Today, scenography with a storyteller. Stories from trade shows, museum exhibitions and even live shows with Christopher Dessus, architect and scenographer. This space designer loves above all, with PAF Atelier, to adapt and renew according to the projects. In his work, he likes to take a position in relation to the world in which he evolves while looking for a link to others.
His scenographies combine design and production in order to have a coherently designed and produced whole. Christopher Dessus and PAF Atelier produce concepts while finding new ways to think about the product and everything that revolves around it.
I learned through meetings, exchanges, partnerships, setting up collaborations. Also understanding how these energies work has been fundamental in the way in which I work today. My subject has been more food for thought, therefore writing and meetings.
Christopher Dessus, architect and founder of PAF Atelier:
“I didn’t want to call the workshop by my first and last name at all. I wanted a word that rather brings people together behind. I like the idea of having something simple enough to remember. There is not too much intellectualization behind it, it was just to have something that could potentially be worth, in quotes, an action, or in any case a dynamism and something quite immediate. And bam ! Either way, it’s a way for me to make things a little lighter. »
Born in Nice in the south of France, Christopher was not predestined for architecture or scenography. His farmer parents encouraged him in his desire to do things differently. After his baccalaureate, he joined the Versailles architecture school. At the end of his studies, he created his publishing house PLI, which allowed him to train himself in different artistic fields, and he founded PAF Atelier in 2017to move on to the implementation of his designs, his ideas.
“For example, we had the project for the Première Classe lounge. The construction site was titanic. We have worked on gigantic tents of more than 600 square meters where you have to generate a lot of volume. Doing scenography in there requires monumental budgets. Our job was to find a way to make the wall flexible for easy assembly, so as not to build and then throw in the trash. These elements have been completely reused and that is why the production is very important. »
“We always manage to find tips and that’s what PAF Atelier is called for, I think. To try to find solutions which are at the same time of the order of aesthetics, semantics, semiology, but also of production and how, in a certain way, we can respond to a project by being coherent and at the same time finding clever things to be able to do it. The other advantage of the agency, and this is also what makes it somewhat specific, is that we have multiple obsessions. We don’t have just one and we don’t just have one tool. »
The creative intuition of Christopher Dessus is subject to the order, the specifications of the private, public, associative or live performance client. With PAF Atelier, he wishes to take up the challenge of the material that beautifies space.
“We follow specifications because that’s our job. For me, it is fundamental. Afterwards, at the creative level, I think that I have an instinct and that I try to have a global vision of the agency and especially of what I want to do. But, sometimes, I’m wrong and it’s the team that also allows me to find new things to test. On the other hand, when there are things that I don’t want to talk about, and if we talk about it for a client, maybe we won’t keep this idea to pursue it. »
“We had our curtain days. At one time I was a fan of curtains, we used them in all our projects and now we are in the inflatable era. We had the era of sheet metal. We had plenty of sorts of obsessions like that that have always remained there. I try to infuse them a bit because it’s interesting. We work for a few years or a few months on materials or effects, renderings, openings, shapes, etc. because it also exhausts them. I love this process of exhaustion. »
“In creating too, to say to ourselves that we start from point A and we go to point B potentially by exhausting it in every way, we arrive in a certain way at the ideal form, or in any case in the most universal form possible. »
Find all the episodes of 100% Création on:
Apple Podcast Castbox Deezer Google Podcast Addict Podcast Spotifyor any other platform via the RSS feed.