest of essential with sensuality and emotion.

What are the must-have qualities you always implement in your products?

It’s about the quintessence of experience, where competence is expected, quality is a must, and emotion goes first.

According to you, what are the most important factors to consider when designing a product? And what do you find most challenging about designing one?

I’m excited to develop good things that we could love for long time. It’s about competence, quality, elegance, and finally about complicity with us and the world. Ecology is not a punishment, it’s a nice and demanding perspective that merges smartness and sensitivity, desire and responsibility. That’s what I call “elegance”. The real challenge is to share this global and holistic approach with industrial partners that are often driven by marketing.

Is there something you will never ever do when it comes to design? Something you always avoid?

Arrogance, vanity, noise — I hope.

Could you walk us through your design process? Where do you begin and what’s the final touch?

From architecture to flying hotel, from car to living areas, I always imagine things like a movie. My mind dreams about situations, scenarios, mood, and shared emotions more than shapes or objects.

When I design a sofa, I imagine a universe, a landscape, organic as well as cultural, where the sofa becomes part of the story of the universe and the life experience. Then I bring it to reality through some sketches, and share them with my team who will develop the 3D and provide elegant solutions to deliver consistent architecture, comfort, and proportions. We share these with our industrial partners that will support the project with their understanding, know-how, and expertise. Sharing ideas, making prototypes, then refinement is the natural process to accomplish good things.

You have collaborated with brands from all over the world, how do you deal with the challenge of working with other cultures?

I love to discover new universes, new contexts. It’s always interesting to open our minds to new fields of consciousness or different angles of perception. I learned a lot by working or sharing with artists, philosophers, scientists, or engineers. I learned a lot by sharing with Japanese, Americans, Indians, Germans, or Italians. I’m like a sponge. I feel, I infuse, I synthesize. I’m keen to exchange with animists as well as transhumanists. I would say, working is an excuse to meet different cultures. True globalisation is about standardisation of cultures where materiality is more about demonstration than a natural extension of our self-sensitivity.

Could you tell us your experience collaborating with Poliform? How long have you worked with them and how do you incorporate their design philosophy and your own in the products?

I started designing for Poliform in 2007, I guess. I met Alberto Spinelli. In that time, I didn’t want to enlarge the number of partners in the furniture field. We exchanged informally two or three times in 2 years. I discovered a natural kind, cultivated, discreet gentleman. I decided to go ahead for a trial. I appreciate a team with nice spirit and a real will for refined simplicity, quality, and timelessness. A natural context for me. We understood each other in a simple complicity and a natural mutual respect. That is a good ground for synergy.

We started with designs quite classic like Metropolitan sofa, but also improved some experimental R&D developments with piece like Wallace. At that time, Poliform started to ensemble a smart R&D team to develop the furniture, whereas their office for systems and kitchen was already powerful. Step by step, we improved and fine-tuned the products and collections in a natural, open, and fruitful dialogue.
We discuss, explore, experiment with complicity, passion, and calmness. We meet every month at the factory, but the teams have weekly exchanges. No ego between us, just the pleasure of sharing our mutual passion for good things.
The will to create that we share always refined, and we experience that through a blend and composition of pure, competent, and sophisticated products. An essential chic approach, that proposes elegant long-lasting pieces. Poliform is a refined, elegant, and timeless company.

Could you tell us about your Poliform 2021 collection? What do you want to achieve with the new designs? What story do you want to tell?

In few words: holistic, essential with a flavour, out of the trend. Beyond style, my aim is to satisfy and to sublimate our ways of living and our emotional feelings. I like to create personal landscapes, being truly comfortable and silently expressive, being the accomplice of our life, that we love for a long time.

Le Club
The modern essence of club and selfish armchair. My ambition was to create the new armchair, an icon that embodies the quest of comfort, reduction, and emotion. Le Club merge elegant technical solutions and craftsmen skills to provide suspended soft and durable comfort. Good as a solo product in strong finishes, as well as an elegant and sociable armchair to combine in multiple places such as in living areas or public lounges. Nothing to remove or to add, Le Club is an expression of better with less. Le Club introduces a progressive direction in Poliform universe.

Saint Germain
Enveloping, sensual, warmly charismatic, Saint Germain offers a new understanding of home landscape. Its voluptuous volumes and organic compositions, propose a free, natural and very comfortable way to enjoy our living room. Its easy and distinguished allure fits perfectly in this kind of very personal universes where we can feel and live a refined blend of different cultures and requirements, this kind of place where radical modern pieces live in harmony with antics, tribal, regional accessories or pieces. These universes where there is no recipe, but the expression of one sensitivity.

Koishi
Sculptural but quiet, elegant and timeless, it’s with the same philosophy we approached Koishi complements, that play with natural but mastered shapes, and refined finishes like stones, marble, or bronze.

Saddle-Hide Seattle Chair
Singularity, refinement, and durability. Seattle chair uses the diversion of crafts in links with classic shoemaking in order to define a new architecture in suspended leather and a radical but also elegant language. Its architecture gives it a great ecological relevance to this product that will gain value with time.

Creating a piece that is both beautiful and comfortable is something that’s inherent to your entire portfolio. What’s your secret to achieving liveable luxury?

Thanks for this appreciation. I am keen to share holistic well-being in natural and cultural landscapes, more than to propose statement or style demonstration. Competence is expected. It’s a question of demand. We always learn and try to do better. Then speaking about style and perceived value, I like to develop consistent products you can mix and match in harmony, whatever the year of creation. You can forget about the price over time, but quality will last.

In your opinion, how do you balance architecture and interior to create a dynamic design?

No recipe. Just an understanding of the context and its stakes. Architecture, interior, and design should be dedicated to propose a better life experience based on our real way of living. You immediately understand when an interior design is a statement or style demonstration that doesn’t embodies life situations. It looks fake and dead, like a showroom.
Then on the opposite, you immediately feel if a place is a playground for real life necessities and situations.

What do you think makes a house a home? And what’s the most treasured item in your own home?

The soul of the owner. The natural embodiment of his/her spirit. My place an informal and cosy landscape close to white, off white, light wood, and rustic finishes, made of a lot of books, prototypes from my Italian partners, furniture and objects bought in the flea market or from my trips. Just few known pieces such Pierre Paulin armchair, close to anonymous mountain wooden pieces, a Saarinen table or a Rietveld chair. My feather Bristol sofas are covered by large white bed linen that we change every week (that’s the essence of comfort). Art objects from various friend artists: three pieces from Guillaume Bardet. A permanent evolving interior landscape, warm, light, serene.

In your view, how does modern technology and environment impact your judgement in design? And how do you stay up to date with current trends?

The world is more and more noisy, agitated, and over competitive. Instant or short-term strategies (even in politics) are more visible than deep and consistent approach and proposals. Technologies are of course huge potential for meaningful progress that face today’s world stakes. They are also massively used for irrelevant marketing purposes, mercantile gadgets.

I have interest in the elegance of discreet technology that disappears and just provides the service we need. For example: the radiator disappears into the glazing and takes the form of metal oxide deposition in electrical resistance fields. I also like alternative simple creative technics, that shortcuts sometimes unnecessary complexity. That is a field of big curiosity for me.

What has been your career highlight to date, and what do you still dream to achieve?

It is a long path and important adventures. Some key people that I met at the beginning (1986) till now like Marc Berthier. My mentor. Some experiences like working with ONERA (scientific partner) on the Manned Cloud Hotel. The meeting with Jorge Vergara, who gave me the chance to create the Chivas Stadium in Mexico following an afternoon of exchange while I had never done architecture yet. Toyota’s carte blanche, the opportunity to offer my vision of the car. But of course, also all the Japanese, Swedish, and Italian adventures which were sources of discussion and enthusiasm. I do not feel the necessity to achieve anything, except meeting interesting people and cultures to share new complicities.

Is there anything exciting that you are working on at the moment that you can tell us about? What’s next in line for Massaud Studio?

We are developing new concepts for a scooter, an e-boat, an electric car of which we will send you nice pictures and of course furniture with our loyal partners. We will soon share this on Instagram. But first, I am working on my team and my lifelong project, to have more free time, and more sharing ideas.