Anthony Authié, the founder of Zyva Studio, has managed to keep a child’s soul. The heart of this architect, cradled in the 90’s, swings between the retro universe of Tetris and Mario, current pop culture and cutting-edge references. After writing an escapist novel about his early years in an architecture firm, he founded his own studio and made a name for himself with realistic 3D images of his fictional projects. Since then, he has cultivated a futuristic and acidic aesthetic, and has multiplied eclectic and offbeat projects, including the offices of columnist, comedian and actor Panayotis Pascot, collaborations with Charlotte Taylor and Victoria Magniant, and participation alongside Laura Gonzalez, Tom Dixon and Constance Guisset in Design Capsule, an NFT project at the crossroads of the physical and digital worlds. For Goodmoods, he delivers the Mood that inspired his newly completed Bagnolet flat.
Your colour palette?
“Water green, yellow, grey and orange.”
Your favourite materials?
“Grey terrazzo, chrome and fire.”
“I was fascinated by the Valentino shop designed by David Chipperfield, where a grey terrazzo, worked as a monochrome, runs from floor to ceiling, creating an immersive universe with a hypnotic pattern.
Fire is more of a motif than a real material, and that’s one of the threads that runs through this moodboard.”
A place inspired by this Mood?
“This is my apartment located in Bagnolet, on the Montreuil side. It’s not very big – 55 square metres – but it has a lot of volume and an interesting spatial structure. As our budget was limited, we chose to create a unique universe rather than a total redesign.
Inspired by Miami Vice, we covered the upper part with large glass windows so that we could watch our guests from our bedroom. We worked a lot on the idea of monochrome in order to obtain a total immersion effect.”
The inspiration for this mood?
“The Spring-Summer 2019 collection by Marine Serre.”
“And also Johnny Hallyday and his song “Allumez le feu”. We had a lot of fun with the flames, a motif found on the curtains in the bedroom to play on the torrid side. I like to play around and create architectural jokes.
Fashion inspires me a lot because I think it’s the domain of the avant-garde, where there’s a lot of room for experimentation, whether it’s in terms of materials or shapes.”
A designer who embodies this mood?
“Alix Coco, whom I met via social networks. Her personality is quite crazy, very exuberant. I discovered her pieces during a Paris Design Week, at the Espace Commines, and I was a bit confused because it’s hard to know if it’s a new aesthetic or a medieval aesthetic that she has revisited. Her approach is quite difficult to define at first glance and requires some thought. We really hit it off and our respective work spoke to each other.
She likes to draw little characters that she puts on stage in a sort of play, which fits in well with my idea of design, which is a bit regressive, my fantasy around toys. I love Toy Story, and I dream of seeing stuffed animals and dolls come to life at night. In fact, some of his furniture looks like dinosaurs, like the Rex from the film.”
An object?
A piece of furniture?
“Ohm Studio’s plots Pion: they have designed a single, very effective product, somewhere between a sofa end, a side table and a stool. The primary function is not defined and it is up to each person to make it their own.
The inspiration of Lego is obvious, whether it is by their shape or the very primary colour in which the pawns are declined. Once again, the story of the return to childhood, of the regressive object resonates with my own affinities. So does the idea of talking about the serious business of architecture in a funny way.”
One look ?
“Passage 37 of the Louis Vuitton Spring/Summer 2023 men’s show. In a setting that resembles a circuit of small Hot Wheels cars, which again echoes childhood.
This look speaks to me because I see it as a suit of armour that also acts as an enclosure and protection for going on an adventure. It’s more than just a piece of clothing, it’s almost like a Transformers game structure. I also worked on the “power-assist robot suits” which help people to lift heavy loads in particular. Sort of “overbodies”, second bodies that envelop us and allow us to develop in our environment. This idea comes close to my vision of a potential future, where we will have shells that help us in our daily lives and create hybrid worlds and hybrid versions of ourselves.”
An artist?
“My girlfriend, Adèle, with whom I designed this apartment, showed Claude Rutault’s work . His idea was to create monochromes: the colour of the wall where the paintings are hung is the same shade as the painting itself. Again, this idea of total immersion created by monochromes obsesses me. Above all, I’m sure he had a great sense of humour, because gallery owners who wanted to exhibit his work were faced with three solutions: either the artist gave them the canvases, but the walls had to be repainted in their exact shade, or he painted his canvases in the colour of the walls, or he gave them blank canvases and they had to paint the canvases and the walls in the same colour.”
One movie ?
“The Mask by Chuck Russell, 1994. A film from my childhood, again! The story of a shy man who is not comfortable in his own skin and who needs this mask to create an exaggerated personality like a caricature. In my opinion, the caricature aspect allows us to get to the point, to show the important points. And Jim Carrey is a bit of a caricature of himself.”
The soundtrack to this moodboard?
“Les Cactus by Jacques Dutronc. In this song, Jacques Dutronc talks about very serious things but in a light way. This choice seems to different with my universe, yet I am quite paradoxical, both in my work and in my personality: I have a very reactive side coupled with a great nostalgia for a world of the past. I fantasize these magnificent postcards from my memory that I then regurgitate to make something current.”
A museum to visit to get in the mood?
“The exhibitions at the New York gallery Super House. I knew about this tiny gallery through the networks. I’ve never been there and yet I’m very inspired by it. The space is very small, barely ten square meters it seems, that you visit almost through the window. With each new exhibition they create a new monochrome to showcase their selection of cutting edge artists.”