The best installations of the Design Parade Toulon 2022

Every summer, the Villa Noailles organises its festival-competition dedicated to the decorative arts in two parts: in Toulon for interior architecture, in Hyères for design. Launched in 2016, Design Parade Toulon has become, in the space of six editions, an unmissable event to discover the scenographies invented from scratch by the new generation of designers.

Chaired this year by the designer Rodolphe Parente, the Jury had to choose the most unusual proposals from among those unveiled on the first floor of the city’s former bishop’s palace.

On the programme? A lot of sunny and iodized inspirations: shells, sea urchins, sardines (especially to be planted), futons for napping, and other winks to the slow tempo of the Mediterranean… Welcome to the South

The seashell toilet by Paul Bonlarron

Leave everything behind to live in a shell, out of sight. This is the feeling that Paul Bonlarron wanted to transpose in his project La toilette aux coquillages - National Furniture Award 2022 -,a rocky setting that expresses her taste for ornamentation and the lively expression of shapes and colours. The "pearls" of design are to be found in this installation: Silvana McNulty's engraved shell tinderboxes, Amélie Orhant's clam knife fan, Axelle Guisserot's marine fibre bath textiles, Lucile Viaud's abalone powder glass...

Sardine Sardine by Madeleine Oltra & Angelo de Taisne

« Une brise chaude fait onduler la toile tendue et s'engouffre dans les ouvertures dézippées. Dehors, les rayons du soleil frappent et le jour se répand dans la tente. On quitte le lit de camp moelleux, le visage marqué par les plis ». C’est la story qui accompagne la scénographie qui a raflé presque tous les prix cette année : la dotation de la fondation Carmignac, le Prix Visual Merchandising décerné par CHANEL, et le Grand Prix Design Parade Toulon Van Cleef & Arpels. À le tête de ce décor de campement au sommet ? Madeleine Oltra & Angelo de Taisne, le nouveau duo qui va faire parer de lui.

Appointment for Jeanne Tresvaux's siesta

Jeanne Tresvaux gave us an appointment for a siesta at the Villa Noailles. The Franco-German artist and designer invoked the sandman in a minimalist and padded cocoon taken over by mattresses, cushions and stuffed futons, all of which was staged with disconcerting fragility around fine curtains, delicate beeswax candles, cottony paper mache creations... A suspended décor, as if on a small cloud.

L'Oursinade by Marthe Simon & Paul Peller

From one villa to another, l’Oursinade - Toulon Public Prize 2022 - from Marthe Simon & Paul Peller immersed visitors in the salty water of the Mediterranean, at the foot of the Villa Kérylos in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, where thousands of sea hedgehogs sleep. It is around this delicate dish that the studio wished to gather its friends, in a rocky and stony installation inspired by the calade of Provence. As soon as they enter, guests are invited to leave their towels, masks and snorkels used for sea urchin fishing, and to settle down around a round table designed as a large sea urchin tray.

Sunrise by Lauranne-Elise Schmitt

What would happen if you asked a taxi at 7am, just out of a club, to take you to the craziest place on the coast? He would direct you to the imaginary villa of Lauranne-Elise Schmitt. A summary between four walls of all the charms of the Mediterranean: the song of the cicadas of the Massif de l'Esterel, the red rocks of Cap Dramont, the expanses of mimosas crossed by bicycle, the bayadère motif and the deckchairs typical of the coastal beaches, and above all, a sky full of shades as far as the eye can see... A dreamlike setting, on the border between dream and reality.

Primo Sole by Carla Genty & Léa Ollivier

« It nourishes bodies and maintains the beauty of a world wherever we go. An elusive and sacred material, the sun is as dangerous as it is regenerative. Dazzling, it captivates and lifts the eye to the sky.. ». Primo Sole de Carla Genty & Léa Ollivier is a metaphor for the fragile response of the skin and a plant to the blazing heat of the sun. Calendula (a plant endemic to the Mediterranean) and sunlight are sacred in a scenography that invites one to bask on the soft curves of a gypsum bed and patiently wait for the first rays of the day.