Ep. 193: Raphael Navot on Non-Industrial Design and Mending the Non-Spoken

Jun 13

Multidisciplinary designer, Raphael Navot, grew up in homes built by his dad, inventing creative escapist activities with his siblings. After the success of Silencio, a Paris nightclub collaboration with David Lynch, he did the opposite of what many expected - turned down the flood of offers and took time off to reconnect with himself and his purpose. Many notable projects later, he remains deeply rooted in a practice informed by curiosity, care and intention.

Amy Devers: Hi everyone, I’m Amy Devers and this is Clever, Today I’m talking to multidisciplinary designer Raphael Navot based in Paris, Raphael creates furniture, objects and bespoke spaces. Describing himself as a “non-industrial” designer - his work is characterized by the use of organic shapes, noble raw materials and traditional man-made techniques. This results in immersive spaces and sensuous volumes, meticulously crafted, in rich, earthy materials like stone, charred wood, mineral coatings, leather and cashmere. He graduated from Design Academy Eindhoven with a degree in Conceptual Design and he first gained international recognition in 2011 with his design of Silencio, a collaboration with famed filmmaker David Lynch, in the form of a nightclub & cinema. Since then Raphael’s deeply diverse portfolio of work includes celebrated projects such as the Parisian flagship boutique of Japanese brand Pas de Calais, the Hôtel National des Arts et Métiers - a 66-room hotel and restaurant in central Paris, a highly technical line of End Grain flooring for Oscar Ono, and a solo exhibition at Friedman Benda featuring a collection of luxe, sculptural furniture and objects. Most recently, in January of 2023, he was selected as the Designer of the Year by Maison & Objet. As you’ll hear in this conversation, Raphael’s demeanor is as earnest as his materials and as thoughtful and poetic as his work. Here’s Raphael…
Raphael Navot: My name is Raphael Navot. I am based in Paris, working and living. I'm a designer.
Amy: I understand you were born and raised in Jerusalem. Can you take me back to young Raphael and talk to me about your childhood and the kinds of things that captured your imagination, your family dynamic.
Raphael: Yeah. I was born in Jerusalem, '77. I remember moving quite a lot with my family around Jerusalem from different neighborhoods. I think my mom was a bit escaping the religious aspect as Jerusalem became stronger and stronger.
Amy: Your mom is from Poland originally, yes?
Raphael: Yes. My mom is from Poland. My dad is from Morocco so that is already a contrasted mix for Israel.
Amy: Why were you in Israel to begin with?
Raphael: Their families had both immigrated. Israel opened its port in 1948 and way before, but there was a lot of immigration, both idealistic or I would say practical. The family of my dad came from Morocco and the family of my mom came from Poland. Yeah, we're a first generation.
Amy: Yes, interesting. And the moving around? Understandably there's a lot of conflict there. Were you moving around to avoid the conflict?
Raphael: I think essentially my parents were concerned about the fact that some neighborhoods were becoming more and more religious. They were very insistent on liberal education for us and that in the midst, in Jerusalem at that time was not so easy. So yes, we moved quite a lot as children. We are four of us. I'm the second.
Amy: Okay.
Raphael: So girl, boy, boy, girl. About two years apart so it's quite tight. Imagine.
Amy: Are you close with your siblings?
Raphael: Yeah, very much.
Amy: So I'm just going to guess, but moving around a lot also means switching schools?
Raphael: Yes, switching schools which for me it's funny, the first thing I thought about moving around was about home, changing home. I didn't even think about the friend, the social change. (Laughs)
Amy: Wow. Well talk to me about changing homes because that means you have a deep connection to environment which I am not surprised to learn.
Raphael: Yeah, and it's funny, I always think that my parents all have very good taste, but they have, especially my dad, has a practical sense because my dad was a carpenter as a hobby. Our rooms were mostly built by my dad, the beds, the cupboards, everything around. The house, the kitchen.
Amy: Okay, this is all adding up, Raphael. Talk to me about your teenage years. You've got what sounds like a tight-knit family, a liberal education, you moved from environment to environment and lived in these spaces that were lovingly crafted by your father. But at the same time they are growth spurts for us. Our bodies are changing, we're floundering to find a new identity. What was yours like?
Raphael: I think that me and older sister, we have what you might call creative OCD. We were really obsessed with all the kinds of games that we would invent ourselves, so for most of my childhood there was a lot of craft and a lot of drawings and a lot of making. Even though I see myself as coming from a rather normative background, then again everybody might describe that and thinking of the contrasted country which I grew in and all the events around my family, I think that we were already as children quite using a lot of our time to escape into creation. So creation as therapy or as a method of mending the non-spoken has already been very much implanted.
Amy: Did you just say 'mending the non-spoken?'
Raphael: Yeah.
Amy: It's a turn of phrase that I'm not familiar with and it might be because English is your second language.
Raphael: Yeah, English is my second language but that's why sometimes I find myself inventing terms. (Laughs)
Amy: Yes, so that is a beautiful invention because so much of what needs to be addressed is non-spoken. Can you actually describe some of the ways that you were mending the non-spoken through creativity?
Raphael: I think that just the ability to make something from nothing. For a child but also for an adult. It's giving you a certain sense of liberty, right?
Amy: And agency.
Raphael: Yeah, exactly. You have agency and more than anything you have liberty to create a reality or let's say an altered reality which I think I remember spending, me and my older sister, she's two years older, we spent hours just side-by-side drawing or making something. Hours. Somehow this was our favorite time and it wasn't really about drawing funny bears or family constellations and checking all the colors. We were actually quite methodical. We were choosing one color, creating a full, big, we used to create this color. It's very unlikely, brown was our favorite color. Can you imagine? Very funny. And we would just color a full page in it. It's not even drawing something on it. And then we used to take the page and cut it in little, little pieces. It was really like a, a sweatshop. We were creating sweatshops for ourselves, we were creating really hard labor. And we would make these tiny, tiny round bowls and this would be the food that we would feed all our puppets with. But we used to do it for hours. (Laughs)
Amy: Oh my goodness, this is amazing. And there is something meditative. Even though you describe it as a sweatshop and hard labor. And it is. It's tedious, it's repetitive, and at the same time there's something meditative and you get to be in a sort of constructed safe space with your sister.
Raphael: Yeah, it was a very intuitive meditation that we developed quite early through craft because at the time even though it sounds funny but for kids to be so obsessed with the amount, the size of the paper, the type of paper that we're going to use, what kind of browns. I remember all our palettes of colors, they were always missing the color brown because it ran out (laughter) and it was the most unpopular color possible for a child. But that's how we knew food for animals is brown. It was very simple.
Amy: Oh. So your attraction to brown was because it had sustenance.
Raphael: It was a logical color. And I think that when you think about all the colors that we're being proposed as children, they don't make any sense. Our bodies, our environment are really rarely in an idealistic space has all these colors. But mostly also maybe I used to live in Jerusalem when it was still very naive. It was very bare and we had nature that was very virgin,, dry herbs, stale greens, clear sky.
Amy: Oh wow. Very muted.
Raphael: Yeah, very muted colors. The limestone for Jerusalem because you have to build in one stone. Still today it's the law that you can only build from the stone of the ground. So basically whatever you dig in, you build up. Similar to Paris.
Amy: Thank you for going that deep into your childhood activities because you have painted a vivid picture for me and clearly you had support from your parents to engage in these activities. They're wanting a liberal education for you. Did you have support from them in terms of pursuing something creative when you went off to study conceptual design?
Raphael: Yeah, 100%. Yeah, all the time.
Amy: What informed your decision to go to Holland to study conceptual design at Design Academy Eindhoven?
Raphael: I think firstly since I'm coming from an incredible and new country, Israel with everything that you can say about it politically or from an anthropological sense it's still very young for craft and design and art. Of course it's developing pretty quickly and it's very typical for Israel to catch up and further. Not only do they catch up in all fields that they go and even further, but it was something a little bit too new for me and I didn't feel that I could get the study that I want or to understand and just a few visits to Europe unveiled so much history and so much heritage and legacy and knowledge.
I remember when I was 15 or so, it was the first time that I was abroad and the first thing that I was fascinated by was pavements. There were finished pavements everywhere. It was just stunning and with cobbled stone and all kinds of granite that I don't know. And around the trees there was this bronze protection and inside this protection there were little tiny stones. (Laughter) I was mind-blown.
Amy: The textures of ancient cities is really engrossing and mesmerizing. Yes. So I had a question. I want to back up a little bit. I'm thinking about these rooms that you live in that your father built and understanding he's from Morocco, did they have a kind of Moroccan craft to them?
Raphael: Not particularly although he did create a lot of plaster like structural libraries which I am still using in almost all of my projects. He used to build plaster libraries which are in the walls. But I think my father had nine brothers and sisters.
Amy: Oh.
Raphael: Yeah, imagine that. (Laughter) It's a huge family but it also creates, I imagine, a lot of independence because by the time you were five years old you were already responsible for three kids. And he was the first born. Yeah, so I think he has all abilities, like he can do all types of man.
Amy: You're mesmerized by the depth, the tradition, the history, and the craft legacy of these European cities so you went off to Holland to study conceptual design. Can you talk to me about your college years and what you felt you could take away from the college years that has really served you?
Raphael: Yeah, a lot actually. Especially from the Design Academy Eindhoven. I mean first I did a trip. When you go out of the army in Israel, both for girls and boys you have three years of your life that you gave in one way or another, and a lot of Israelis go and travel just to wind off. They go to India or Africa, and I traveled to different countries in Europe to find my school, to look for my school.
The first thing I wanted to do was to study architecture, that was the main thing I wanted to do. I arrived in London to meet a friend of my grandfather who is called Joseph Rykwert who is a professor of architecture. He was back then working for the AA and just one meeting with him I realized it was just not for me,
Amy: Okay, good. That's efficient. (Laughter)
Raphael: Exactly. It was the responsibility that really turned me off. The idea of building something that will last there and the whole story. It was just that I thought that I do want to do architecture but I was really afraid of the idea of something that would last.
Amy: I know we're still in your college story but if we could back up a little bit, that the years you spent in the Israeli army, was that impactful on you?
Raphael: I was lucky to have a great service. It's a very informed army, so I've learned a lot and I was working already in amazing software and things that I work daily now with, back in '95. Can you imagine? I was already mastering many 3D programs in '95.
Amy: Wow, that's intense.
Raphael: Yes. So in a way back then the army already gave me a lot of education and a lot of experience. You're only 18 years old and you're walking around with an M16 and you are studying at 5:00 in the morning. It gives you an immediate, very instant type of growing up or having some responsibility.
Amy: Do you feel like it also takes your innocence in a way?
Raphael: I think it does somehow, but when you see it as a country. You always talk about it since you're very young. What do you want to do in the army? It's a very smart army, it gives somewhat of a choice. You're not completely in the hands and there's never a discussion about not doing it. Of course there can be but the idea generally is to create something that can work for both sides and I ended up doing a creative job. So when I left I started to do models, I was building architectural models.
Amy: Yeah, this makes sense. I can also see the army as maybe more of a rite of passage than something that steals your innocence. It sort of initiates you into adulthood in a meaningful way.
Raphael: Yeah.
Amy: And into service in a meaningful way.
Raphael: Absolutely. You're living in a country that has a certain type of set up, whether you like it or not you're a part of it. Whether you hold a pessimistic opinion, on whether you're left or right, you are taking part in your country. It's something that it very connecting as well. I met most of my best friends that I have now I met in the army. It's a melting pot.
Amy: Thank you for sharing that. I have no experience with the army so I'm just sort of fascinated by that experience. From there you were making architectural models and maquettes and having maybe ahead of the curve in terms of computer renderings. So you're traveling around looking for your school to study. Found out it's not architecture, too permanent. (Laughs)
Raphael: No, it was really clear. I had this amazing meeting with the professor. I had time with him in his beautiful Hampstead Heath, it was a house that was full of books. He was sitting and making me tomato soup and his garden was just really perfect. I remember him correcting me all the time. Every term that I'm using he says, “That's not an academic term.” I remember myself being in awe and very respectful, but on the other hand I felt I'm too young for this. (Laughter) Yes, but not now kind of feeling.
Amy: Oh, that's very self-aware.
Raphael: Yeah, and I remember we arrived at my next stop was at Li Edelkoort school that was called The Design Academy. I remember this school was different than other schools and I wanted to know why. But when I went there to Holland, that was my next stop, the first thing I saw was a cafeteria [0.20.00] and it looked amazing. It's really stupid. It sounds really silly to say, but the cafeteria looked so cool that I said that's where I want to be. (Laughter) It's almost to be a choice on the good life, you know. You need to choose your profession, you want to do it wisely, you want to make the right choice. I always knew I wanted to do something creative. I thought that the peak of creativity would be architecture and then I realized I want to enjoy more and I want to explore more. I thought that Holland was just the perfect place for that.
Amy: I think it's very telling that you chose your school based on the cafeteria.
Raphael: (Laughter) Yes, hospitality.
Amy: Yes.
Raphael: Yeah. (Laughter) Absolutely. At the end it's about wanting to enjoy and it's funny that all the times when you go into, the more in depth you go into the design it's a funny term anyway, it's very funny to say 'design' still to me because it's such a huge field and it touches practically anything that captures your eye at any given moment. But when you think about that, when you are becoming too serious about it, at some point you're missing the point.
Amy: I love that. So this is a philosophy, it sounds like, that you live your life by, including your design practice. Yes?
Raphael: Now, yes. I can't say that it has always been like that since then, but now I guess, yes. Design Academy at that time, and that time I'm talking about the year 2000, about then so it's even more than 20 years ago, it used to be really the place that shuffles all rules. There were nine departments and instead of labeling them 'interior design,' 'graphic design,' fashion design,' they decided to call it 'men and living,' 'men and leisure,' 'men and identity,' 'men and well-being.' It was always 'men and.' Now it's really politically incorrect, (laughter) but the idea for men...
Amy: In 2000 even?
Raphael: It was more about I think that in Dutch the word 'men' means 'human.' So it was almost the same. But the idea is let's say human and well-being meaning that design is about people essentially and that was the first method. You could design a chair in any department but if you will do it in identity which you should call fashion, you might do something that is around identity. And if you do it in well-being maybe this chair would be made of rocks and it will be disappearing and it will be ecological. Every department had actually a question: 'Where do you design from?'
And I think for me that was a lot more interesting to answer because sometimes we want to do stuff, we want to take part in the creative process, but we don't really mind if it's graphic design, if it's sculpture, if it's functional. I don't think a creative person essentially, especially in the beginning, doesn't really mind that. So the idea of not creating definitions of a department was really smart. The first year you just get confused which was a little bit of the purpose, and you study yourself. It's really more about being very experimental. We used to have a project where you take a camera and come back with a five minute video of you in an uncomfortable situation. That would be an assignment.
Amy: Wow! That does sound really impactful. Because it is shuffling up all of your preconceived notions about how the world operates and where you should generate from. And it also gives permission to design from any one of these places and to not be bound by any sort of creative limits.
Raphael: Yeah, I left there feeling that I have studied philosophy of design and that they taught me how to think. Maybe I didn't go out with all the knowledge of wood craft and I didn't come out with amazing new softwares that I can control, or tools, but I did have something a lot more fundamental.
Amy: When you break down all of the silos in such a way, there isn't really the concentration of craft, of mastery, of a certain kind of technique or material. But there can be the appreciation for it. There can still be the attunement to it which it sounds like you left with more attunement than actual skills in your hands, in your body.
Raphael: Yes.
Amy: From graduation where were you feeling you were going to start your professional life and how did you make those first few steps?
Raphael: I remember graduating in two departments. One was called man, or let's say 'human and activity' and the other one was 'man and well-being.' So it was well-being and activity which are actually very contradictive departments because one was all about advance and tech and more technology. I think Philips Design were the ones who were the teachers from Philips Design, the engineers were there. Well-being was more about humanitarian, essentially it was Ilse Crawford, she was the head of the department and she was back then making a magazine called Bare. She was part of it, she was leaving Donna Karen and making her own studio.
All the teachers were philosophers. So it was very soft and humanitarian and the other one was more high tech. Eventually I asked permission to graduate in both because I could not choose and funnily enough both heads of departments fell in love so Ilse Crawford married Oscar Pena (laughter) and I'm still good friends with them. So I found that this balance between activity and well-being meaning the new technologies and the storytelling were something that is still very much present in how I work. I left there and I was lucky enough to connect directly to Li Edelkoort and the first thing I did is I did first a star at Philips Design, so human behavior, research department in Philips Design so it was very tech and technological, but I did more of a philosophical installation there about the sense of touch. Then I moved to Paris to do my second start in Paris for Li Edelkoort studio.
Amy: Oh okay. And Paris, you never left.
Raphael: I never left.
Amy: For somebody who grew up moving around you put down roots it sounds like.
Raphael: Yeah, I think so. After 20 years I can say that. It has been chosen. It has been selected. I don't want to say that it has been a passive choice because I do think all eventualities are somehow connected, but definitely I have Holland as a neutral stepping stone to Paris. Yeah, certainly.
Amy: This sounds foundational, this Li Edelkoort.
Raphael: Yeah. Absolutely, yeah.
Amy: And how did you launch yourself from that?
Raphael: I always said it was obvious to me that I have to be at all times independent or liberal. I never considered to work anywhere. I don’t even think that it was ever in my mind. I remember a conversation with my dad after Philips Design offered me a job there and he was saying it was an amazing opportunity and such a good brand, ‘you’re just out of school.’ And I was like, what?
Amy: (Laughs) Did it seem just preposterous to you?
Raphael: Not even considered for a second. It was more about…In what world would I sign for a steady contract? Why would anybody? So I also graduated and right after graduation… I almost failed the graduation project because I designed a piece at the end that was not very practical. Somehow it was not considered for them as a design piece and I got a six I think which is just enough to pass the school. (Laughs) But a lot of contradiction remarks from the teachers. I graduated in one department with a successful presentation and the other one with a failure. The whole ending of my schooling was very controversial. And then that piece that barely passed got into the cover of the magazine Frame. Do you remember that?
Amy: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Whoa.
Raphael: And I remember my graduation piece was on the cover of the magazine and I was very disturbed by that. (Laughter)
Amy: Yeah, it’s very contradictory. It does not give you a clear message as to…
Raphael: It’s very shocking and I think it’s very important and I can imagine that it happens in many different fields, academic life is not the same as real life. They try to train us to a certain standard or a certain ideal that is actually extremely subjective. And the reality out there has nothing to do with ethics, with academic ethics and I think it was very clear to me at that time. I was well surrounded not to make these events be too important for me. Like to tame it and not to say, ‘oh my god, I’m on the cover of a magazine, I’m going to be great and we have to open a studio.’ I was actually slowed down. It didn’t take me. They contacted me to do more pieces and I just refused because I felt very clearly that I am too, I am still in virgincy, I am still too green to actually go further.
Amy: Whoa. That’s also really interesting. This is the part of the story where most people get the ‘oh shit’ opportunity and they do it and either fail spectacularly or scrape by (laughs) but you know, with the help of mentors or something. But you kind of took yourself out of the running in order to…
Raphael: Immediately, yeah.
Amy: To get more experience under your belt?
Raphael: Yeah, just to feel that you know where you’re heading. I remember that I think it was Ilse Crawford back at school and she told me that ‘you have to be careful, you have a very good way of defending yourself and convincing, you have to really be careful of what you are talking about because there’s a sense of responsibility with it.’ But it felt a little bit like a warning and an advice at the same time. It comes with a responsibility, be careful what you’re putting out there and if you can really stand behind it. And I think that’s true. You don’t want just to advance. You don’t want just to be recognized. You want to be able to stand yourself behind it and feel that that is somewhat worthy.
Amy: Oh, and there’s nothing worse than putting work out into the world that you yourself don’t believe in.
Raphael: (Laughs) Exactly. And it feels like the worst.
Amy: And then making a profile off of it.
Raphael: Exactly.
Amy: People keep asking you about it.
Raphael: The worst is that they might love it. (Laughter)
Amy: Yes. Then you feel like a real fraud because you’ve betrayed yourself.
Raphael: A successful fraud, yeah. (Laughs)
Amy: Wow, okay. What was the first sort of project for you that you felt was worthy of your responsibility and your defense?
Raphael: I think I can split it quite clearly to two decades. I have the one after school, the first 10 years in Paris and the past 10 years in Paris. It was really, really clear. In the beginning imagine I arrive in Paris, I have no experience apart from design thinking. I didn’t really have tools. I was making my own pieces so I was building.
Amy: And this is like 2001?
Raphael: 2003. It’s actually exactly decades, you know that. Because I graduated in 2003.
Amy: Okay, two decades. Let’s talk about the first chapter. (Laughs)
Raphael: I think the first chapter would be my life was expanding according to opportunities. You know, you just keep on expanding. Whatever comes and I would take it or if I didn’t like the opportunity I would try to change it to an opportunity that might fit me better. So it’s not only refusing an opportunity or saying yes, but you know I was independent and I had to work. There is nothing more weird still than a creative person to need to work in order to pay his rent. I say it because it’s so particular and still there’s always the question of what do you give, what do you compromise, or how far are you willing to go in order to be able to finance your life.
Amy: It’s as though the creative project or the design framework has to become so internal because you’re designing around survival, shelter, how I’m going to manage my energy and my morale so that I can keep doing this. And yet how can I make this opportunity and learn from it, or at least gain something from it even if I’m mostly doing it because I need the money. You know, it’s just very raw to be in that position and so many of us are, especially when our careers are getting off the ground. Sometimes it’s non-linear and it can happen over and over again.
Raphael: It’s a very curious place because it’s similar to taking the pause on your soul. (Laughter). How far are you willing to go and actually it’s also about not being too heavy about it. Sometimes you think ‘I’m being asked by this jewelry company and they’re telling me,’ and that’s really happened. I came to Paris and I said I have to get more work and I approached this beautiful jewelry company called Arthus-Bertrand and they were in Saint-Germain-des-Prés and they were now where Louis Vuitton is now, they were there before. It was a beautiful very high craft, and I really loved the knowledge that they had about jewelry. Somehow it was attracting me and I just somehow got to work for them. I don’t even remember how it started. And they told me in the first meeting, ‘here are the best-selling shapes.’ It’s a heart, it’s a star, and it’s a circle.
Amy: Oh (laughter) okay.
Raphael: These are the best-selling so your jewelry that you’re going to design for us may have these forms because basically you’re going to be paid by royalties so…this was really a very funny test but it’s similar to many other places. When you meet a person who said, “I saw this light that you made, I want the same but in large crystals.”
Amy: Yes. (Laughs)
Raphael: And then you go, “Okay, I can do it but I might remain anonymous on this one.”
Amy: Yeah. (Laughs) One of your earlier projects that gained a lot of recognition and I don’t know if it was your first immersive environment, but it certainly is one that seems pivotal to me, you tell me if it was, but it was the nightclub or the members club, Silencio.
Raphael: Yeah, absolutely.
Amy: I would love to hear how that project came about and your concept and the things you learned that helped you in subsequent projects.
Raphael: Yeah, Silencio is definitely. I think you pierced it directly into the middle and it’s exactly. I think that’s what happened in the first decade and Silencio was 2012 or 2011. It’s right after a few years in Paris. It started from a very innocent and friendly conversation. My cousin knew the [0.40.00] owner of a nightclub, we used to hang out together, we used to be friends, he asked me advice, we used to think about logos, and he was managing the Love Parade in Berlin and doing all kinds of works with a lot of electronic music and he knew MK2.
MK2 is the cinema and producers in Paris that they of course knew David Lynch and suddenly it happened that David Lynch was in town and they had this underground place that was completely neglected that they wanted to do an art club. We spoke about it all the time, what it can be, that it could be something that is about a social venue for artists, for creative people. The Paris years had become so boring. Paris used to be so much fun, at least from what I’ve heard.
So there was really looking into a program, nightlife, new venue of culture, and suddenly David Lynch came into the space and one thing led to another, another conversation, and before I knew it I was the art director. I was trying to, it’s not really true, I wasn’t the art director in the beginning. I was assigned to interpret the work of David Lynch into visible design. It started like that because he started to send us beautiful images and ideas, but they were so abstract and sometimes like a scenography and I remembered that actually he’s used to be surrounded by amazing people who are visualizing and making his ideas into matter.
So what happened is before we knew it we just started to bounce back and forth and I used to see very simple scripted, it could be in text, it could be in drafts, and I would just interpret this world into a physical. It was a long process. I think I had a year and a half of conception. That is amazing luxury in interior world. A year and a half back and forth, too, from Hollywood to Paris. Just to sit and concept with him was amazing, yeah. He is incredible.
Amy: Yeah. So it also gives you the opportunity to sort of bring and interpret. It’s like production design but it has to be functional and permanent and with wear and tear. It can’t be quite as fantastical and yet it has to be because…
Raphael: It has to be visible. It has to be budget oriented, yeah.
Amy: And when you step foot in it you need to be transported into the story. It must have been sort of wonderful for somebody with an imagination like you, to be able to be in charge of everything. The furnishings, the fixtures, the textures.
Raphael: It was 100% bespoke immersive world in the beginning. Now I think it aged a lot. Still it has its charm and it has many new guests, that are coming. But it was an exciting opportunity not only because you get to work with the director, but to actually not work in a design context. I had to work in a context as a lot more liberal, a lot more free and some things needed to be deliberately non-practical.
Like remember we made the chairs that we… I remember that day it was important for me that they will be uncomfortable, that sitting in the club will be uncomfortable because every time that you installed a comfortable piece in a club there is always someone there napping (laughter) and that just takes the whole evening down.
Amy: It ruins the vibe.
Raphael: It ruins the vibe. (Laughter) And when you have these hard seats you get to sit more towards the edge of it and you’re more engaged in the conversation. You’re not leaning back and relaxing so you’re bound to get a different tones and that tone is the mental comfort that you need in that space. It’s really taught me a lot of ‘wait a minute, what’s it for, how will it function.’ A sofa is not a sofa, an entrée is not a piece that has a clear and steady typology. It has semantics that change all the time according to the function and function depends on your intention.
So it was all a think-tank and conversing with Lynch was very abstract which was my preferred way to converse at the time. It was exciting to discover. I used all natural materials. I called up everybody around from Paris that is a craftsman from gilding to wood carving to [0.45.00] ingrain method to wool-weaving and to use everything natural materials and local craft in monochrome gold and still keep it warm and not tacky and to take back the legacy of gold because it was such a bad color, especially when you think about Paris and all the gilding in the palaces in Versailles.
But take the craftsmen that are working in gilding and used to doing this beautiful seating and asking them to patchwork on wood, on raw wood. It was very exciting and everybody was on board so we had an incredible team. We exceeded all the badges that we set ourselves, but it became such a big success, it was unexpected. Before you knew it it was everywhere.
Amy: Yeah. It sounds to me like it gave you the opportunity to work in all of these capacities. Also to translate story through every element of an interior space and behavior and sort of work with the social dynamics that you’re trying to create.
Raphael: Yeah.
Amy: But also to develop your contacts and your relationships with the local craftspeople because that’s a huge part of the way you operate now.
Raphael: Now, absolutely. Yeah.
Amy: Yes, so did this experience not only open more doors for you to do hospitality in other spaces like that, but then did it also ignite something within you?
Raphael: Eventually, yes. But not immediately. What happened to me right after is exactly the opposite. I just think it’s how things work sometimes. It became on one hand I felt that I’ve reached my goal. There was a moment that I said, “I’ve just designed one of the most successful member clubs that is programmed with an incredible movie maker and we have it in every possible magazine and every artist, director, or celebrity has experienced it.” It felt like that’s it and for me what happened is on one hand I felt that when you have a goal that means that once you reach it, it’s over.
Amy: When you climb a mountain and get to the top…You got there.
Raphael: But that’s when I realized I was not taking care of my destination and I think when you have a destination it’s a little bit where you want to be and I never thought about it until that moment because we always want to aspire to something or get to somewhere. Whether it’s being acknowledge or having the opportunity to express, I never really thought about where I want to be. What is the reality that you hope for in which you want to settle? In which you wish just to be there and continue being there?
The world that we live in is so aspired by peaks and goals and moments, it was for me the first self-realization that it was a goal in one way, and that it was not a destination for me somehow. On the outside I received a lot of the worst job opportunities and they were all mostly clubs that wanted to do the same. That’s what happens in every project, if you do something that is famous you will mostly get immediately people who want the same as you did there or that you work with. I even got an offer to collaborate with another very famous director and to do another space and I was like, ‘seriously?’ What happened for me is I just stopped after Silencio and after all the works I was still doing for some time. The art director for Silencio worldwide was some party in New York and Cannes, the festival in Cannes. Then I think I just stopped everything for a year and a half.
Amy: So you don’t stop everything for a year and a half unless you’re having some sort of existential re-evaluation.
Raphael: Absolutely. Yeah, full-blown.
Amy: Whoa. Okay, we’ve got to go there, Raphael. (Laughter) No, I’m serious because I think people don’t understand that taking care of your creative energy, your creative fire, is probably the most important thing you can do.
Raphael: Absolutely, and I think I jumped entirely into it. I mean I took it all, meaning that I stopped completely to work. I think that happens when you do get recognition because when you get recognition then it’s only you. Because when you get recognition then you’re facing yourself and that is very interesting. I don’t think you actually know yourself as a creative person unless you get recognition.
Amy: Oh, you’re kind of blowing my mind. I think you’re absolutely right. It’s sort of like you don’t know yourself until you’re in a relationship with other. And it mirrors that back to you. So when you get recognition it shows you who you are to the world.
Raphael: Yes, and also facing your own values.
Amy: Yes.
Raphael: Let’s say on one hand you think ‘okay, what do I actually think about what I’ve done?’ Sometimes it’s a little bit like when you misuse your talent. Talent goes to a certain extent. Yeah, you should have some sort of talent, but I always think it’s about interest. If you have an interest to go further in that field you’re most likely going to develop the skills and sensitivity to excel in it and that’s equal talent for me. I know that some things and some ways will be faster or slower, but whatever you give attention to will give you back. And I think I was confronted with values. Talent was not that I was doubting that I have or don’t have skills or talent to make things, it was about ‘then what?’ What is it that I’m giving and what is actually my role. I wasn’t very interested in the financial career of creating a design firm that is giving service out. I was interested in telling stories. So to find stories and to tell them and to work and to generate new pieces and to extend, was not very clear to me. I was not really clear on what it is that I want to do and I had behind me a decade of creation.
I just couldn’t figure out the common thread to them and so by stopping completely which was a very tough time for me but also at the same time very precious, it was a moment where you’re really facing, you know. You need to ask yourself the question that you started asking when you were a teenager: What do you want to do? What do you want to do? What is your part in this setting? In this city with your story? So I think it became I did a lot of things that I did. So I was from really taking care of well-being and doing, it could be anything. It could be from certain types of sports to meditation, to reading, to traveling to meet my friends.
Amy: And you were doing all of those?
Raphael: Yeah, for a year and a half I was just studying. There was a lot of studying, a lot of writing, a lot of thinking, a lot of talking, a lot of unveiling. And I think what happened is I came back to Paris, I was in and out of Paris but I mostly was in Paris, and I met Julien Desselle, he’s now my agent, he’s the biggest agent. For me he’s the most incredible person that represents in such an elegant way, the great talent.
He met me before and offered to work with him but I just told him I don’t think it’s for me or I’m not ready, I don’t remember what exactly I blabbered out. But this time he said, “What do you want?” And I said, “I want a small project, like really small, like a small project, but the right one.” And he found a Japanese brand with 60 square meters in the Le Marais. It’s a beautiful brand called Pas de Calais and I just did their first very crafted, very handmade. I was there every day working with patchwork wood and just going back to the material. I think I started from the beginning.
For me I started from the beginning and it was wood, iron, glass, stone, wood, iron, glass, stone. These are my materials, this is the world of design, this is all we have. Everything is either vegetal or mineral. So it was something about that that connected me back to the physical aspect of craft which is directly linked to the corporeal comfort that we experience even when you just touch a block of massive wood [0.55.00] into the mental comfort of it which is everything that your body signals you back.
So I think it started for me just to go back to the material and waking up in Paris which is the Mecca of arts and crafts and the know-how and savoir-faire and everything that they have in their legacy and I just started to hop from one foundry to another plaster maker to silk-weaving to gilding which everything I was doing before was just not crystal for me. It was not clear for me that that was the thing. I already knew it but I couldn’t, you know?
Amy: Right, you couldn’t articulate it for yourself. But there is something about your work that it transcendent in that it does really connect back through animal, vegetable, and mineral, and in the same way it elevates all of that with the care and attention of human intervention. Very, very skillful, loving, masterful human intervention. And in the end when you boil down, boil everything away, all that we have is each other and the earth and that’s what you have in your work. That is what is embodied in your work in such a meaningful and powerful way.
Raphael: Thank you.
Amy: (Laughs) So you started with this small project. You had a better grasp on what it is that pulls you.
Raphael: I also loved the scale, that I could capture it in my mind and that I could have it in one go. You know a space takes, when you think about a space and what you want to do and how it’s supposed to be and you listen to the space and you listen to the client and you listen to the environment, you want to create something that is tamed, at the same time exciting. You want to make it calm but at the same time, dynamic. You want to have these two things otherwise if it doesn’t have any… it needs to have some values that are omitted or that you feel good in it. But I think what happened is that I started to do the space.
I dedicated myself to this project entirely meaning it was all my time which is you know when you work or do that you don’t really put all your time into 60 square meters over six months. It is something that is impossible. And I think slowly, slowly I just wanted to have my own recognition on things that I do so I am okay with that floor. I feel that this floor is good. Why? Because it’s made with ingrained, We managed to get it dry enough. We managed to create an intuitive algorithm of shapes that work together. This is lava stone. I’m going to go to the fountain.
So I was traveling to the quarries next to the lava in Clermont-Ferrand, that’s where they actually have the lava stone, and I spent two days with the lava stone owner with the quarry. So you spend time with him, with this guy that owns a quarry of lava stone which is not really a stone. Lava stone it's not the same as a geological mineral, it’s really particular. And he was confessing his stories. I’m listening to his stories saying this stone is associated with death and why is it, because in France that is the stone that is relatively light and we use it as a black in Christianity, but actually in Japan is it used for life and it is used to spa.
So you get the story of the material, you fall in love with that stone and then you make something with it. Then I come to the client and say I’ve been in this quarry and I have a few ideas and maybe we should keep the stone as it is. So we’re going to bring little rocks and these little rocks are going to be. It’s just one, the material, the aspect is telling you how to use it, how to take care of it, and how can it improve your well-being. Suddenly the concept is clear. Its more I become the facilitator of these stories that are everywhere and I’m just stitching them together, I’m more of a glue at the end. I’m not inventing something that is not there.
Amy: But you are interpreting.
Raphael: Unveiling maybe.
Amy: Unveiling, revealing. Also interpreting. Listening. I mean I like to describe it as deep and active listening so the material can talk to you and you can translate for other people what the material is saying. You’ve made quite a career in hospitality. And I’m hoping it’s providing you the satisfaction that you are seeking, that you’re feeling really good. I read somewhere that you said that the last five to seven years of your career you’re feeling like you’re really doing what you’re meant to be doing.
Raphael: Yeah. I have to remind myself of that sometimes. There’s always things that you want to do but I think if we’re talking about goal or destination it’s more of ‘okay now it’s still young.’ I just feel my career as I see it is still very young. It’s not always the total amount of years that you have worked that represents your career. It’s more about the meaningful time where you feel that the work that you’ve been doing is progressive. There’s always a new crossroad, right? And now with the pieces, woodcraft, when you work with hospitality whether it’s a restaurant or a hotel or making a gallery space, I try to not work with private clients. That’s something that I try to avoid just because I’m such a pleaser that I fall into their requests and I forget what my concept was. So I need to be very careful with private clients. I’m not doing that and that’s why when I do hospitality I get to create something that is for everybody. It’s for an anonymous person that you imagine so my guests are always my client in that sense. It’s a public zone, you can go in, you can go out. It’s not closed in somebody’s house, it’s not always about affordability. It can be a very fancy chef étoilé from a restaurant in George V but it can also be a more simple hotel. I don’t really mind.
This is whole discussion about the world of luxury but I don’t really mind the set up. As you go deeper into craft it does require certain budgets or certain skills or certain time and that’s why I started to do the work that I do with the Friedman Benda Gallery. That is how the work started because I realized if I wanted to explore further into this rare craft and to mold and to work in bronze molding or to do 18th Century upholstery pieces then I will need to have the right platform.
Amy: I understand that and it gives you the avenue and the agency to work with certain craftspeople and I think we’re both on record with this, who absolutely have spent their lives perfecting what they do and deserve the high price tag that it costs because there is so much meaningful labor invested into it. This is my soapbox, but I get really annoyed when people bemoan the high price tag of well crafted pieces. I think if you surround yourself with cheap, disposable items, your life will feel cheap and disposable.
And if you surround yourself with items that have been loved and cared for and invested in by people who have invested their life in this kind of mastery, then you hand it down from generation to generation and it’s a form of care and generational wealth. These objects that collect stories the longer they’re around. Like the rock they become vessels of meaning for families, for individuals, and for society as they become iconic and become symbols.
Raphael: It’s funny, you talk about furniture and that’s something really… the principle of transmission has been embedded in us for generations. We used to have, and I think my parents still would have a chair or a table or a commode of your grand, grand, grandmother. Pieces were constantly inherited and they had a certain legacy and so our knowledge of craft or our knowledge of how to take care of materials were a lot larger. If you just go 50 years ago, not so much, you used to know how to, I don’t know, even make a difference between linen and cotton and how to stitch things and how to mend things and how to fix things and to be able to take care of your wood. Yeah, you need to oil your deck and you need to take your chair to the carpenter and you fix it and you continue to use it. But nowadays we came to a point, yes it started a lot earlier, but without getting into the industrial revolution or the principles of democratization, just simply talking about it more as a personal experience, the idea of concepting a simple chair made of wood by a local carpenter is almost impossible for us now.
That became luxury and that’s very sad because that used to be the only first option to have. When you would go for a brand it’s just if you really can afford it and what happened that twisted is the craft became luxury because the industry is so muscled up. So when you have even materials, you have so much substitute material. Even aluminum is a solution, is a material that is a solution. I’m not even mentioning polymers, but all kinds of veneers and all kinds of even paint. It’s recent. What’s up with paint? What’s that? You just have got a little makeup coat on the wall and you call it material. That is something that I try to avoid even in these spaces, the use of paint is really excessive.
There is something so thin at the moment about the understanding of material and craft and furniture and our knowledge is becoming smaller and smaller, at least our personal knowledge. So the idea of seeing the same piece again and again and again and the same design piece again and again everywhere in every magazine that you open, I don’t get it. That’s why I think I’m trying to create custom pieces for every project, so to draw design pieces completely new even if they’re very simple. Yeah, trying to get something more personal into the frame.
Amy: The pieces that you do for Friedman Benda are limited edition or one offs?
Raphael: Yeah, could be either. That also makes them a story that is particular because normally they are challenging a certain craft to its end. I think that’s what is common with them, is that we could work with a very old foundry of bronze and at the same time work with, I don’t know, 3D prints of vegetable polymer and then mix it up with projected materials. So it can be more experimental. I think it’s more of a lab project and they’re often made by very traditional artisans. So actually I work with very old artisans to create these pieces and we get to do this again [French language] in the French sense of it, of exclusive artwork that are furniture. Art and design have never been separated, it’s just a new old discussion but it has always been one thing.
Amy: Yes, I wholeheartedly agree. I have a quick question about the nature of your relationship. You create these works that are hybrid art and furniture, but are also very much hybrid of traditional craft and current or modern technology. An example would be the, Aleatoric Shelf Sculpture for Friedman Benda that includes a kazillion hand-cut mortise and tenons. And also five axis CNC’ing. And I’m wondering about the relationship between you and the artisans. There is something really beautiful about this melding of traditional craft techniques through a modern lens because it keeps it and reminds us of how timeless and relevant it is. Right? There is no reason traditional crafts can only be deployed in period pieces. That’s ridiculous. So on some level do they appreciate working with you in terms of executing on these pieces that are probably fresh and new for them? And push their thinking about what their craft can do?
Raphael: The first thing is the artisan needs to be a partner. They need to really want it otherwise it’s not going to go. In the industry, when I work in hotels or work on large scale projects we cross a lot the idea of ‘that’s impossible.’ The first time I hear an artisan or a craftsman that says, ‘interesting,’ that’s my type of guy. Then the idea is to push. A lot of these pieces are coming out of discussions that I have with them and Aleatoric is particularly, yeah it is a piece that could have been made... in a way it could have been made 100 or 200 years ago. It's using tradition that goes back hundreds of years. But the planning and the conception of it, not. Also it involves a lot of handwork so you cannot copy it. Just copying it is the craft itself and there is only one artisan in Europe that agreed to do it so it was also saying it's possible. It's pushing something to the end of it but I always try to make sure the expression of it is somewhat timeless, that it's not trying to also show that it's... you know. There's always this balance between humility and remarkability. Either way it will doom you if you only go with that, if it doesn't go with the other. And I think that's why when you say, 'okay I want to, I am fascinated by this connection of wood, I'd like to make a piece of it, what is it about.' So wood needs this kind of fixture because it has so much force in it because nature has so much. It's so much. Fibers are actually sucking the water from the ground and giving it upwards towards the tree so the whole tree is a bunch of fibers that are collected together like connected veins nourished by water.
Then I say that means that these forces are expanding and shrinking all the time. That's why they say wood is a living material. In order to stock them they need to be maybe composed together in the way that they hold each other and they support each other's expansions and retractions in a way that keeps them stable in the whole process of drying them out. So there is endless technical aspect, but at the end it's very simple biology. That has a real beauty.
The idea of making loads of blocks connecting together, the first time they are hand-mounted in a complete mess. Actually the piece starts where the mortar is completely disgusting, full of connecting wood, and without using any metal. The idea is to let the wood do the work between itself. The wood has to work with the forces and only when this huge lump is ready and stable and strong, then you put it into this five axis through a body machine that puts out this perfect piece. So it's handmade, machine made.
Amy: Yeah.
Raphael: And it shouldn't like a futuristic concerning design that you say, 'oh is this the future?' (Laughter) That's not very warm. (Laughs)
Amy: Right. I can't see this lasting more than six years in my life.
Raphael: Trends are something that are very dangerous, I find.
Amy: Can I ask you, is brown still your favorite color?
Raphael: (Laughs) All the shades of brown. (Laughter) You know it's funny because I think when we talk about wood we never say the color brown. It's not a beautiful name so when you talk about wood, wood is essentially brown but we're talking about we call it 'tobacco,' we call it 'smoked oak,' we have all kinds of fancy 'walnut' and nice names to it. But...
Amy: But it's still brown. (Laughs)
Raphael: Yeah, it's still brown. You know. Brown is cool. (Laughter).
Amy: Well, Raphael, thank you so much for talking to me today. This has been really, really delightful.
Raphael: My pleasure.Amy Devers: Hey, thanks so much for listening for a transcript of this episode, and more about Raphael, including images of his work, and a bonus Q&A - head to cleverpodcast.com. If you can think of 3 people who would inspired by Clever - please tell them! It really helps us be out when you share Clever with your friends. You can listen to Clever on any of the podcast apps - please do hit the Follow or subscribe button in your app of choice so our new episodes will turn up in your feed. We love to hear from you on LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter - you can find us @cleverpodcast and you can find me @amydevers. Please stay tuned for upcoming announcements and bonus content. You can subscribe to our newsletter at cleverpodcast.com to make sure you don’t miss anything. Clever is hosted AND produced by me, Amy Devers with editing by Rich Stroffolino, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan and music by El Ten Eleven.

Raphael with Arnaud Frisch (owner and founder of Silencio)

Clever is produced and hosted by Amy Devers with editing by Rich Stroffolino, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan, and music by El Ten Eleven.