Seven pieces by the Paris designer, drawn by hand between airport terminals and tropical flora, published by Modern Metier for Paris Design Week
Modern Metier has published its second collection. Tropic of Capricorn holds seven pieces, all drawn by the Paris designer Rudy Guénaire. The house showed the collection at 21 rue Bonaparte during Paris Design Week, from 10 to 15 September, in a set dressed with tropical plants.
The Jet Set sofa and armchair, the Avenue coffee table, the Fleming chair, the Monument wall light, the Casca pendant lamp and the Marimba mirror. Together they cover most of a living room. The references sit in the names. Guénaire took the curved language of jet-age airport terminals and set it against the concrete modernism of Brazil and the domestic modernism of California. Tropical plants supplied the rest of the shapes. The result stays curvilinear throughout, and the designer drew every line by hand.
Rudy Guénaire, from PNY restaurants to Studio Night Flight
That method is his rule. Guénaire sketches on paper in place of a computer, a habit he applies to interiors as much as furniture. He came to design through restaurants: he built his name on the PNY burger chain, whose interiors he designed, and later opened his own studio, Night Flight, named after Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s novel Vol de nuit. His Paris projects include Matsuri, a sushi restaurant in the sixteenth arrondissement, where he worked from Frank Lloyd Wright and John Lautner. He has also designed furniture for other houses, among them the Phoenix chair for La Chance.
Mohair, fused glass and polished nickel: the materials
Materials carry the contrast in this collection. Cherry-toned wood veneers structure the Jet Set sofa, while mohair covers its cushions. A milky lacquer finishes the Avenue coffee table. The Casca pendant lamp uses fused glass, and the Fleming chair has a seat in woven paper cord. Polished nickel runs through the collection, as it does through most of Guénaire’s work.
Modern Metier: the Paris design publisher founded by Minh Ngo
Modern Metier works as a publisher. Minh Ngo founded it in Paris in 2021 as a platform for European design, and it now carries furniture, lighting and objects by studios from Paris to Copenhagen, among them Hauvette & Madani, Caia Leifsdotter and Spaces Within. Its showroom stands at 102 rue du Faubourg Poissonnière.
Edited collections came later. The house published its first, Solstice, in 2024 with the French designer Léa Zeroil. Tropic of Capricorn is the second, and follows the same principle: one designer, a set of pieces made by European workshops.
Tropic of Capricorn is available through Modern Metier, modernmetier.com.
