Public Prize and 2nd jury prize during France Design Week in Tours, the “Vice-versa” chair by Alban Corbel was able to seduce, it is no longer an abandoned chair…
Abandoned chairs to adopt
Abandoned chairs to adopt, this is the creative adoption campaign launched by the association Valesens (also organizer of France Design Week last September in Touraine) in order to give a new recycled or even upcycled life to discarded school chairs. The designers therefore had to compete with their imagination in order to transform these chairs. At the prize giving ceremony for the Creative Adoption Campaign for Abandoned Furniture competition, as part of France Design Week, the art craftsman Alban Corbel was awarded 2 prizes, the Public Prize and the 2nd Jury Prize for his chair “Vice-versa”
Vice versa: an intergenerational chair
Alban Corbel was particularly inspired by this school chair because it was one of the first pieces of furniture that he revisited when he embarked on the activity of painting upcycled street furniture. Made up of two school chairs closely linked together, symbolizing the link between generations, this composition highlights the transmission of knowledge and intergenerational exchange. Placed face to face, these chairs create an intimate space conducive to dialogue and sharing. The chairs, marked by the scars of time, tell the stories of those who sat there. They are the silent witness of exchanges between teachers and students, between young people and elders.
On the one hand, the elder can transmit his knowledge, sharing life lessons, knowledge and experiences accumulated over time. On the other hand, the young person can invite the adult to rediscover simplicity and joy through games and fun activities, recalling the importance of remaining curious and open. »
A passion for old furniture
Old furniture is what inspires Alban Corbel who takes pleasure, as he explains to us, in revisiting it with a graphic style of his own and very recognizable, a real signature which brings to mind the patterns of giraffes and which he calls Mosaïk with a K for his Breton origins, he tells us!! Thus, he revalorizes objects, transforms, designs and paints these discarded pieces of furniture, giving them a very stylish second life!
He particularly likes simple shapes, the combination of metal and wood and sees his work as a form of passage which highlights the blows, the bumps, the injuries by this furniture, which he sublimates like this Japanese technique of Kintsugi which consists of gilding the fractures of objects which are even more beautiful afterwards than before. And then, why go buy poor quality furniture that comes from very far away when you can go get what you need from the attic or from grandpa/grandma and transform this piece of furniture that can last a long time?
Alban's little factory is based at Le Hangar in Saint-Avertin where he works among other craftsmen.
France
