THE ART DESIGN LAB - Key Persons
Giacomo Ravagli was born in 1981 in Italy and learned to carve marble in the sculpture workshops of Pietrasanta.
He started carving as an apprentice at a young age and spent many years producing religious ornaments and decorations, large outdoor artworks for public spaces, and sculptures for contemporary artists, such as Louise Bourgeois. He also restored monumental pieces, including some by Henry Moore.
Since 2011 he has been creating furniture, ranging from unique pieces and limited editions for galleries and collectors to products for international design companies. Executed in rare marble, Ravagli's pieces link luxury with a certain serendipity of form and play off the unique colouring of marble.
His work also alludes to heaviness and lightness and sometimes incorporates clay or metals, such as cast bronze, in addition to marble. Ravagli likes to mix architecture and sculpture. His working method is an exercise in reduction and refinement that follows a reverse design process.
In short, he acts as a designer but thinks like a sculptor. His work has been exhibited internationally in galleries, museums, and art institutions, as well as at industry fairs.
Industrial designer, Gilles Belley is graduated from ENSCI/Les Ateliers in 2001 with a project of radio station and signage system for highway. He began working under his own name in 2006. In 2008 he won the "Grand Prix de la creation de la Ville de Paris". In 2009, he won the ‘Agora Grant for design' to develop the ‘Organic Factory' project launched with ‘La Cuisine' art center. In 2016, he is laureate of the VIA Carte Blanche grant and presents ‘Rooms'. Some of his pieces are part of the collections of the National Center of Plastic Arts (CNAP) Its activities are spread through research projects, exhibition design, furniture, industrial products and signage. In parallel, since 2010 he is in charge of industrial design degrees at Ensci/Les Ateliers, Paris.
Gilles Belley's work explores tensions and convergences between discursive logic (the project's purpose), technical logic (project implementation), and gestural and spatial logic (use of the project). Considering that projects always fit into complex systems, Gilles Belley uses image production as a vector of a plastic thought that avoids analytical formatting: the image as a fuzzy method.
After he graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Bretagne in 2008, Jean-Benoît Vétillard was a project manager for several french and italian architectural practices: Block Architecture, Salottobuono, Projectiles, Atelier Ciguë and Berger&Berger.
In 2014 he founded Jean-Benoît Vétillard - Architecture. He has taken on different aspects of his work, from developing installations as well as on private projects and public facilities on a large-scale, openly mixing art, design, and architecture, without preconceived hierarchy.
He has been teaching at the École Spéciale d'Architecture in Paris (Atelier des Extrapolations Métropolitaines) and he is currently teaching the Representation and Visual Culture at the École de la Ville et des Territoires de Paris-Est.
He is the recipient of the Albums des Jeunes Architectes et Paysagistes 2018 award, a biennial competition organised by the French Ministry of Culture, which distinguishes young architects for the quality of their projects, the relevance of their architectural, urban and landscape proposals and the coherence of their approach.
In 2019, The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies have awarded Jean-Benoît Vétillard with the prestigious EUROPE 40 UNER 40 architecture and design award.
Jean-Marc Gady graduated in 1996 from the Blue School of Interior Architecture and began his career in the design of furniture, lighting and tableware for Ligne Roset and Liv'it.
He was the subject of several permanent calls from the VIA before joining Louis Vuitton as artistic director of shop windows and events.
In 2006, he created his own creative agency with the mission of being active in a broad sphere of activity. Studio Jean-Marc Gady is a multidisciplinary studio that covers product design, interior architecture, as well as scenography and museography. He has collaborated with prestigious brands including Louis Vuitton, Baccarat, Gucci, Van Cleef & Arpels, Diptyque and Montblanc.
In 2014, sought after by Apple for his vision and expertise, Jean-Marc Gady embarked on a Californian adventure focused on the customer experience in Apple stores.
Johannes Lindner founded his own studio in 2014. He graduated in architecture from the RWTH Aachen University in 2018.
Johannes Lindner focuses on products that are characterized by clean lines, functionality and aesthetic quality, sometimes with a graphic aspect. His work is influenced by the simplicity and functionality of the Scandinavian design tradition.
Luciana is an Argentinian designer working in Buenos Aires. Passionate about upcycling and the exploration of materials, she devotes herself to Circular Design: recovering waste for the production of new objects, making "trash" a new raw material. In particular, it supports companies in their sustainable development efforts, through actions that make visible the recovery and treatment of the waste generated by these companies themselves, transformed into useful and marketable parts.
Teacher at the Penninghen School in Paris from 1999 to 2004, Éric Raffy has signed numerous projects such as the Sofitel in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil (2002) and the Club Med Hotel Kanifinolhu in the Maldives.
Éric Raffy is an Architect graduated at the Bordeaux School in 1978. He designed many furnitures and objects as for Soca or Laguiole. In 1995, he received the Medal of Architecture from the Academy Dejan and especially the showroom for the designer Paco Rabanne (Paris 6 °), the restaurant 3 *** Michel Bras in Laguiole, or Ushiku Daibutsu, a Buddha of 120 m high in Tokyo which also received the 1994 APIDA Prize in Hong Kong.