Jury-GRANDS PRIX DU DESIGN / Published on January 19, 2021
Share to
Fired like a fishnet into the architecture and design space, Madeleine and I, INTÉRIEURS collaborators since the start, tailor-made with passion, a Proust-style questionnaire for this first People issue of INTÉRIEURS (Winter 2020).
Our catch of the year? These prestigious industry actors we are proud to call members of our first ever GRANDS PRIX DU DESIGN Awards International Jury.
Answers as quivering as trouts, as amusing as perched cats, and deeper than the St. Lawrence River waters, came back to us from all corners of the world.
Make way for discoveries and answers that are sometimes so endearing we would like to wear them as a badge on our lapels!
Concept & Edit by :
MADELEINE CHAMPAGNE
JULI PISANO
Vancouver, 1968
With Industrial designer and Sottsass collaborator Albert Leclerc, 1986.
PROUST QUESTIONNAIRE
PEOPLE OF DESIGN AND ARCHITECTURE VERSION
1. What prescient youthful memory relates to your present career?
2. What are three basic rules you learned from your mentors?
3. What project launched your career?
4. Any music playing while you work?
5. Do you work in PJs or three-piece suits?
6. What is your current design state of mind?
7. What living designer/architect do you most admire?
8. What past designer/architect inspires you the most?
9. What is your most marked design quality?
10. How would you like your designs to go down in history?
11. What peer quality do you most value?
12. Which project is the epitome of your work?
13. How are your country of belonging’s values reflected in your work?
14. What always inspires you?
15. If a spell were to transform you into an object, by all means, what would you like to be, and why?
16. What is your favorite place in the world?
17. What design or architecture project do you wish you would have thought of yourself?
18. If you could host any three guests, past or alive, over for dinner, who would you choose and what would you dare serve?
19. What is your mantra?
20. What is your dream? THINK BIG!
Wonder Why We Call It a Proust-Questionnaire?
History says a young 15-year-old French author-to-be Marcel Proust stumbled upon an 1860’s English game called Confessions and provided answers that have since made the quiz famous and famously asked and answered!
PROUST ORIGINAL QUESTIONNAIRE
Young Proust’s answers provided in 1890
1. My main personnality trait? |
The need to be loved, the need to be hugged and spoiled much more than the need to be admired. |
2. The quality I prefer in men? |
Feminine charms. |
3. The quality I prefer in women? |
The quality I prefer in women? |
4. What I most appreciate in friends? |
To be tender towards me if the person is exquisite enough to value his/her tenderness immensely. |
5. My biggest flaw? |
Not knowing, not being able to want. |
6. My favourite hobby ? |
To love. |
7. My dream of happiness? |
I worry it might not be grand enough and I’m scared to say what it is and ruin it by naming it. |
8. What would be my worst nightmare? |
Not having known my mother or grandmother would have been a tragedy. |
9. What would I like to be? |
Myself, as those whom I admire would like me to be. |
10. The country I would like to live in? |
A country in which things I want accomplished could happen by enchantment and where tender moments would always be shared. |
11. My favorite colour? |
Beauty has no colour, only harmony. |
12. My favorite flower ? |
Hers, and then, all the others. |
13. The bird I prefer? |
The swallow. |
14. My favorite prose authors? |
Today, Anatole France and Pierre Loti. |
15. My favorite poets? |
Baudelaire and Alfred de Vigny. |
16. My fictional hero? |
Hamlet. |
17. My fictional heroine? |
Bérénice. |
18. My favorite composers? |
Beethoven, Wagner, Schumann. |
19. My favorite painters? |
Léonard de Vinci, Rembrandt. |
20. My real-life heroes? |
Mr. Darlu, Mr. Boutroux. |
21. My history heroine? |
Cleopatra. |
22. My favorite names? |
More than one at a time. |
23. What I hate most? |
What’s bad in me. |
24. Historical character I despise the most? |
I lack knowledge to answer. |
25. The military action I respect the most? |
My promptness to volunteer! |
26. The reform I respect the most? |
— |
27. The natural gift I’d like to have? |
Willingness and seduction. |
28. How would I like to die? |
A better man. And loved. |
29. Current state of mind? |
Boredom brought by having thought of myself to answer all these questions. |
30. Mistakes I am most willing to forgive? |
Those I understand. |
31. My motto? |
I won’t say… not to jinx it! |