Hasta La Ideas

François Chambard’s studio, UM Project, is a bright, sunlight workshop located in the industrial end of Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The main space is divided between a conference and showroom area upstairs, while downstairs he keeps the most organized, well-kept woodworking shop I’ve ever seen. Tools and materials are not only assigned their own cubby holes, individual drill bits stand upright in a specially made gridded base as if on display. One of the first pieces François shows me is a project he’s working on with a music producer who uses 50-year-old recording equipment in conjunction with brand new engineering for a sound that’s a mix of analogue and digital. Listening to François talk about how his powder-coated steel encasement will house this technology mash-up, I realize that not only is he a skilled craftsman, capable of creating work that is elegant and playful at the same time, he’s also a total tech geek.

In fact, he used to call his style technocraft, but that doesn’t really do justice to the handmade elements of his work. After looking closely at some of the pieces in his collection, like a massive Corian dining table set off by minimal yet oversized bright orange fixtures, I suggest ‘serious play,’ a mix of traditional craftsmanship and new technology with serious attention to fun details. “Playful yet serious,” he muses. “Yes, yes that’s good.”

Origins

After moving to New York from a small village near Compiègne, about fifty miles north of Paris, François worked in consulting until his early 30s, when he enrolled in RISD’s graduate program. “I was sick of doing only conceptual, strategic work and I wanted to do something more hands on, to build things.” But RISD wasn’t the right fit and he dropped out. “Nothing against RISD. I think it’s a great school. It was a wonderful experience, but it wasn’t for me. It was too late in my life stage. I was a little impatient, to be honest, but I was also very clear on what I wanted to do.”

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