Philippe Starck was born in Paris in 1949. The son of an aeronautical engineer, he learned early how to organise his work in a rigourous manner from his father. At the Ecole Nissim de Camondo in Paris, Starck developed his interest in design and architecture. The inflatable house designed in 1969 was awarded a prize at the Salon de l'Enfance. At an early age, he demonstrated the taste for irony and desecration that would later characterise his work.
Throughout his career, Philippe Starck implemented his personal vision of "democratic design", creating objects that seek to improve people's lives, not intended for an elite but for the greatest number of people possible, at affordable prices. Driven by this mission, Starck has designed many everyday objects, strictly mass-produced, avoiding limited editions, precisely because they would be accessible only to the few. Philippe Starck is not only a product designer. He has also designed architecture of all kinds, from luxury hotels to nightclubs, and even housing modules for private tourism spaces, making him perhaps the most visionary of designers on the international scene.
Many Starck projects have become true design icons, like the Juicy Salif juicer designed for Alessi in 1989. Over the years, he has created numerous chairs for Kartell, among which La Marie, which was the first to be moulded in a transparent polycarbonate monoblock using an innovative moulding process; the Louis Ghost (2000), a great success with the public, selling over a million pieces; the A.I (2019), the first chair to be made entirely using artificial intelligence. Important lighting projects were born from his collaboration with Flos, like the iconic Miss K table lamp in polycarbonate and the In Vitro collection in glass and painted metal. He has designed various bathroom collections for Duravit (Starck, Cape Cod and Me) and the innovative Axor Starck steel and glass mixers.
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