The Maison Soustraire project was born out of a radical experiment to reduce everyday objects, conducted by Mathilde Pellé in her apartment in Saint-Étienne. Over eight weeks, two-thirds of the material from the apartment’s 112 objects was removed or transformed in a bid to question their necessity, materiality and impact. In the resulting stripped-down environment, recreated here for visitors, the designer directly addresses the challenges of sustainability and minimalism.
© Cynthia Ammann
© Mathilde Pellé
© Mathilde Pellé
© Mathilde Pellé
Mathilde Pellé has done away with all excess. The sofa’s legs and backrest; the wood concealing the structure of the shelf; the wardrobe’s doors and panels; the bedframe; the sink’s ceramic pedestal; the panelling around the bath; the padding of the chair. She cut the cutlery and kitchen utensils down to the essentials. How should we view this decluttering? As a radical shift? A culling of the superfluous? A search for the indispensable? Attacking the very essence of materialism? Mathilde Pellé lived in, or rather with, these domestic subtractions. She was, during this project, both a designer and a researcher, as well as a resident.
Designer, because she worked on the shapes of objects and layouts. By subtracting, she challenged the forms and materials dictated by market forces, and by the norms, standards, costs and production logic of industrial practices. By subtracting, she proposed a minimalist materiality: an elimination of all excess.
Researcher, because she identified, tracked and documented each object – and each habit or gesture connected to it – throughout the process, from purchase to use. Resident, because she reconfigured her own interactions. The fragility of a fork, for example, taught her how delicate is the act of nourishing oneself. Jean-Baptiste Warluzel’s film Meublé is an intimate immersion into this transformed space, revealing the gestures and adjustments of Mathilde Pellé’s process of stripping away.
