Work With the Best Companies, Don't Mind Being Copied: How the "Genius Designer" Brothers Make Good Design

Behind their success may lie an eye for what people really need, a great deal of hard work, and a passion and curiosity about the world.

Even Ronan Bouroullec can't quite say how he and his brother won over the big brands.

Since 1997, when the Italian design master Giulio Cappellini discovered the two newcomers, the Bouroullec brothers' career has run smoothly. The home brands you know — Vitra, Artek, Magis, Alessi, Flos, Kvadrat, Iittala, Cappellini, Nanimarquina, Hay and the rest — all have long, steady relationships with the French brothers' studio. Known for work that is simple and useful without losing its design edge, they are regarded as the design stars most worth watching since Philippe Starck.

On a weekend in early March, Ronan Bouroullec came to China for the second time. He visited the Design Republic showroom on Jiangning Road in Shanghai, where an exhibition called "Dwelling" had just been installed. There are plenty of Bouroullec pieces in it: the Belleville Chair Ronan designed for Vitra, the Clouds installation for Kvadrat, and the Run furniture series for the American brand Emeco.

We met Ronan Bouroullec in that showroom. Next to his cheerful younger brother Erwan, Ronan is the harder of the two to please — an absolute perfectionist with a strong critical streak.

Talking with us, Ronan Bouroullec answered fast. "(The design language) changes every day. I think that to find a good answer, learning to question is very important. We always run into many problems, many solutions, many decisions to make, but we have to stay critical," he said. "Sometimes it is also necessary to keep a certain distance from things. It helps us think from a wider angle and try to find an intelligent answer."

The brothers work in small, scattered pieces. Ronan finds it hard to describe how he works at all: a day spent drawing, talking, walking around, sitting. He hands his finished drawings to a design assistant, who turns them into 3D-printed models.

In the 18 years since they opened the studio, the two have worked side by side, argued often, and made up quickly. "We only want to make better work," Ronan says. Designs that come out of their disagreements often surprise them — helped by backgrounds that fit together: Ronan studied applied arts and is strong on color and installation, while Erwan is better at lighting, display, and interiors.

Erwan designs on a computer. Ronan always starts with a sketch, then a model, then a product. Some people think that way of working is out of date. He doesn't mind.

The office sits in northeast Paris, in what used to be a three-story shoe factory. Apart from the brothers there are four young assistants. Six people, and the place is still crowded: desks jammed against one another and buried under clutter, one whole wall covered with drawings and project files. Downstairs in the workshop hang tools of every kind — wrenches in all sizes, tape, wire, screwdrivers. Here they will spend two or three years on a single piece.

Plain, patient labor and close quarters make them quick, and they have grown more and more prolific: nine pieces in 2014, 11 in 2015, 16 in 2016. At their busiest, the six of them had 20 design projects running at once.

Most designers have a design language of their own. The Bouroullec brothers prefer variety, and change. They move between large spaces and small objects, between mass production and handcraft, between plain statements and strong color. The pair call their work "solutions" — meaning that what they really care about is not the outward form but how better design solves a problem in ordinary life.

You can see it in everything they have touched. Designs built around a need look uncomplicated, carry no loud personal signature, and seem to suit anyone, anywhere. That is also why they can design for almost any brand — furniture, but also buildings, interiors, even electronics.

For the Italian lighting brand Flos, Bouroullec designed the aim pendant lamps. Long cords give them as much freedom as possible; like vines, the lamps wind and coil through the air, and from the bare to the lavish they can light very different rooms.

Bouroullec also likes to design in modules. Several of the pieces now treated as classics grow endlessly varied shapes out of one basic unit.

Their best-known modular works, Algues and Clouds, came in 2004 and 2009, both for Vitra. The "cloud" vases, designed in 2015, are a set of black ceramic vessels for flowers: the bodies take the shape of clouds, with unusual wavy rims. Vases of different heights can be combined at will into new groupings. After Zaha Hadid died in 2016, the brothers made the vases in white, filled them with flowers, and placed them inside her first built work — the fire station on the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein, Germany — in her memory.

They insist on meeting a need, but they do not think good design stops at function. Above that it should do more — be comfortable, and be beautiful.

The television they designed for Samsung shows how stubbornly they chase both.

Ronan Bouroullec treats getting rid of every "ugly thing" as a mission. The black box we have all stopped noticing — the television — could be part of the home, he believed, elegant enough in shape to belong in the room. When Samsung approached the brothers about working together in 2014, they put the idea on the table. It became the Serif TV. Seen from the side it is an elegant serif capital "I"; the back is covered in fabric. It can sit on a cabinet by itself, or be mounted on legs and stand on the floor.

The secret of a designer's rise is rarely easy to sum up. The Bouroullecs are no exception. Behind their success may lie an eye for what people really need, a great deal of hard work, and a passion and curiosity about the world.

On March 11 we sat in on a conversation between Lyndon Neri of Neri&Hu and Ronan Bouroullec at the Design Celebration. The day after it ended, QDaily also talked with Ronan Bouroullec for a while. What follows combines the two, with the more interesting remarks picked out. The secret behind Bouroullec design may be in them.

1. My brother and I disagree constantly, and design needs that

My brother and I argue a lot. In Chinese culture the younger brother usually listens to the older one; in France it is different. He started out as my assistant and later became my partner, working alongside me. We grew up in the French countryside, on a farm. We came to art and drawing early, and whatever I did, my brother tended to like as well. He is also very good with computers, and good at a lot of other things.

Design work is really a process of inspiration appearing, and it takes good technique too, if the design is going to be any good. In the studio we sit facing each other and judge each other's work. He'll say: that's well done, but this small part could still be better.

Design is not art. It is not a job that involves you alone, so you have to learn to work with people. We deal with engineers, with the CEOs of client companies, and with craftspeople, and together we settle a piece's form, function, and looks. Everyone plays a part in the process.

2. I don't much mind being copied — I didn't invent the chair

I don't think copying my chair design is anything remarkable. The chair is not a brand-new invention; it isn't as if the world had no chairs before. I keep talking about solutions — a solution is what we are looking for, and I have been researching this since 2000. How do you design better office furniture, for instance? Everyone works in an office, maybe more than 12 hours a day, and for all those hours everyone wants a chair that is convenient and comfortable.

On that point, if you simply make a straight copy of my work, I think it's fine. But I hope that when you copy it, you also take in what I was thinking when I designed the chair. It is a good method of mine, and you can share it. If my design encourages you in some way, that seems to me a very good thing.

I know there are plenty of well-known furniture makers today whose products may take their inspiration from other people's designs. You can see it: some of their details look very similar.

3. An important stretch in my life

Around 2000 and 2002 we met some clients, and some other important designers. They wanted us to rethink the office — including the enormous office that holds ten thousand people. I had no experience of that then, and our studio was three people. So it struck me as strange that a client would suddenly hand us a project that size. Two years of work later, our ideas had taken shape, the studio had grown to six, and we had started working on computers. That stretch mattered a great deal to me.

4. If you don't make something different, there's no point

Our studio is very small and runs many projects. But when we take one on, we have to be sure it is a project we want to do.

Samsung came to us once and said they wanted to do a television. A television also carries something of the spirit of the electronic age. I told them we could work together, and that we wanted interaction in the set we designed. That was when it occurred to us: could the television be built into a wall, or into a cabinet? Once we had that, the project interested me more and more — we were making the screen a piece of furniture.

I can't call it a brand-new invention. But when you take on a project you have to feel that it speaks to you. You can make a rug, you can make something like what already exists — but if you don't make it different, there's no point.

5. I want to work with the best companies

I don't chase the number of companies I work with; I chase working with the best ones. Vitra is one of them, a very well-known company and a large one, and we want to innovate together and open up new directions.

6. One of a designer's jobs is to find better solutions in the work

When I do industrial design I often have to find a few basic ideas and see which suit the industry. To find a better solution you have to take the industry's character into account: robots? Or some other material?

At the same time, outside mass industrial production, handcraft interests me a great deal. I work with artisans from Italy, China, and Pakistan, all of them with skills handed down through generations.

So one of a designer's jobs is to find better solutions in the work. And beyond that, to help the industries and workers involved find better answers too, so their skills survive in a world that keeps changing.

I have a partner in Pakistan, for example — a family of hereditary craftsmen whose products still sell in South America, Brazil, and elsewhere. Watching them, I found they are not just good with their hands; they are part of a society. While I was doing that project in Pakistan I talked it over with the local elders, and the project ended up running for nearly three years and involving 150 artisans in all. A project like that leaves its mark on the local society and economy.

7. Shouldn't we be reaching more people?

What is called Nordic style is the modernist movement that began in the last century, combining practicality with beauty. The question is how to make furnishings that serve an ordinary family. That family may have only a small room of 25 or 30 square meters — how do you serve them? How should their furniture and kitchen be designed? That is the direction we are looking at.

We hope new companies will join in and answer such questions, find cheaper solutions, bring prices down to something fair, and serve more people.

8. The world is changing and people now see how much design matters. There are many ways to become a designer

On good design, including integrated design, Apple has always been a good example. Through its designs it changed the whole world — not a surface improvement but a revolutionary change, a brand-new concept introduced by a team of only ten people.

That is Apple's story. In France, design is not treated as an industry or a profession, and no government body is in charge of it. But our design really has moved the economy; good designers grow very fast, and the good products they make change how people live. So I think people should understand the designer's profession much better. In Italy, for instance, design had a major effect on social change — the people of the Renaissance were painters and sculptors, and designers too.

As far as I know, young designers today have far wider careers, and they have to think about demand worldwide. For them there are many ways to become a designer: you can work for a company, or you can design on your own. If the early work goes well, you can live on royalties later. If it doesn't go so well, you have to think about survival. You can take on a lot of work, but the most important question is whether you have a method — a strategy — and know how to go about it.

9. To young designers: "You should get out to the front line"

I'm always being asked what I have to say to young designers. Doesn't that mean I'm being treated as an old designer?

Honestly, I think you are all younger and should do better than we did. My advice: as a designer you have to go into factories, out to the front line of life, and get to know different companies.

Designers have to work with other people, so you have to understand how different industries work and what you can change. I don't think that's very difficult. What matters most is having a good idea, one that can actually be made. And you have to share your ideas with others, so people know which way you are heading. That's my advice to you all: never see yourself as an expert; see yourself as someone working with others, and learning.

Cover image: designboom, stylepark

Other images in this article: Studio Bouroullec, bestinteriordesigners