Downtown — PAD London — PAD Londres — Fair — Slash Paris

Past: October 15 → 19, 2014

20th Century Design France

Stand Number B2

Since opening in 1980, Galerie Downtown has been showing European and American masters of design, most of them architects, of the Twentieth Century: Jean Prouvé Charlotte Perriand Le Corbusier Serge Mouille André Bloc Jean Royère Carlo Mollino Gaetano Pesce Ettore Sottsass George Nakashima Oscar Niemeyer Ron Arad George Nelson Charles & Rae Eames Joe Colombo Mathieu Matégot Isamu Noguchi…Located on the rue de Seine in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, the galerie DOWNTOWN was created by François Laffanour in 1980.

For the past twenty-five years, the galerie DOWNTOWN has organized thematic and monographic exhibits on architects and furniture designers such as: Charlotte Perriand, Jean Prouvé, Le Corbusier, Charles & Ray Eames and Carlo Mollino. Shortly after the second world war, this generation of designers brought a new vision to the world of furnishings, design and architecture…the forms are pure and without ornament. Manufactured in materials such as solid wood, metal, straw but also in plastic and fibre glass, their works privileged functionality and expressed an intellectual and social thought process on behalf of the designers, who were in charge of the reconstruction of post-war France.

In the beginning of the 1980”s Francois Laffanour opened the Galerie DOWNTOWN and explored and rehabilitated through its exhibits a domain that had been forgotten, Furniture by Architects of the XXth century. Designers — architects for the majority — Europeans and Americans, who shortly after the second world war brought a new concept to the art of furnishing, dictated by a need for freedom and functionality, a new “art de vivre” in a time of technological and scientific advances. This new rational furniture was conceived by architects who were observing the changing times, it first began in the 1920”s and the movement was confirmed in the years that followed the Second World War; the years of reconstruction. The forms are pure and specifically studied to serve the purpose they were built for. Economical, functional and accessible to all, adapted to peoples daily gests and needs.

The materials are simple: wood, metal, straw, bamboo, plastic, stainless steal, aluminium, fibre glass, worked with care in every detail in order to achieve a refined aspect. Since opening in 1980, Galerie Downtown has been showing European and American masters of design, most of them architects, of the Twentieth Century: Jean Prouvé Charlotte Perriand Le Corbusier Serge Mouille André Bloc Jean Royère Carlo Mollino Gaetano Pesce Ettore Sottsass George Nakashima Oscar Niemeyer Ron Arad George Nelson Charles & Rae Eames Joe Colombo Mathieu Matégot Isamu Noguchi…