Rive Gauche: major editors and emerging design
The Left Bank is the quartier of the major contemporary furniture brands. During Paris Design Week, it is a chance to revisit the pieces that have shaped modern design at Knoll, Cassina, B&B Italia and other major houses, and to see the new directions they are taking.
The route then continues with Louis Vuitton Objets Nomades, where the house’s archives meet new pieces of furniture, and passes by Studio Andrée Putman, which brings re-editions, collaborations and new contemporary creations into view.
At Gobelins, the programme takes a different direction. In the chapel of the Manufacture des Gobelins, Jiang Qiong Er presents four seats opposite two French lacquer works from the collections of the Mobilier National, the French National Museum of Furniture. At the Galerie des Gobelins, ‘Vivement Demain #5’ brings together twenty-three young designers who graduated from the Campus Mode, Métiers d’Art & Design. The Prix Jeune Création 2026 presents projects by its finalists and alumni.
Visit Café Varenne
36 rue de Varenne, 75007 Paris
Palais Royal to Place des Victoires and Pigalle: Paris looks East
At the Musée des Arts décoratifs, ‘Paris > Kyoto > Paris’ brings together four important designers returning from a year-long residency in Japan: Nina Fradet, Tony Jouanneau, Felipe Ribon and Marion Vidal. The exhibition explores what a residency can offer: new ideas, new forms, new materials and new ways of looking at objects, with the Villa Kujoyama as an important point of reference.
The route continues through the museum’s collections, then to Source Édition, which re-issues iconic pieces from the 1950s to the 1970s in collaboration with designers and manufacturers. At Pierre Frey, the new furniture showroom is designed as a Parisian apartment. At Yves Salomon Éditions, materials and fabrics leave the wardrobe to become furniture in the collection ‘Tactile Monuments’.
François-Régis Clocheau / Paris Design Week
Marais to Bastille and République: design in historic places
At the Hôtel de Rohan, the sculptural furniture piece ‘Arabesque’ by Pierre Renart translates the curves of a formal French garden into a monumental bench made entirely from Moabi wood. It is a piece of furniture connected to the ornate gardens around it.
At the Institut suédois on rue Payenne, the exhibition ‘Everything is in Order’ brings together design, art and fashion. Nearby, at the Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris, the emerging ppdesigner collective presents ‘Service Included’, an installation imagined as a Parisian café in the open air, with furniture, objects, tableware and readings arranged as though on an outdoor terrace.
The French Design by VIA, which has promoted French design for 40 years, presents a selection organised around several themes, from playful interactive design to the reuse of materials in an age of consumption.
The route can also include ‘The Re-taking of the Bastille’, a much-anticipated installation by Claire Renard and Jean-Sébastien Blanc, co-founders of Studio 5.5. It features 196 flags made from recovered clothing, including a white flag as a message of peace.
Pierre Renart — DR
Opéra to Concorde and Étoile: living with monuments
At the Fondation Le Corbusier, the apartment-studio and Maison La Roche show how architecture, light and furniture can combine to create living spaces.
Nearby, at the Grand Palais, ‘The Large Bouquet’, imagined by Uchronia, takes over the exhibition space with a monumental flower installation. At the Arc de Triomphe, ‘La Tempête’ offers an immersive and new way of seeing a monument we think we already know. The artist Jeremy Pradier-Jeauneau has imagined and created a succession of works that transforms the ascent through the arch into a spectacular experience.
Café de la Paix is an address tied to history and to the Second Empire style. Best experienced simply, sitting and relaxing on the terrace with a coffee or a house pastry.
Fondation Le Corbusier DR
The highlights if you have one day
You do not need to try to see everything. If you have one day, three stops offer a useful introduction to the different sides of Paris Design Week:
1. The Gobelins collections of the Mobilier National, for emerging design, craftsmanship and institutional collections gathered in the same area.
2. Paris > Kyoto > Paris, to discover how four French designers interpret their experience in Japan.
3. The Re-taking of the Bastille, where recovered clothing becomes an artwork in public space through 195 flags representing the countries of the United Nations, plus a white flag as a message of peace.
Jean-Sébastien Blanc / Maison&Objet
Paris Design Week is best experienced at your own pace, through its creators, designers, places, monuments, bistros and cafés. Re-Situ creates private, bespoke visits for travellers who want to discover Paris beyond the usual itinerary.
