French Sculptor and Designer Cecile Planchais Will Exhibit During Design Week NY 2013

Online, May 7, 2013 (Newswire.com) - To reveal the essence of design a la française to an American audience, French Design Connection have selected Cecile Planchais' ICILA chair. It will be an opportunity for American collectors and design enthusiasts to discover a creation that is already an integral part of the European urban landscape, from Paris and Lyons to Brussels.

Cecile Planchais sums up her vision of design in a single sentence: "usage is a way of introducing art into space-of lending meaning to a location." She sees design as a universal language-but a language that speaks to each one of us, forging a direct link between elements often seen as contradictory.

How ICILA chair came to life

ICILA chair was inspired by a sheet of paper, the sound of steel and a lithograph by Alexander Calder. ICILA is a typical example of Cecile Planchais' series of landmark-objects linking art and industrial design. It forms the culmination of the research she has been pursuing since 2008, focusing on the role of sound in art and within the urban landscape. These experiments into presenting and communicating sound through street furniture have already given birth to ICILASONG, the first "sound-chair". For its first New York show, French Design Connection will be presenting the silent version of ICILA, edited by the French sheet metal workshop Tôlerie Forezienne.

Design concept

With a sleek line, and foils of this folded sheet of metal playing with light, ICILA Chair design concept marks a striking departure from the canons of conventional furniture, offering flexible, comfortable seating to optimize the listening and contemplation experience. Willing to make opposites connect, Cecile Planchais has used sheet metal, a state-of-the- art industrial tool, to produce collectible timepieces, combining the fluidity of their folds with the sturdiness of steel. The ICILA chair is made from a single steel sheet, cut and folded without welds. And to mark its New York première, ICILA will be launching its new white satin finish: an alliance between delicacy and robustness.

Pictures download : https://www.dropbox.com/sh/v674n2re9nv17iw/6J9SSYjgd0

The vernissage will be held on May 18th from 7pm to 10pm at Chambers Hotel NY. Cecile Planchais will be happy to welcome you. Please contact us to request an invitation to the cocktail.

Contact: [email protected]

www.cecileplanchais.com

About Cecile Planchais

Cecile Planchais learned the tools of her trade at ENSBA, the Paris School of Fine Arts, where she trained as a sculptor. She went on to take a higher degree at ECM ENSCI, the School of Industrial Design, where she developed an interest in folding techniques and textiles. During this period (1983-1987), she was also drawn to the work of Simon Hantaï. Since 1990, her designs have been mainly oriented towards the city and landscape and this has led to major commissions in urban design, for pilot schemes aimed at rehabilitating the urban space and rethinking the natural landscape.

Committed to sustainable development since 2000, her forms offer durability, spatial harmony and manufacturing sourcability.

Her ventures into industrial design, alongside multinational, traditional or up-and-coming businesses, have resulted in the first new lines of lighting and street furniture since 1995, as well as unprecedented applications such as the interactive Salon de Musique in Brussels. She is currently developing a new range of lighting, which will be officially launched in September 2013.

For the last few years, she has been focusing on the sensorial links between location, audience and objects. Water, sound, image and light are viewed as elements of the landscape, which she tackles as sculptor and scenographer, working from both inside and out, and introducing new generation technologies.

She has been awarded the prestigious French design labels VIA and Observeur du design. Her work has been shown at Helsinki World Design Capital 2012, in the France Innovation Pavilion, and at the International Design Biennial in Liège, Belgium. She is a frequent contributor to international symposiums, where she lectures on the subject of urban design.