TRENDS

For the first time the Paris Déco Off show is holding a botanical-design fair, with guests including the talented Alexis Tricoire.

He's a design artist, botanist, scenic designer and gardener – Alexis Tricoire is of those who have made the repute of a now-booming discipline: botanical design. For over a decade he has been rethinking nature's place in our society on behalf of international institutions and companies. Known for his spectacular, sensory botanical installations featuring everyday objects or huge sculptures, to each of his creations this designer brings an innovative, committed eye that communicates his desire to raise our awareness of the need to respect the environment. One example is his Babylone ceiling lamp (2011) that uses a bubble to redefine the idea of a hanging garden; the light source doesn't just illuminate the home in an original way, it also ensures the plants inside flourish. His Two-Headed Dragon installation commissioned by the Cité de la Mode et du Design (Paris) and displayed there from June to November 2015 was an immense, extraordinary semi-aquatic beast created from living plants sprouting out of huge tubes snaking up and around the vast entrance foyer and atrium.

Levitating trees
With his Végétal Atmosphère studio, set up in 2009, for experimenting, Tricoire engages in diverse collaborations with specialists of many types, notably sound designers such as French composer Gilles Cardoni; this gives him an effectively limitless freedom of expression, indoors and out, lasting or temporary. “To mark the eating area in the new Minto shopping centre that opened last year in Mönchengladbach, Germany, I devised the Diner’s Tree, an 18m-tall audio and botanical installation reaching up through the centre's four floors. From the 'trunk' of this tree sculpture, 15 cast-aluminium 'planter-plates', 2m across, branch out into space, each presenting a unique arrangement of plants as in a dish on a restaurant menu.” An ode to biodiversity, their 40 species of tropical plants will evolve with time and the seasons. Tricoire's projects for 2016? A botanical décor for Angers railway station, reflecting the town's horticultural identity and making it a showcase for the region. A first in France, for which: “The stand-out element is to be ‘levitated’ trees, along with others on the ground plus banks of flowers.” And this month in Paris's 6th arrondissement Tricoire is previewing a free-standing urban planter as part of the first Off de l'Art et du Design Végétal event. This new concept, developed out of the Bird project designed for the Ruhr Park shopping centre in Bochum, Germany, is intended as a 'flying garden' in the form of an albatross. Truly a meaningful flight of fancy!

* 7 to 11 April 2016 at around 30 venues in Paris.