Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec

Shifting focus - the Decade interview: The Bouroullec Brothers

Where were you ten years ago, what are you doing today, where will you be in ten years' time?

To mark the start of the new decade and Phaidon's publication of Decade - a photographic history of the first ten years of the new Millennium - Phaidon.com spoke to ten leading figures in a variety of disciplines about what they were doing ten years ago, what they are doing now, and where they might be in ten years' time.

Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, born in Brittany in 1971 and 1976 respectively, hit the design scene at the start of the Millennium. Today they are considered two of the hottest young designers working in Europe.

 

Q: What were you doing 10 years ago?

We were 29 and 24 years old. It was the beginning of our career: we had just started a collaboration with Cappellini and we were preparing our first solo exhibition at the Design Musem in London.

 

Q: What are you doing now?

The current projects include the preparation of two major exhibitions for 2011. album, at the architecture center, Arc en Rêve, in Bordeaux, offers a panoramic view of the multi-faceted activity of our design studio exclusively throughout 1000 documents from inspirational drawing, sketches, picture of design processes, etc. The second exhibition is scheduled for the fall of next year. Chefs-d'oeuvre, which will be the first major design event to take place at the newly-opened Centre Pompidou Metz will be a monographic exhibition that will travel to different countries. Other projects are with the organisations that we are usually working with, from Vitra to the Kreo Gallery.

 

Q: Where will you be in 10 years' time?

We don’t know. We actually feel very uncomfortable knowing what we will be doing in the next month or next year. We feel stimulated by the unknown, the doubt.