“Design is an integral part of our everyday” – An interview with Pascal Gentil from the Innovathèque
Pascal Gentil: Price-related and performance-seeking matters come up on a regular basis. We are also asked about ways to tailor products that furnish the end user with a unique piece. Though a recurring idea, simple observation shows that, in the end, a well-designed product suits everyone. Some go through life not needing any changes. What are the current trends seen in today’s market? A strong will expressed by industrials and possibly customers to revert to more European, or even French products.
Catherine Bouvard: A local market?
Pascal Gentil: Rather on a national scale due to the growing concern on the impact of imported goods on the environment and the quality of the materials used.
Catherine Bouvard: But this growing concern is overtaken by the reality of pricing!
Pascal Gentil: You’re absolutely right.
Catherine Bouvard: Who wins?
Pascal Gentil: For now, pricing does. But we have to change our ways, and head toward a new consumer logic that pushes us to hold on longer to products. In any case, most products are sustainable, but our consumer habits spur us to renew them all the time.
Catherine Bouvard: A more cultural than technological revolution…
Pascal Gentil: That’s it. It would be about a different way of consuming. While keeping with the same budget, we could buy an object with a higher value-added that would stick around for a longer period of time. This is possible: sticking to the same economic model, though manufacturing and usage would change.
Catherine Bouvard: Shape memory products can be a significant cog in this machine.
Pascal Gentil: Absolutely, not to mention product repackaging, repair and interchangeability. Indeed, a lot of furniture parts can be switched out.
Catherine Bouvard: Is this trend making a comeback?
Pascal Gentil: I wouldn’t say it is a trend. But it’s something to which we can aspire, for should it happen, national industries would be in a position to manufacture high value-added products, which would, in turn, provide companies with an accrued viability. To be competitive in the hyper-consumption market today, you must set extremely low prices while making investments and maintaining very high production costs. For this to happen, you must set up shop in huge-scale markets so as to absorb costs. National markets are, simply, not enough. Car manufacturers put up with them, but barely get by.
An interview conducted by Catherine Bouvard,
Course Leader for the Mutations of the Built Environment Master’s program – June 2010.
Translation: Morgane SAYSANA & Krista SCHMIDTKE
Who is Pascal Gentil?
Pascal Gentil is 50 years old. From 1984 to 1987, he developed equipment for the laboratory gas, medical and industrial industries. From 1987 to 2007, he was Head of an R&D department in the professional furnishings industry. Together with designers, he elaborated products composed of polymers, wood, flexible materials, metal, etc. He is also skilled in computer-aided design and three-dimensional modeling, structure calculations, prototyping and testing.
He currently acts as a technical interface between designers, retailers and users. He is a member of several European standards development committees, and chairs the French commission for office furniture standards development.
Since 2007, he has headed the Technical Department of the Innovathèque, an in-house resource center for innovative materials, processes and systems at the Technological Institute for Forestry, Cellulose, Wood Building and Furnishing (FCBA). His main duties include identifying innovation sources for creative professionals and industrials so as to apply them to myriad types of projects across all sectors.
Pascal Gentil is also an aeronautics fiend who regularly flies as a private pilot, and leads training courses as part of the Brevet d’Initiation Aéronautique (French aeronautical initiation certificate).
Caroline Saier’s project, éKosse
deciphered by Jocelyne Le Boeuf, Director of Studies
Don’t tell me you’ve never flinched with emotion and hesitation before parting with old, used items when it came time to move? In the end, why do we keep an object instead of throwing it away? Do we ultimately hang on to it because – who knows? – somewhere deep down, we may eventually have a use for it? Or isn’t it most often a token of our strong ties to the memories it conveys?
This dimension of the object that bypasses functionality, and which runs parallel with the “irrationality of needs” as stated by sociologist, Jean Baudrillard (The System of Objects (Radical Thinkers), Verso, 2006) – was the starting point for Caroline Saier’s final degree project.
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