Studio tutor: Youri Kravtchenko (Ykra Architectes),

Assistant: Manon Portera (Atelier apropå)

Curators: India Mahdavi and Javier F. Contreras.

Exhibition assistant: Valentin Dubois.

Students: Elsa Audouin, Marina Ezerskaia, Thibaut Krauer, Robin Delerce, Patrycia Pawlik.

Herbarium of Interiors is a special collaboration between India Mahdavi and MAIA, Master of Arts en Architecture d’intérieur, for Toulon's Design Parade 2021.

A herbarium is a specimen that becomes its own image. A specimen is multi-format and lies somewhere between object, image and 1:1 model. Similarly, contemporary interiors can take multiple directions from objects to images, spaces or media. Although they exist in various formats and media, these spaces become real in a variety of configurations and situations.

Are contemporary interiors like herbariums, spaces whose image oscillates between fiction and representation?

In 1965 interior designer Robert Haussmann created the Kronenhalle Bar for Gustav Zumsteg in Zurich and the bar has remained unchanged for 50 years. Anyone stepping in is instantly plunged into a reality that is as well-known for its space as it is for its classic image, swapping bright sunlight and the din of the city for an elegant, dark and discreet interior. And although it is not the Kunsthaus (but on the way), the place features paintings by Picasso, Miró, Chagall and Braque, lit by lamps designed by Alberto and Diego Giacometti.

Developed by MAIA (Master of Arts in Interior Architecture) students, the Herbarium of Interiors revisits the Kronenhalle for the Design Parade 2021, exploring the role of image culture in the construction of contemporary interiors. Like a crime scene, the exhibition at L’Evêché in Toulon, France, will change throughout the duration of the Design Parade, with objects being stolen and replaced by images, and images being replaced by objects.

The project thus aims to redefine the boundaries of interior architecture through parallel image/space domains and envisions a new reality that bypasses traditional distinctions such as interior/exterior, public/private, original/copy or tangible/mediated, ultimately reasserting the role of interiors in the construction of contemporaneity.