Core77

L'Édition 2011 is a "graduate student initiative"—the collection of the final projects of Masters students at the École Supérieure d'Art et Design de Saint Étienne (ESAD for short). The nine largely self-directed projects represent each of the graduates' approach to an issue of their choosing.

Sébastien Cluzel's "Culinary Landscape" (my personal favorite) is an ultraminimal, almost Muji-like approach to kitchen design. Cluzel's form follows from function, where "the table consists of four areas critical to the kitchen: a place of preparation, a water point, a cutting plane and a cooking area."

In "Terminal AR,"Julien Bouvard reimagines an airport terminal in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as a low-cost, open-air hub for middle class travelers. It's a hypothetical alternative to the prevalent "hermetic and generic" airports.

Jean-Baptiste Durand explores "the social dimension of sound" in his project of the same name. It's definitely one of the more cerebral projects to come out of this graduating class.

Celine Forestier tackles "Home Medicine" with a distinct design language.

Anne-Laure Martins' "Can You Eat?" is simply "staged around the act of eating."

Morgane Pluchon's "Soffa" is an exercise in space and comfort.

Quentin Simonin explores "non-permanent" furniture construction techniques in "The Experience of Construction."

Elodie Vichos' "Compound History" is a study of how the process of transcribing a literary object into a physical one becomes a metanarrative in itself.

Last but not least, Leo Virieu's "Affone" consists of a series of audio posters that are printed with conductive ink, an interesting approach to representing sound graphically.