story

My name is Nicolas Guillamot, I’m a designer and I live in Paris, in the 12th arrondissement. I design and build objects and spaces using reclaimed materials. Some of the objects I make, I carry around with me. Some people might say it’s performance, others might say it’s

street theatre : it can be a lot of things. The idea is to have a form of design that is close to DIY, so it can speak to as many people as possible. Originally, I came to Paris for my studies.

Like for all creatives, it’s the place where you can test your ideas, show them, and so on. It’s also a great playground. Working with upcycling or recycling kind of guides your design on its own, and that’s what I find cool about it.

I like the fact that when you recycle, you actually accumulate a lot of things : stories, energies that already come from different objects. There is an ecological and political dimension behind it.

When the Air Max 95 came out, I think I was 15 or 16. So I got a pair. Sometimes, when I’m working, I pick things up off the street. When I pick them up, I think, “Okay, it’s cool, but I don’t know what I’m going to do with it yet.” And much later, I go, “Oh, actually, that’s exactly the thing I need now.”

More than ten years ago, I bought a pair of Air Max, and now I’m working around an Air Max 95 Atelier. I find that assembling memories like that is really cool. My main goal is 

to make people want to create, to show that design isn’t just about ultra-contemporary, expensive things made for very specific people.
I’d say that being a visionary, for me, is someone who can see into the future.

Maybe it’s someone who knows how to assemble different messages, different approaches, different people, and bring all of that together in order to adapt : adapt their practice, adapt their way of life, whatever the future may be.