Interview with La Tête au cube

La Tête au cube (which means ‘a cube of head’ in French) has created unique objets d’art such as tank-shaped flower vases and hooks that remind us of the screws on tin robots. Ever since Jérôme Fischbach, from Strasbourg, and Thierry d’Istria, from Corsica, launched La Tête au cube in Paris in 2005, they have attracted attention and been featured in various media domestically and internationally.

COOL : What inspired you to launch Le Tête au cube ?

J : I was working as an organizer for sports training camps after I finished business school. But I started feeling like doing something else.
T : I worked for Philippe Strack for a few months after studying product design. Then I started my own career and worked on space designs for clubs, boutiques, as well as McDonald’s in Japan and France. We’ve been friends for 20 years, and one day we started talking about ‘creating something different’ over beers. And then Jerome became the president and I became the designer of Le Tête au cube in 2005. Since we exhibited pieces at a trade fair for interior design called ‘Maison & Objet ’ in Paris on September that year, we’ve been doing well.



COOL : What’s the concept of your creations?

J : There is high competition in the market of designs now. We don’t create things to sell. It’s important for us to create with clear concepts. Each object that we create has its own story.
T : A tank-shaped vase ‘Tank you’ is one example. After a couple fights, they make up as one of them hands this vase with flower to the other, along with the word ‘sorry.’ It’s also a symbol for ‘a cease-fire’ in a broader sense, but we made the vases with the image of intimate communications of ‘handing it to someone as a symbol of making up.’ Another example is ‘Hookey,’ a screw-shaped hook that can be installed against the wall. When we were creating this, we had an image of Hookey making the house start to move like a tin robot. We want to tell people to use their imaginations more often in their daily lives. It’s also interesting in a sense that we used France’s own porcelaine de Limoges to make a fusion of the tradition and the modern.
J: We like humor, and we want to create poetic things and provocative things. But we don’t want to have too much intelligence or difficult theories. We want to deliver simple messages that everyone can understand. With sarcasm sometimes, we have created the pieces that deliver messages without explanations, such as Lucky, a flask that saves cowboys’ lives, and Plaid Buddy, a throw made for ‘anti-loneliness.’


COOL : Thierry, originally you were a space designer. Why did you start your career as an object designer?

T : Because I got interested in creating actual objects from various ideas. I just wanted to create something with my spirit in it. It didn’t have to be objects. We might have different directions in the future.


COOL : Are there any influential figures for you ?

J : Bret Easton Ellis, an author, because he has his own sensibility and inner space.
T: There are people whose views I admire. I like the lighting arts of James Turrell and photo books of Hedi Slimane, a designer for the men’s collection of Christian Dior.


COOL : Do you have other private works ?

T : Right now, we are working on the object which will be featured at the ‘Framenco and avant-garde’ exhibition at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid.
J : Also, we are working on the project of ‘cup and saucer,’ designed by Neil Poulton, collaborating with Musée des Arts Décoratifs.



COOL : Have you ever been to Japan ?

J : Once, on vacation. I enjoyed shopping, and spent 8 hours at a record store (laughs).
T : Twice on business, and once on vacation. When I went to Kyoto on business, my client arranged a tour guide for me on a day off. Though he explained eagerly about all the places that we went, I couldn’t communicate with him because he couldn’t speak English. I will never forget about that day (laughs).

COOL : Tell us about your future plans.

J : I want to create things other than objects, and collaborate with cloths and music. I also want to hire more designers, adopt the works of other artists, and collect what we like.
T : And if we continue collecting all the stuff, naturally we may have a store in the future.

Text by Chiho Yoda, Photo by Mieko SAI

URL of La Tête au cube
http://www.lateteaucube.com/

Omnific : Online store in Japan
http://dp00011055.shop-pro.jp/

Charles&Marie :Online store in the US
http://charlesandmarie.com/