Poetry by Razavi

“Thousands of furnishings featuring new shapes are created each year, each more efficient and lighter, using new materials that even more comfortable. Some of them are even affordable…The creations exhibited here are nothing like that. Sometimes, they aren’t even born out of a desire for comfort, but just for a certain presence and material quality.” Freed from any constraints, Alireza Razavi’s work was on show in a gallery in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris, during the recent edition of Paris Design Week, as part of the AD Circuit. His “non-domestic” furniture is a vision of material purity, and conveys a certain idea of assembly, at the very root of his work as an architect. The Razavi Architecture studio constructs buildings in Europe and the United States and designs private residences and workspaces, for which he envisions every element, all the way down to the custom furniture. A chalet with pure lines in the Alps, the design of a restaurant in New York, the spectacular elevation of a Parisian building, all are carried out by the teams in his three studios, in Paris, New York and London.

For him, Paris Design Week was “a tremendous opportunity for architectural expression on a different scale, in the specific context of highlighting objects, not buildings or interiors”. The series he presented, The Alborz collection, referred to the Alborz Massif in the north of Iran, where the dormant volcano of Mount Damavand lies, at an elevation of 5 600 meters.  The series was made of unfinished stone erected into spikes, a table with Fio du pesco marble legs, a circular bookcase, and an onyx chair. Each piece features ultra-precise oval cut-outs that contrast with the hand-polished material. They include, in a clever combination, a seating unit, a tray, or light-as-air shelves in tempered glass. The entire ensemble is, undoubtedly, not very functional, but it is timelessly poetic. A cosmopolitan gentleman who studied at the Ecole des Arts-décoratifs in Paris and a graduate of Columbia University in New York, Alireza Razavi lives beyond borders. He is only guided by the way his designs stand the test of time, and by the emotions they inspire.