Joseph Dirand has been sharpening his eye since childhood, he knows how to see, a rare quality indeed. He sees the space and perspective of a place. His sense for composition comes from his creative family background, he has a scenographer’s eye and frames volume with extreme precision. He is sensitive to the way light plays on relief and flat surfaces, he analyses structure, notices the tiniest of details, observes a material’s abundance of features and appreciates the rightness of a color.
Dirand is sensitive and visionary, he took life by the horns the minute he graduated from the Paris-Belleville architecture school. His first commission, a house in India, became his graduate project. He opened his own firm straight away, motivated by the ambition to express himself and the need to get started, “creation was a need”. He evokes his masters: Le Corbusier’s for his commitment, John Pawson for his minimalism, Peter Zumthor for his timelessness and modesty, Carlo Scarpa for his precision, Eero Saarinen for his global vision. “I love minimalist architecture, the precise, clear vocabulary and the detail”. He plans his projects as both environmental and architectural endeavors.
Dirand’s precise commitment has borne fruit. He works constantly, on projects of varying sizes. Architecture and interiors have confirmed his signature style. The quality of his design and his masterful space management have made him stand out from the crowd in France and abroad. His “French touch” is highly appreciated in places where an “art de vivre” is of the utmost importance. A number of hotels and restaurants, luxury fashion houses and private residences have been marked with the seal of his incomparable elegance.
Within the firm, he draws the plans himself, working ceaselessly on each project down to the last detail in tandem with his colleagues.
Each job, regardless of size, takes shape after a long gestation period, bolstered by research into texture, composition, color, ambience, context and history. He objectivizes this impressionist reflex through bold choices and strong directions.
Nothing escapes his eye. He designs furniture and lamps for his architectural spaces to reintroduce beauty and intention to the object and thus participate in the story of the architectural whole.
Using his thought process and taste as a collector as a base, like architects from the modern movement, he has decided to create his first ever collection of limited edition furniture under the title “modernist”: “I’m prepared to answer for furniture if it manages to tell a story, my story.”
