Studio Diplomates: The studio offering elegant brutalism

Central Image: Desideration (with Smith) - Moonbeds | Image courtesy of Smith

We met with Matthieu from Diplomates on a fair day at the foot of Lycabettus hill at a cafe overlooking Athens. Serendipitously, we arrived at the exact same time and our conversation involved much of the metropolis we were overlooking; matters of spontaneity, site-specificity, repetition and tropes of seductive scenographic interventions.

Matthieu is not your typical designer. His background is quite peculiar. He is an autodidact designer: having gone through the formal education of designers and artists for a couple of years, he decided that it wouldn’t suit him for his creative endeavors and threw himself in the centre of designing. This peculiarity and the notion of construction feasibility permeates their process. His work in Diplomates, while starting from the typical, explores the atypical or even the hyper-typical. 

Piéce d’Anarchive (with Jean-Pierre Raynaud), Palais de Tokyo | Image courtesy of Pièce d’Anarchive

Desideration (with Smith), Galerie les Filles du Calvaire, Paris | Image courtesy Les Filles du Calvaire

Desideration (with Smith), Rencontres d’Arles | Image courtesy of Diplomates studio

Installations, colours, textures, lights and design interventions are words that outline the work of studio Diplomates. Their tectonic forms deregulate the spaces they create, which are reshaped into new references and starting points for the visitor to interpret. Beginning from the 5 by 5 wooden plank, they create speakers on the scale of a stage, ziggurats for social interaction and even moonbeds for rumination. Having solved the assembly phase with their basic construction solutions, they can spend more time in the stage of composition, which can allow them to embark on a balancing act of their raw, almost brutal projects, with the surrounding world being understood through the environment of the city, through a clearing in the woods of Corsica, through the cosmos at large. 

The Ossiderium, Casell’ Arte Fabbrica | Image courtesy of Diplomates studio

The Ossiderium, Casell’ Arte Fabbrica | Image courtesy of Diplomates studio

The Ossiderium, Casell’ Arte Fabbrica | Image courtesy of Diplomates studio

Diplomates is a studio, with multiple fields of interest and activity. They themselves state that they offer an experiment and a vision of modernity that implicates the spectator in the location of intervention through site-specific installations. In most of their projects, whether it be runways for fashion shows or retail or pavilions, studio Diplomates operates on the intermediate scale between a piece of furniture and a building, thus allowing for an adequate design resolution of the spaces involved. This allows their work to be framed as a familiar object, through which one can be at ease and excited at the same time.

Detour exhibition, 10AM x Dapper Dan | Image courtesy of Diplomates studio

The Sickness of Time / The Thickness of Time exhibition, curated by Locus Athens - | Image courtesy of Dimitris Parthimos

The project Kassandras was part of this journey and it lasted for five years in Athens. The Locus took place in Votanikos and their “un-disciplinary” approach, as Matthieu called it, drew together a group of interdisciplinary professionals who were involved with a variety of projects. They were working together, making things together, having parties together and trying to make a positive impact in the city together. Part of their work was dealing with unfinished buildings, which abound in Athens, and the paradoxical notion of the long-term ephemeral, which for me encapsulates the Greek mentality almost perfectly. Their question of how not to produce ruins directed them into making pieces that would regenerate these empty sights with a vibrant energy of the people and of the places. 

Kassandras | Image courtesy of Pierre Blanc

As all things do, Kassandras also came to an end at its natural pace. But as it, usually, happens, one chapter ends and another begins. Now, Matthieu is also working closely with ciguë as a creative consultant, trying to formulate a meaningful direction for the projects they have themselves involved with and specifically a hospitality project happening in Athens and which is his main focus at the present time by curating the art program. It would be an understatement to say we are excited to see what they come up with next!