Pichard’s carte blanche installation redefines the home as a fluid, evolving space where craftsmanship, AI, and accessible design converge.
Amélie Pichard, the bold and unclassifiable designer entrusted as Artistic Director of Maison&Objet’s September 2025 edition, invites visitors to step into a house unlike any other. With Welcome Home, she curates a 150 m² installation that resists closure and permanence, instead embracing the unfinished as a mirror of our ever-evolving human condition. Conceived as both stage and dwelling, the installation challenges conventions of domestic space through objects that are hybrid, mischievous, artisanal, mass-produced, or still in progress—each carrying the imprint of a living process rather than a polished conclusion.
True to the fair’s DNA of celebrating inspiring lifestyle trends and boundary-crossing design, Maison&Objet’s Carte Blanche to Pichard results in an Open House – Open to All. Halfway between imagination and reality, this scenography unfolds like a poetic exquis between craftsmanship and artificial intelligence, past and future, intimacy and effervescence. Here, ornamentation gives way to questioning, and the house becomes a place of encounters where brands, creators, and singular pieces—from a sculptural wooden chair by Policronica to a bold reinterpretation of sanitary design by Trône—converse freely. Pichard’s Welcome Home is less a finished residence than a living manifesto, joyously undisciplined, and deeply resonant with the fluidity of contemporary design practice.
WATCH our live tour of Welcome Home on Instagram.
Living with the Unfinished: Lightweight, Foldable, Modular
At the heart of Welcome Home lies Pichard’s questioning of why a house—or even an object—should ever be considered “finished.” Just as our lives evolve, so too should the spaces and tools that shape them.
“The house doesn’t ever have to be finished,” Amélie Pichard said during a press tour of Welcome Home. “It leaves the creativity open.”
This is translated through a focus on furniture that is lightweight, foldable, and modular, designed to adapt rather than dictate. From Policronica’s sculptural wooden chair that feels halfway between form and function, to Airborne’s iconic metal armchair reinterpreted in a freer, more playful context, each piece conveys fluidity and movement. Instead of definitive statements, these objects remain open-ended, embodying a language of possibility. They remind us that durability today is not about permanence, but about adaptability.
In the living room, she placed a divider that can be assembled or disassembled to provide a private space for guests rather than having an extra room that’s often not used outside the occasions when friends or family members come.
“There’s no heavy furniture in the house except for the couch in the living room, but it’s still lightweight despite its ‘heavy’ aesthetics. The table in the kitchen-dining area can be folded.”
While Pichard believes every element featured in the Welcome Home installation should be considered as market-friendly, long-term possibilities, she highlights the foldable table in the kitchen-dining area as the most interesting feature. The “fold down to use and fold up to put away” idea is perfect for many situations
A Dialogue Between Craftsmanship and Artificial Intelligence
Perhaps the most striking metaphor in Welcome Home is the house-teapot—a hybrid object that embodies the exhibition’s central tension: the dialogue between tradition and technology. Inspired by a ceramic teapot originally crafted by Blumen, then reimagined by artificial intelligence before returning to human hands, this object exemplifies Pichard’s belief that craft and AI are not opposites, but co-authors in new forms of creation.
“The teapot, the mascot for Maison&Objet this edition, is available for sale through a bid on eBay,” she said, laughing as she continued. “It’s fully functional, but it’s big.”
The scenography amplifies this interplay through carefully chosen pieces: Anne Krieg’s ceramic carafe-vase, Bosc Design’s wall light, and the Rodin statue loaned by the Musée Rodin, which anchors centuries of craft within a forward-looking domestic stage. Here, the unfinished is not a flaw but a testimony of process, a story told by multiple voices, human and non-human alike.
An Open House: Design as Accessible to All
Pichard frames Welcome Home as a truly open house—an installation designed without barriers, welcoming both industry insiders and the curious public.
“I can’t imagine a dining room alone, and I can’t imagine someone cooking alone in the kitchen. Here, we can see everything, everyone,” she said, explaining how she transformed elements from her personal life into ‘clins d’œil’ found in the installation at Maison&Objet.
In this vision, design is no longer an exclusive showcase but a lived experience, where fast-food-style porcelain tableware by Non Sans Raison shares the same stage as a bold reinterpretation of the toilet by Trône. Gabbois’ ephemeral sugar cup and Morgane Tschiember’s window installation turn everyday gestures into creative encounters, showing that design need not be monumental to be meaningful. The accessibility here is not only about physical entry but about intellectual and emotional connection: each object retains its purpose while inviting visitors to question, touch, and inhabit design.
A New Chapter for Maison&Objet
In entrusting Amélie Pichard with Carte Blanche, Maison&Objet signals a decisive turn toward renewal. Her curatorial approach—joyously undisciplined, openly narrative, and resistant to traditional hierarchies—marks a departure from the polished perfection often associated with fairs of this scale. Not to mention the picture-perfect images of life as it’s seen on Instagram.
“You see celebrity homes as these perfect spaces with everything just-so. The reality is that nothing is perfect, and we always have random items that are never used but need a ‘home’.”
By presenting design as unfinished, porous, and collaborative, Welcome Home positions Maison&Objet not simply as a marketplace, but as a cultural stage for dialogue across disciplines. This September edition inaugurates a new chapter for the fair: one where the house itself becomes a manifesto, and where the value of design lies less in completion than in its capacity to evolve with us.
“The house doesn’t ever have to be finished. It leaves the creativity open.”
