MATANG* is situated between architecture and furniture.
A process built around the natural materials from a territory: their expressions, the way they are meeting and the hands shaping them. As an interface, these sensitive objects express a skill, a culture, a relation to stone, wood, earth.
Lucien Dumas and Lou-Poko Savadogo are the two minds behind MATANG. Both Lucien and Lou-Poko were trained as architects, graduated of the École nationale supérieure d'architecture de Versailles, France. At the same time, Lucien Dumas studied cabinet making at the École Boulle in Paris. He has collaborated with various agencies in Barcelona, Rio de Janeiro, Basel (Herzog & de Meuron), Paris (DATA architects) and Mumbai (Case Design).
Lou-Poko Savadogo, architect and cabinetmaker, she also studied woodworking at the Lycée Léonard de Vinci and tapestry at the École Boulle in Paris. She has been working with MATANG since 2021. Lucien Dumas created MATANG in 2020. The duo is based in Paris, France.
*The Mattangs are maps of the informality which the Polynesian people are producing since 3000 years, in order to direct them in their abstract universe where the only fixed points are atolls lost in the middle of the ocean. The invisible elements: winds, swells, waves, and streams are represented by palm sticks straight or curved dispatched on a grid, and the different islands correspond to shells. The mattangs were used to teach the principle of the stream’s perturbation. The architecture and furniture produced by the studio are encrypt in the same manner as these maps, by embodying the essence of a territory, these projects reveal the relation made by the Men’s and their environment.
FROM THE PLANT TO THE FURNITURE.
These furniture pieces want to express the potentiality of plants, creating a sensitive structure but also vibrant colours. Wood, roots, flowers, fibers are getting transformed in our objects revealing a colour palette rooted to the plants, creating the MATANG universe.
By using dyeing plants, we choose to use methods of dyeing replacing the chemical pigment and artificial dyes by a non toxic, non polluting ressource. The colour appears non omogenius and allows to reveal and vibrate the fibers ropes.
