‘Squeeze’, Paul Cocksegde’s installation at the Hôtel de Sully and Place des Vosges in Paris – All photos: courtesy of Paris Design Week 2024.
Design. During Paris Design Week 2024, British designer Paul Cocksedge created Squeeze, a unique installation at the Orangerie of the historic Hôtel de Sully and its gardens in Place des Vosges. The exhibition features five limited-edition mirrors commissioned by the Maisont&Objet international design fair, which organised the festival taking over the French capital.
The Squeeze exhibition “explores light, reflection, and the alchemy behind mirror-making against the backdrop of one of Paris’s most remarkable architectural landmarks,” explains the designer. The creative process began with compressing three-dimensional soft circular forms and pushing them into a box. Some were squeezed vertically, others from the sides. According to Cocksedge, the result “conveyed a palpable sense of compression.”
“I then took the shadow, the outline, and created the two-dimensional works. We waterjet-cut each single piece of glass, we huddle them together, and then we added a frame to complete the composition.”
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The Parisian installation features five unique, three-dimensional compositions lifted out to create the mirrors as well as the two-dimensional reflective pieces. “At first, you can’t recognise the connection between the mirrors and the three-dimensional studies.”
All the works are displayed in the Orangerie of the Hôtel de Sully and its gardens in Place des Vosges so that the mirrors reflect their surroundings, dialoguing with the palace’s XVII-century architecture. Visitors themselves become part of the installation.
Historic hotels host some of the best installations of Paris Design Week 2024. Lucas Huillet and Alexandre Helwani created a refreshing water fountain made from sustainable materials at the Hôtel de Soubise, [read more]. At the Hôtel de la Marine, French collective Uchronia created an oversized canopy bed installation, while Pierre Regard showcased an enveloping hammock made of charming wooden slats, [read more].
All photos are courtesy of Paris Design Week unless stated otherwise.
