Jean-Marie Massaud (born 1966 in Toulouse, France) is a French architect, inventor and designer. He was born in Toulouse, France in 1966.
Biography
Massuad graduated from the École Nationale Supérieur de Création Industrielle – Les Ateliers, Paris (ENSCI) in 1990 and began working with Marc Berthier. In 2000, he co-founded the Studio Massaud with Daniel Pouzet and expanded his interests in the fields of architecture.
Since the beginning of his career Jean-Marie Massaud has been working on an extensive range of works, stretching from architecture to objects, from one-off project to serial ones, from macro environment down to micro contexts. His work spans architecture and the full spectrum of object design—from bespoke furniture and industrial products, to, more recently, futuristic installations like a helium-filled airship hotel. Major brands have solicited his ability to mix comfort and elegance, zeitgeist and heritage, generosity and distinction.
Massaud has run a quest for synthesis, reduction and lightness since his first intuitions. He has been working all kind of design fields, from furniture to industrial product and equipment. In 2000, he founds Studio Massaud and expands his expertise to architecture and brand development. He collaborates with various brands such as B&B Italia, Axor Hansgrohe, Dior, Poliform, Poltrona Frau, Lancôme or Renault.
His collaboration with Marc Berthier and his work in the field of town planning led him towards design and architecture. He is concerned with design in various contexts, industrial products and furniture. His contextual approach centres on research into the essential, within which the individual remains the centre of attention. It is a work upheld by research into the senses, magic, and vital emotion which brings him to work with very different brands.
Beyond these elegant designs, his quest for lightness – in matters of essence – synthesize three broader stakes: individual and collective fulfillment, economic and industrial efficiency, and environmental concerns. "I'm trying to find an honest, generous path with the idea that, somewhere between the hard economic data, there are users. People."
His creations, whether speculative or pragmatic, explore this imperative paradigm: reconciling pleasure with responsibility, the individual with the collective. When asked to imagine a new stadium for the city of Guadalajara, Mexico, he comes back with a never seen before cloud and volcano-shaped building, integrated in a vast urban-development program that re-unite leisure and culture, nature and urbanization, sport aficionados and local citizens. Instead of implanting a stadium, he proposed an environment. And the initial vision has proven a realistic approach: the project has come to life in July 2011.
More recently, his concept car developed in partnership with major car brand, has the same objective. MEWE is a synthesis of economical and ecological concepts, integrating issues specific to each stakeholder: the user, industry, and the environment. A pioneering multiple-use platform that is a car for the people, with a body in expanded polypropylene foam: a major innovation. "When I'm working on a project, there’s always an attempt to renew the subject I’m involved in". Another distinctive aspect of his approach.
Denying trend and fashion, Jean Marie prefers questioning the existing, working out on progress and eventually proposing answers to contemporary stakes. It is this symbiosis between Man, his creations and his natural environment, that Jean Marie Massaud strives. to reach, as a catalyst to innovation, as an economic model and as a life project.
His unique style is reflected throughout: from the product design through to the architecture. His creations are intended to have an effect on people. And to create a better living space for them. Heavily influenced by the beauty and usefulness of the natural world, he loves to combine design and architecture.
Massaud has said he draws design inspiration from the thoughtful elegance of Charles & Ray Eames, the eclecticism of Philippe Starck and Castiglioni Brothers, the sharpness of Antonio Citterio, and the expansive creativity of Leonardo da Vinci and Thomas Edison.