The name is not a metaphor. The school took over real workshops, in the quarter of Paris that had made furniture for three centuries, and kept the word.
At a glance
The École nationale supérieure de création industrielle is France’s national school of industrial design. It was founded in 1982 under the sponsorship of Jean Prouvé and Charlotte Perriand, and it occupies the former Ateliers Saint-Sabin of the Maison Jansen, the Paris decorating house, at 48 rue Saint-Sabin near the Bastille. It is a public establishment under the Ministries of Culture and Industry.
Key facts
- Founded: 1982
- Sponsors at its founding: Jean Prouvé and Charlotte Perriand
- Building: the former Ateliers Saint-Sabin of the Maison Jansen, decorators
- Address: 48 rue Saint-Sabin, 75011 Paris, near the Bastille
- Status: a public establishment under the Ministries of Culture and Industry
- Later programmes: added in 1985 and 1993, among them the Atelier National d’Art Textile
- GPS: 48.8584, 2.3692 · Open in Google Maps
History
The Faubourg Saint-Antoine, which begins a few streets east of here, was the furniture quarter of Paris from the seventeenth century: cabinetmakers, gilders, upholsterers, packed into courtyards behind the street fronts. The Maison Jansen, founded in the nineteenth century, was one of the great decorating houses of that world, and its Saint-Sabin workshops were part of it.
In 1982 the French state founded a national school of industrial design and put it in those workshops. Jean Prouvé and Charlotte Perriand — the two figures who had done most to join French design to industry — stood sponsor to it. The school added further programmes in 1985 and 1993, including a national studio for textile art.
Why it is called Les Ateliers
Because they were. The second half of the name is not branding applied to a new institution: it is what the premises were called before the school arrived, and the school kept the word because it kept the way of working. Students are expected to make things, in workshops, in a building that was built for making things.
What you see
A plain industrial front on a narrow street, with the wide openings and the unceremonious brick of a working building rather than a public one. It does not announce itself as a national school, and that is consistent: the quarter is full of buildings whose fronts say nothing about the workshops behind them.
Sources & resources
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