Architectural Jewels: Gaëlle Lauriot-Prévost
If architecture is magical, innovative architecture is fresh, intriguing, and surprising, particularly when it involves blending art, design, and architecture. When architects design jewelry—creating buildings in miniature—they tend to translate their own principles of structure and materials, often exploring new possibilities to create uplifting wearable architecture sculptures through their own voice. The new PLIS jewelry collection by French architect Gaëlle Lauriot-Prévost, who became internationally known along with her partner Dominique Perrault when designing the National Library of France of 1995, is a celebration of the presence of architecture in jewelry.
The solo show, presented at Galerie MiniMasterpiece in Paris, includes earrings, rings, and bracelets, where the key material is pleated metal mesh, an unusual material that bestows the collection with a crispy, modernist, and constructivist look. Mesh is also a central material in the duo’s buildings and has been introduced by them not only as a building material, but also as a poetic expression in their architecture, utilizing mesh in defining architecture boundaries and spaces while also using it as a tool to bring light into a space. In fact, mesh has become their signature material.
In Gaëlle Lauriot-Prévost’s new collection of jewelry, mesh is receiving a new interpretation, embodying her architectural thinking along with allowing mesh to become a refined and sophisticated material for jewelry. To produce this collection, she collaborated with GKD, the world’s renowned maker of metal mesh for façades and interiors, known for its bespoke wire mesh systems which are often utilized as buildings’ envelopes, solar and acoustic solutions, and a variety of architectural elements. To create this series of jewels, the company introduced new tools that enabled them to shift in scale and materials from buildings to jewelry, thereby bridging between architecture and jewelry, which comes to engage the body in a chic way. It is the type of jewelry that is not adding decoration as in traditional jewels, but rather a special character and expressiveness to a minimalist fashion.
This is not the first time that this architect has created jewelry. In the past she won the Galeries Lafayette prize for her work in jewelry design. Gaëlle Lauriot-Prévost has been engaged with jewelry since the 80s, which has become a part of her architectural oeuvre. I particularly remember a necklace crafted in silver that she and her partner Dominique Perrault created for Galerie kreo in 2012 which was reminiscent of construction cables. In the current collection, the minimalist sensibility and the quotation from construction materials are present as well. However, this time it is stainless steel, silver, and gold plating. It is enigmatic as the pleated mesh looks flexible, but it is in fact a hard sculpture, which allows the pieces to introduce abstraction to the body.
I am fascinated by many forms of design created by architects: furniture, jewelry, ceramics, fashion. The journey from buildings to objects tends to produce intriguing and surprising results. I hope more architects create jewelry and apply the skills of precision and forms into the story of wearable art, translating urban design and built fabric into small, personal scales jewels.
The exhibition will open through October 25th.
