Erwan Bouroullec was born in Quimper, France in 1976.
In the Nineties he and his brother Ronan began to care about design. In 1998 Erwan graduated from the École des Beaux-Arts de Cergy-Pontoise. His brother Ronan Bouroullec graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 1997 and worked as a lecturer at the National Art Schools in Nancy and Saint-Etienne.
In 1999 Erwan and Ronan together started a small company in St. Denis/Paris. Their collaboration was a permanent dialogue nourished by their different personalities and shared perfectionism.
The brothers are seen among the raising stars of the design world, bold and reflective, poetic and in the same time passionate; their creations are "micro architectures" with different functional applications, able to characterize and made the places look different wherever their creations were put up.
Their meeting with Rolf Fehlbaum, chairman of Vitra, resulted in their conception of a new kind of office system, "Joyn", in 2002. This was the beginning of a special partnership which has resulted in numerous projects, including "Algues", the "Alcove" Sofa, the "Worknest" and the "Slow Chair". Since 2004, the Bouroullecs have designed two complete furniture collections, Striped and Steelwood, for Magis.
These days Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec designed for numerous manufacturers, in particular Vitra, Kvadrat, Magis, Kartell, Ligne Roset, Issey Miyake and Cappellini.
Erwan and Ronan were voted Designers of the Year at the Salon du Meuble in 2002, and received numerous awards such as the Grand Prix du Design de la Ville de Paris (1998), the New Designer Award at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (New York, 1999) and the Finn-Juhl Prize (Copenhagen, 2008). Their Facett collection (manufacturer: Ligne Roset) and their Worknest office both won the "Best of the Best" Red Dot Design Award (2005 rather 2008).
Several exhibitions showed their work, notably at the Design Museum, London, in 2002, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and La Piscine, Musée d'Art et d'Industrie, Roubaix, in 2004. Their designs can be found in the collections of numerous museums such as the Musée National d'Art Moderne – Centre Pompidou, Paris and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
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