Marc Held is an architect, photographer and designer. Precise as the architect, inspired as the designer, sensitive as the photographer’s lens: these aspects of his work also demonstrate his unique nature and his ability to build a place where research and creation are deeply intertwined.

From the architect’s most antagonist projects one may quote: François Mitterrand’s commission to refurbish the Salons de l’Elysée and his incredible houses built in the Corsican maquis. His very functional 60s furniture presented in the Prisunic catalogue and the graphic staircase, keystone of an 18th-Century mansion’s redevelopment he had been in charge of. Skiwear, porcelain, Culbuto, Lipton watches to name a few.

If it were necessary to translate his protean universe into another language, it would not be wrong to say that all his work as a designer, an architect and a photographer is underpinned by the quest for simple refinement. Energy is mastered, channelled, sometimes exalting a basic and timeless formal repertoire that places material at the core of his work, sometimes capturing with his lens a moment of grace within the most everyday banality.

After all, what do these spaces of creation mean if they do not interpenetrate themselves and if they do not live for each other? Served by the look that embraces the world in its smallest details, the hand executes and yet the way is still free. Free to remake the world, to reinvent places, objects, to re-think them infinitely. Free to dream. Some, like Marc Held, do it with talent.

In 2013, the gallery organised an exhibition dedicated to this brilliant creator: Marc Held. From photography to design / From design to architecture.