L’Atelier d’exercices - Studio
Our teamOur company is a family business in every sense of the term. Our creative studio, with its diversified team composed of industrial designers, graphic designers, research scientists and publishers, works hand in hand with our highly trained metal and woodworkers.
Design & Function
We want the objects we produce to be useful and serve to enhance the pleasures of life. A good tool should be functional, useful, and therefore used frequently. Design and materials should derive directly from function. This is why the majority of our shapes are discreet and sober. Their lack of superficial trimmings will make them timeless.
Maison Margiela
Maison Margiela is a French fashion house founded in Paris in 1988 by Belgian designer Martin Margiela. Both masculine and feminine, oftentimes fusing the two genders, the brand’s universe can be described as conceptual and enigmatic, mysterious and iconoclast. Today, the House is recognized internationally for its unique approach to modern elegance. Since 2014, the Maison thrives under the guidance of Creative Director Mr. John Galliano. He reveals a new aesthetic, marrying his own poetic vision with the codes of the house of Margiela
François Azambourg
A workshop artisan, inventor and professor in Paris (since 1993), François Azambourg has always worked for simplicity and lightness, which are the signature qualities of his work at first glance. His first subject of study was the weight and instability of the saxophone. He spent ten years improving upon its design and performance. Since then, his projects have focused on materials for the future as well as non-synthetic materials for industry, publishing and galleries. His research has resulted in creative designs for leather tables, skeletal chairs, openwork folded garden chairs, light fixtures with hair-like fiber optics and streetlights with long stems. The Two Propeller Mobile, each arm quivering at the slightest breath, was specially designed for “Exercises in air and wind”.Chiaki Murata
Chiaki Murata has designed many functional and impeccable objects; some of them have a humorous touch. He received, among others, the Good Design Award Golden Prize and the Red Dot Award.
Sebastian Bergne
A son of diplomat parents, brought up in various countries, Sebastian Bergne was in contact with arts and crafts from an early age. An Englishman who loves France and the French language, Sebastian is an extraordinary designer, both painstaking and humane. Since he set up his London design studio in 1990, Sebastian Bergne’s work shows less of a signature style, and is more a quest for appropriate solutions to diverse design problems, whether working on bespoke projects or mass-produced consumer products. His achievements have been widely recognised by international design awards, numerous publications, exhibitions and inclusion in permanent collections such as the Centre Pompidou (Paris), The Museum of Modern Art (New York) and the Design Museum (London).
piKs Design
Created in 2005 in Roubaix, in the North of France, piKs is a family studio comprised of two brothers, Pierrick and Sylvain Taillard, and Christine Cordelette, all three trained in graphic arts and industrial design. Designers, developers of projects for major retailers, design consultants and creators of workshops for innovation in business, members of the piKs family drew upon their childhood toys and memories for L’Atelier d’exercices to create the Family growth chart and Central bank.
Elise Gabriel
Ever since the childhood hours spent in the sculpture studio of her father, Elise Gabriel has had a special tactile sensitivity and a love for the creation of beauty, which has been enriched by her training in textile, furniture and product design at the Ecole Boulle in Paris. She then went on to earn a degree at the Ecole Normale Superieure de Cachan, under the aegis of Erwan Bouroullec and Benjamin Graindorge. Elise Gabriel’s career is just beginning. However, a rare blend of delicacy and boldness is already evident in each of her accomplishments: from the workshop program she designs for the Centre Pompidou, the furniture she creates for the Gallery Gosserez in Paris, made from Zelfo, a material that only she knows how to tame. The Pencil display, created for L’Atelier d’exercices, is the first commercial product she has designed.
Joachim Rasmussen
Born in 1983 and raised in Norway, Joachim Rasmussen lives and works in Oslo. Initially spending a few years as a garage mechanic, he has always been fond of creating and drawing. He then undertook studies in industrial design at Oslo School of Architecture and Design, which he completed in 2013. The Disc Mirror is his first published project.
Marie-Aurore Stiker-Metral
Trained in philosophy and a graduate of the ENSCI (Design Institute in Paris), Marie-Aurore Stiker-Metral received financial assistance from the VIA in 2007 to develop her revolutionary chair, "La Pliée", made from one piece of cut and bent sheet steel, sold by Ligne Roset. Her design institute project, supervised by Erwan Bouroullec, combined cut-out wooden structures and fabric surfaces and won the Audi Talent Awards in 2010. Marie-Aurore also participated in the creation of displays within the future Louvre Museum of Abu Dhabi (Agence nc). Winner of the “Visa for Osaka” prize from the city of Paris, Marie-Aurore has lived in Japan from April to September 2012 to study the manufacturing of samurai armour and to meet Japanese craftsmen. The feather clock created for L’Atelier d’Exercices is the quintessential example of her design work: quasi-monastic structural simplicity with artisanal and poetic detail.
Tio
A French artist and designer of wind sculptures, Tio is an unusual artist who has been working with the wind subtly and intensely since 1993. His field stretches from small wire mobiles to large-scale open-air installations, and from the weight of a bird’s feather to the complexe building of massive metallic structures. His work has regularly been exhibited, in the Garden Festival of Chaumont sur Loire, the Abbaye de Chaalis, at Paris Plages, and during the Paris Nuit Blanche oeprations, etc. Each of his works, whether ephemeral or durable, speaks of the encounter between hand-worked materials and air, with its unpredictable and intangible aspects.
Willi Glaeser
Willi Glaeser, a Swiss businessman and designer, has designed the Paper Collector in 1989. More than one million are in daily use around the world. It can be found in prestigious museum shops and leading retailers.Valérie Windeck
A graduate of the School of Art and Design of Saint-Etienne and of Decorative Arts of Paris, Valerie Windeck is both a freelance designer and art director of a Parisian watch brand.Since the beginning of her career, Valerie has focused on function and simplicity. Not minimalism, which is too cold for her taste, but the essential form, which makes an object accessible and readable even during the manufacturing process, as seen in her Domus book ends and her Block-news (Ligne Roset) made with folded sheet metal, or her objects in carved wood.
The Anamorphosis Mirror is the finest example of her work and the pinnacle of her creativity, where the main function of reflection reveals another one, the anamorphosis, which projects the design onto the edge of contemporary art.
Lili Gayman
Graduate of ESAD in Strasbourg in 2009, then of ECAL, in Lausanne, in 2011, Lili Gayman has been an independent designer since 2012. She was the assistant to François Azambourg and works with the Mathilde Brétillot team. In 2012, she was a finalist of the Design Parade 7 at the Villa Noailles in Hyères, the Grand Prix of Creation of the City of Paris, and the Young Designer Cinna Design Contest. Lili is a prize winner of the Aides à Projects 2014 at VIA in Paris alongside Julie Arrivé for their Fauteuil Feuilleté. Her latest projects, including the Pencil holder, edited by L’Atelier d’exercices, share the game of “hiding to better reveal,” which keeps the stored objects hidden as long as the user does not need them, and makes them visible and available with just simple gesture of the hand.
