Art Center at the Salon du Mueble

 by Patricia Oliver, Chair, Environmental Design Art Center College of Design

On January 9, 1997, four Environmental Design students, "stormed Paris" for the Salon du Meuble, the Paris international furniture fair. The New York Times (The Home Section, January 23, 1997) proclaimed the student participation in the show a "triumph", and for Environmental Design students at Art Center College of Design it certainly was. The show typically hosts some 55,000 professionals and visitors over a five day period. Twenty five schools in the United States were approached and four finally invited to participated for the first time in the Paris show. The other schools exhibiting were Rhode Island School of Design, Pratt Institute and Savannah College of Art and Design. It is safe to say that the American students stole the show.
 

The response to our student work was overwhelming. Many visitors proclaimed that the whole justification for coming to the fair was to see the work the students were exhibiting. Our students authored the only two computer/home-office desks featured in the fair. The craftsmanship, the ambition of the design and the elegance of the execution made the work stand apart from the other schools and from much of what was on exhibit. Our students, to a one, had offers to put their pieces into production. Sami Hayek received offers from three agents to distribute his Salma Chair/Table in Holland, Sweden, and Finland. Many of the students had several offers for copies to be made at a handsome profit for the students. We had offers to exhibit our work in Europe. We were approached by magazines in Tokyo, England, Paris, Italy, Hungary, and the United States to publish our work. Alumni came from three countries just to say hello. We were approached by Creopole, a French design school, to develop an exchange program. And furniture manufacturers expressed interest in internships and sponsorships for the future. It is too early to say if our recruitment efforts will be boosted by this exposure, but we distributed some 5000 cards and brochures to interested visitors.

We were only able to exhibit four projects at the show. A jury of eight professionals selected the four students from a group of twelve students that were being considered. The students that attended were Sami Hayek who produced his first prototype in his sixth term and continued to refine the design in his seventh and eighth term, Dario Antonioni, fifth term, Peter Benarcik, Graduate Student, and Julien Egger, fifth term Product Design.