French designer Martin Szekely's enigmatic furniture and objects are the result of formal structural challenges, observation, and analysis. Experimenting with both new and traditional materials, he approaches each project as a new inquiry into the essence of the built world. The designer's furniture and objects are embodiments of his meditations on the nature of balance, and are based on data concerning mass, gravity and networks of forces, most often invisible to the naked eye.

For Szekely, building is the very essence of the designer's profession: "I see my practice from the builder's perspective, considering the use that will be made of my construction; this immediately involves the user, his body and his environment."

What is built - which is the designer's domain unlike the artist for whom ideas suffice - calls on the history of structures and the technologies that underlie them. This catalogue, for a show of forty pieces at the musee des Arts decoratifs et du Design, highlights Szekely's elegant mix of craftsmanship and high tech, raw materiality and high culture.

Text in English and French.

Published to accompany the exhibition at the MADD, Bordeaux, France, 26 April-7 October 2018.