Twenty emerging designers interpret the ashtray

Staged during Paris Design Week 2023, ‘Feu!’ (meaning ‘fire’ in French) presents the work of 20 emerging designers and studios offering a new creative interpretation of the ashtray. 

French design collective Meet Met Met, led by Helder Barbosa, Thibault Huguet, and Jean-Baptiste Anotin from the studio Waiting For Ideas, have gathered an eclectic group of fellow designers, including Bram Vanderbeke, Wendy Andreu, Laurids Gallée, Lea Mestres and more. The brief was to explore the ashtray and its functionality.

‘We were looking for small subversive objects of daily life that give a complete creative freedom,’ says Anotin of choosing the ashtray specifically. ‘We asked every designer to produce a piece for the exhibition, so cost and time were key parts.’

The resulting designs range from simple circular shapes reminiscent of traditional ashtrays to mini-architectures and material experiments. ‘We were amazed by the diversity, in terms of techniques, concepts and materials used,’ adds Anotin. The concepts include Heim Viladrich’s ‘social’ ashtray, with 42 indents on which to rest as many cigarettes, each numbered so you can remember where you left yours. And the design by Parisian duo Sabourin Costes, a micro-architecture for the table that doubles as a decorative object when not in use. Nice Workshop’s design references the forms of a Sony cassette, and can be used only by a person at the time, inspired by the idea of solitude as a moment for recovery and self-reflection.

Quentin Vuong chose a sculptural approach for his piece, which takes on an imposing presence in a room, while Sho Ota’s prowess with sculpting wood resulted in a pair of tactile, abstract objects.

'Feu!' is the first of a series of collective design exercises, which Anotin hopes to repeat yearly to bring together new design explorations of simple, everyday objects. 

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