Portrait

Adrien Gardère, designer, ILLUMINATED AESTHETICS

Adrien Gardère, designer
His medium is space. Its arrangement, flow and distribution - this is the passion of Adrien Gardère, museum designer, interior decorator, furniture maker by training, with an extensive knowledge of ancient civilizations.

At year’s end, the renovated Cairo Islamic Art Museum, a four-year project, will open. Structure, traffic flow, interiors - he has re-imagined it all. He’s also produced best-selling furniture and recently made a piece for Saazs with Planilum light technology - a luminous vide-poche or catchall tray. Gardère sees a “natural connection between designing objects and museums. Each helps tell a story, provides fluidity, makes something intelligible.” When it comes to designing for individuals, “it’s key to envision how every curve and angle of a design meets a specific need. A project’s success depends on how it adapts to different situations, individual styles. I am a cog, the hinge between needs, desires, uses, production, lifestyles… all that has to be taken into account, made coherent.”