Sophie Gelinet and Cédric Gepner of Studio HAOS carve their own path away from mass production and polished craftsmanship. With a raw, experimental approach, the design duo uses mixed materials to produce furniture that is both bold and contemporary. In an industrial workshop (soon to be home) in Lisbon, where design and production happen side-by-side, the French designers research new ways to turn readily accessible materials into striking pieces – lamps, armchairs, coffee tables, benches, and vases – that are sculptural and highly limited. They discuss their quest for creating something new and near-frustration with the past.
CG: Let’s discuss our work and what we do.
SG: Well, we don’t have any formal training in product or furniture design. I went to art school and then started a graphic design studio in Paris. Cedric had more of a business background. When we started Studio HAOS we used to do everything together, working on one computer, with one of us holding the mouse, but both having to agree on every move. It did produce some results, but it was quite a painful way to work. Now we try to work more independently, each editing the work of the other.
CG: We also have very different personalities. Sophie is more spontaneous, free spirited, carefree. I'm more analytical, steady, and thorough. She likes to follow her intuition and see where it leads, while I enjoy searching for every possible way to look at a problem. I would typically start from a research angle, either gathering inspirations or exploring ways of using a material or technique, while Sophie would be more hands-on, quickly moving to experimentation, playing with the same bits of materials for days until she feels she’s found an interesting shape. Perhaps our differences are why we are drawn to each other.
SG: And now we have a child together.
CG: We are both from Paris and moved to Lisbon together three years ago. We initially had planned to relocate to Tangier, but upon leaving, COVID had started picking up again, and we thought that moving to Morocco with a one-year-old in the middle of a world pandemic was not the best idea. So, we changed our plans at the last minute and booked a flight to Lisbon, with the idea of staying a couple of weeks. We ended up extending our stay a little, then moved to Morocco for a few months and ended up coming back here. It’s a great place to be at the moment. It’s very relaxed, and the weather and nature around the city are amazing, but you still get the cultural benefits of being in a European capital.
SG: It was at that time we reached the point where we could both work full time on HAOS. Prior to that we had been working on HAOS on the side of our regular jobs. The first thing we made was a lamp. I started working on the prototype and it must have looked like a lot of fun because Cedric soon joined me. From what was initially a single lamp we made a collection. We then reached out to the press, got into a few publications, and started getting some orders. It began just like that. We created the studio in 2017.
CG: But our way of working has changed a lot since we started. At first, we only designed and handled the manufacturing with craftsmen in France. Ultimately, we found it was a frustrating way to work, expensive and time consuming. We felt limited in terms of what was possible, and we also wanted to distance ourselves from a trend that seemed to focus on expensive materials and opulent craftsmanship, sometimes at the expense of the value of the design itself. That’s when we decided to kind of free ourselves from all that, open our own manufacturing space and focus on finding esthetical and technical solutions to turn humble, readily accessible materials into interesting design pieces. Now we work mostly with interior designers, either directly or through our galleries. Even though we release a new series of pieces every year, we still tend to work on a bespoke basis for private clients or collectors.
SG: Yes, our work and way of working has evolved a lot. It’s funny, you get so focussed on the most recent work. I’m almost frustrated looking at past works. Our recent aluminium pieces were quite interesting to make, in the sense that the series started quite randomly. We had just designed the armchair, which is the most ‘classical’ piece of the series, and during the welding process we realised the object was visually interesting in many different positions, even when upside down. It had to do with the allure of raw aluminium, with the contrast between solid surfaces and the raw tube ends. Then we looked for ways to highlight these qualities, to introduce rhythm in the geometry, such as playing with the visible welds, or arranging the tubes in a sort of marquetry. It was really the manufacturing process that guided us through the design of
this series.
CG: Yes, because our process is still evolving every day. We’re always trying something new. We can get very excited about a design one day – we feel it’s so great that the world is going to stop turning on its axis – then we look at it the next day and realise it was actually pretty terrible and the world crumbles. [Laughs.]. We repeat the process for many days and eventually a new series of objects comes out of the workshop. We’ve spent a lot of time recently designing the renovation of our workshop. It used to be a car repair shop, and we are turning it into a liveable workspace. It’s our first architecture project, and quite a big one, so it’s both very exciting and terrifying at the same time. It’s probably a good thing; the mark of a project worth pursuing.
SG: And we’ve been thinking of places that excite us. Not necessarily for design ideas, but more for a feeling. To think of unusual and unexpected nooks you don’t know you need. I love the Judd Foundation in New York. The last time we were there, our tour guide pointed to a niche below the staircase and asked if anyone could guess what it was. A place for storage, or a safe? It was actually a hidden puppet theatre that Judd had built for his kids. We couldn’t believe it. Donald Judd, on top of being Judd, and doing all his Judd things like building a ranch and being one of the most celebrated artists of the century, had the time to build puppet theatre for his kids! I hate using this word, but it was quite inspiring. Generally speaking though, I think that finding inspiration is not the issue – we are bombarded with inspiration. The challenge is to shield oneself from that information overload and develop the capacity to distinguish what’s actually great from the rest.
