Marie & Alexandre

Marie Cornil and Alexandre Willaume met in 2018 during their participation in Design parade 13 at Villa Noailles in Hyères. Their complementary backgrounds gave them good reason to collaborate; Marie studied visual arts at HEAD in Geneva before joining Ecal in Lausanne, while Alexandre trained in industrial design at ENSCI - les ateliers, followed by a university exchange to San Francisco at the California College of Art.

When Marie arrived at the Boroullec studio in 2018, Alexandre had been working there for nine years. She stays for two years, while he continues his collaboration with Ronan Bouroullec until 2023. Alexandre also works as a painter and sculptor with Le Duo WANC, while Marie develops her textile and color work.

In summer 2021, the series of mobiles they created for the scenography of the Hermès corporate foundation is presented at the Villa Noailles, and marks the start of a search for shapes and colors in extruded and glazed Salernes Earth. Since then, all their one-off collections have been designed using an iterative approach, in which the Faire is central.

Since 2022, they have been collaborating with the Signé gallery, which has enabled them to present the Horizon and Iris collections designed in Salernes earth and Moulded pressed glass from Biot, as well as other collections created using comparable processes.

They approach materials and techniques related to metal (CR), glass (Végétasia, Berries, CR), wood and textiles (Mou, CR) in the context of residencies and collaborations with artisans.

In 2023, they were shortlisted for the Grand Prix de la Ville de Paris and won the IKEA Foundation grant, followed by the CNAP grant "Créer un Vase".

In 2024, they presented their recreation of a piece of furniture in the Mobilier National's "Les Aliénés" exhibition at the Hôtel des Arts in Toulon, and develop plans for the remarkable Camus space in the Quadrilatère des Archives under the aegis of the French Ministry of Culture.

In the same year, Le Duo presented new works in Marseille in apartment 50 of the Cité radieuse, then in Paris at the Signé gallery. The new works reflect a great freedom of style and technique, combining pieces specially designed for the occasion (CR collection) with existing pieces.

Numerous ongoing projects will see the light of day in 2025, and it's against this backdrop that Petite Friture reveals the PYL collection, the first edition by the duo Marie et Alexandre.