Book of the Week
Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec Drawing
“The fact that we can discuss everything openly and honestly
with each other is important because often creativity does not come
from a rational point of view but an emotional one.” Erwan Bouroullec
Known for unusual forms and materials, it should not surprise that the Bouroullec brothers – who introduced the LED lighting to Versailles with the Gabriel chandelier – would confound and delight their fans with the same sensibility in a new book. Published with the French Museum of Decorative Arts, it is neither an exhaustive inventory, nor an elite selection of the two brother’s work, but a compilation of sketch books and drawings completed in the years between 2005 and 2012. Both finished work and seminal ideas, it clearly presents a visual process, as much as design object. The volume follows diverse criteria: reproducing a vast number of personal drawings in the context of the designers’ body of work, it is organized chronologically; the layout and materials giving a cohesiveness to this format. Cornel Windlin, the multi-award winning graphic designer oversaw this massive volume
of 864 pages in the beautiful and thinnest “Bible” paper.
There are no texts, apart from the introduction; no titles, not even a date or a description, only a concise one page biography at the end.
The book reveals the private and intimate way the brothers work together. Their visuals are more generous with information than photographs, less precise than technical blueprints, and all their drawings look to the inner language
of the project at hand, under a wise graphic eye.
Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec Drawing
by Cornel Windlin
JRP Ringier publisher, 2013
20,5 x 28 cm, pp. 864, € 38
on sale at Galleria Carla Sozzani Bookshop