The famous and prolific French architect Philippe Starck is considered one of the top names in contemporary design. Equally appreciated and detested, Starck is renowned for his qualities as a designer, an intelligent and cultured self-educated, poetic creator who is free of conformisms yet guided by an extremely controlled professionalism.
The winner of important awards and at the same time the object of endless disputes (he is accused of sacrificing the functionality and practicality of objects for their aesthetic), Starck became interested in design from a very young age, designing just about anything: furniture, boats, scooters, motorcycles, clothing, bathrooms, watches, television sets, lamps, toothbrushes, bottles of mineral water, eyeglasses, suitcases, juice-squeezers, vases, new types of pasta, and much, much more.
As an architect and interior designer, he became famous in the '80s for having created furnishings for various halls at the Elysée Palace in Paris, and for his restructuring of the Café Costes, but he has also designed hotels, shops, restaurants and palaces the world over: New York, Tokyo, Sidney, Moscow, …