CHAIRS
AND
TIME
Summum Architecture
Paris, France
As part of Paris Design Week, Saints la nuit is partnering with the new procurement agency The List to present the exhibition "Chairs and Time", on view at the premises of Summum Architecture from September 9 to 19, 2026. Curated by Nour Tournier, designers and artists Dorian Balsegur, Malo Espercieux, Mia Gosset, Thomas Lelouch, Clémence Mars, Maxime Partouche, and Maison Charles are exhibiting seating designs brought together through an uchronic exploration of the timeline.
View of the exhibition with, from left to right, seating by Dorian Balsegur, Thomas Lelouch, Clémence Mars, and Maxime Partouche © Juliette Mouratoglou
Between a place of conception and a place of exhibition, shaped by the daily practice of design, the space of the Summum Architecture agency offers the presented seating a naturally fitting framework, where materials conceived in their relationship to humans are drawn. Much like architectural science, where each type carries within it the memory of those who preceded it while anticipating the uses it will enable, Chairs and Time brings together pieces by six designers drawing on ancient references as well as anticipatory visions, each capable of breaking free from the era to which their piece belongs.
Rare is the object that bears such faithful witness to its era as the chair—the very object that Hoffmann once ironically described as a "sitting machine." The curve of a backrest, the shape of a leg, the angle of a seat, or the choice of a color say a great deal about the stylistic stance of a given time, but just as much about the function fulfilled: the chair embraces the evolutions of both morals and lifestyles.
Seating by Maxime Partouche © Juliette Mouratoglou
Chairs and Time focuses on the contemporary side of a history already widely documented by books and exhibitions, adopting the observation of Rolf Fehlbaum, chairman emeritus of Vitra: "no other everyday object brings such diversity." A symbol of power in the 18th century, then a bourgeois staple of family dining rooms in the 19th, the chair became a true design object in the following century, driven by avant-garde experimentations and then by the Bauhaus functionalist principle that form follows function. From the golden age of the 1940s-1960s—between molded plywood and injected plastic—to the ecological concerns of the late 20th century and postmodern reinterpretations of the classical repertoire, this history implicitly tells the story of the materials, techniques, and societies that shaped it.
Seating by Malo Espercieux and Mia Gosset © Juliette Mouratoglou
A program to be found in the Paris Design Week guide
Seating by Malo Espercieux and Mia Gosset © Juliette Mouratoglou
A program to be found in the Paris Design Week guide
These two polarities—memory and anticipation—are what the six designers gathered here work with, each in their own way: the functionalist purity of Maxime Partouche and his Freedom Chair; the formal freedom offered by the mastery of materials in the work of Thomas Lelouch and Clémence Mars; the raw leather and medieval iconography invoked by Malo Espercieux and Mia Gosset; and the sculptural quest of Dorian Balsegur, whose La Flèche, for TOTEM Mobilier, embodies an unprecedented soaring flight. Emerging between medieval heritage and futuristic projections is a true-false history of design, where narratives overlap.
Saints la nuit extends its most sincere thanks to Paris Design Week and Summum Architecture for hosting the exhibition.
Maxime Partouche's Freedom Chair can be found here, as part of the Saints la nuit viewing rooms.
Curator: Nour Tournier
Consulting Agency: Saints la nuit
Exhibition Scenographer: Dorian Lafargue
Production: The List Paris
