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Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec
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Ronan (born 1971) and Erwan Bouroullec (born 1976) grew up in Quimper, Brittany, where previous generations of their family had farmed the land. The shift from agriculture to design was not so abrupt: both brothers cite a fascination with the logic of making things, with how materials behave, and with the rhythms of daily life. Ronan studied at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Decoratifs in Paris; Erwan followed at the Ecole Nationale Superieure d'Arts de Cergy-Pontoise. They launched Studio Bouroullec in Paris in 1999.
Their breakthrough came almost immediately. At the 1997 Salon du Meuble, Ronan presented the Disintegrated Kitchen - a domestic workspace fragmented into freestanding elements - and was spotted by Giulio Cappellini, who gave them their first industrial commissions. The partnership with Vitra, which began around 2000 with the Joyn office system, proved the most enduring. Joyn reimagined the open-plan office as a landscape of shared surfaces rather than a row of private desks, and it remains in production today. Their Slow Chair for Vitra (2006), a deep upholstered shell on a lacquered steel frame, draws loosely on Eero Saarinen's Womb Chair while resolving it into something quieter and more pared-back.
Some of their most distinctive output crosses into spatial and material experimentation. Algues (2004, Vitra), a branching polyamide module that clips together in infinite configurations, functions as both product and architecture - a screen, a curtain, a garden. North Tiles (2006) and Clouds (2008), developed with Danish textile company Kvadrat, use soft fabric panels as acoustic and visual partitions, dissolving the boundary between furniture and interior design. The Steelwood Chair for Magis (2007) - wood laminate with a steel skeleton - won the Interior Innovation Award in Cologne in 2008. Each project tends to work through a single material or structural idea pursued until it yields something unexpected.
The brothers have worked with Artek, Alessi, Cappellini, Flos, HAY, Iittala, Kartell, Kettall, Ligne Roset, Magis, Mutina, nanimarquina, and Samsung, among others. Their work entered the permanent collections of MoMA in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Art Institute of Chicago, Les Arts Decoratifs, and the Design Museum in London. They received the Grand Prix du jury international at Maison et Objet in 1998, a Compasso d'Oro nomination in 2001, and the Panerai London Design Medal in 2014.
On Auctionist, 31 lots by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec have appeared at Swedish auction houses including Bukowskis Stockholm, Stockholms Auktionsverk, and Upplandsauktionsverk. The Slow Chair for Vitra appears most frequently, with prices reaching 6,500 SEK. The catalogue is weighted toward seating and furniture, with chairs and armchairs accounting for the majority of lots - reflecting the pieces most commonly found in Scandinavian interiors.