The young Lausanne designer Adrien Rovero takes over the ground floor of the mudac with Landscale, an exhibition tailored to fit the museum’s spaces, part landscape, part a play on the concept of scale and part land itself.
Adrien Rovero opened his studio in 2006. He is an industrial designer known particularly for his furnishings, lighting and scenography. He combines an experimental flair frequently presented – and bought – by institutions such as the Pompidou Centre, the Grand-Hornu and the mudac, with commissions for established brands including Hermès, Kreo, Pfister and the Manufacture de Sèvres, alternating limited edition runs with larger-scale production.
In just a few years Adrien Rovero has built up an international following for his ingenious, often humorous, but restrained designs, and his effective and subtle scenography. Drawing inspiration from everything from muscle cars to the texture of sweets, his work involves assembling, twisting and disconnecting shapes, materials, references and expectations. His uniqueness lies in his vast range, his use of materials (Particules, a stool made of compressed wood chips) and scale (Cabane perchée, a human-sized bird house), his ability to translate from two to three dimensions, and a solid connection to the needs of everyday life: respect for the environment, with the Saving Grace lamps designed for low-energy lightbulbs, and multifunctionality with Flip, a sofa that turns into a table.
Landscale offers visitors the chance to immerse themselves in the designer’s universe through a scenography that uses translucent screens to eliminate all the usual points of reference, presenting modules as autonomous islands within the exhibition space. The exhibition plays on the concept of scale: the objects on display may be small-scale models, enlarged versions, or even the production objects themselves, but at first sight it is not obvious which. The spectator’s perspective is distorted – larger than life or Lilliputian. It reflects Rovero’s modus operandi, using distortion of scale to inspire thought and creativity.
Two of Adrien Rovero’s projects will be on public display for the first time: the Opercule collection commissioned by the Cristalleries de Saint Louis, and the Rock cable car, part of the Mountain Climbers project.
The 160-page bilingual (fr/en) exhibition catalogue is produced by the mudac and Infolio, with texts by Alexandra Midal and Chantal Prod’Hom. It is the first monograph on Adrien Rovero.
