{"id":936117,"date":"2026-10-21T21:16:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T21:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/936117\/"},"modified":"2026-10-21T21:16:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T21:16:14","slug":"olivier-mourgue-obituary-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/936117\/","title":{"rendered":"Olivier Mourgue obituary | Design"},"content":{"rendered":"

Olivier Mourgue always wanted to design the future. Growing up in Paris in the 1950s, he took against the ornate antique furniture of his parents\u2019 apartment, the formality of a dining room with a table surrounded by elaborately uncomfortable chairs and a living room dominated by a sofa used only on special occasions. \u201cFurniture like that has nothing to do with life,\u201d he would suggest later. \u201cOne is never at ease in such rooms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mourgue, who has died aged 87, set out to design furniture that belonged to the modern world, and blurred the boundaries between furniture and architecture. In his view, that meant that it should be flexible, informal, affordable and as close to the floor as possible. He succeeded in a way that he could not have expected.<\/p>\n

The film director Stanley Kubrick<\/a> made Mourgue\u2019s designs an essential part of popular culture\u2019s expectations of how the future would look, even though Mourgue\u2019s work was produced by the thousand rather than in millions. Kubrick used a cluster of Mourgue\u2019s Djinn armchairs to equip the lobby of the Hilton hotel orbiting the moon on Space Station V for one of the key scenes of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Djinn seemed to float almost weightless, like a colourful bubble of air. There were no conventional arms or legs to be seen. Instead there was a lightweight steel structure and some sturdy rubber webbing to support the foam upholstery, all hidden inside a seamless surface.<\/p>\n

Kubrick had a preternatural gift for finding what might be called \u201creal\u201d objects, such as Djinn, from his own time, that seemed to belong to the future. He used them to give a sense of authenticity to his sets. Kubrick filmed A Space Odyssey in 1968, when Djinn looked entirely at home in a plausible version of 2001 that did not yet exist. Almost 60 years later, Djinn still looks like a version of the future, fluid and colourful, covered with a specially made stretch fabric that was available in 15 different bright colours and light enough to carry under your arm.<\/p>\n

Olivier Mourgue lived in later life in Brittany, where he taught at the \u00c9cole des Beaux Arts in Brest. Photograph: Armel Mourgue<\/p>\n

Mourgue wanted to do more than change the way that things looked. He believed in designing furniture that reflected the way that people want to live. He created a low-cost range of mass-produced designs for the department store chain Prisunic, in the days when it was a French version of Ikea, selling through its catalogue as well as its network of stores. The 1969 Prisunic edition launched a collection that Mourgue described as \u201cbringing beauty at the price of the ugly\u201d. It included bookcases, beds, tables, and seating made from lightweight chipboard that could be easily dismantled if required. One piece was a floor-cushion seat with raised edges that formed a place to sit.<\/p>\n

Mourgue was born in Paris, to Denise (nee Lesieur), a physiotherapist, and Jean, who owned an art supply store. His uncle, Pierre Mourgue, was a successful illustrator, working for Vogue and Harper\u2019s Bazaar in the US. Olivier\u2019s younger brother, Pascal, also became a successful furniture designer.<\/p>\n

Mourgue was influenced by the radical spirit of 1968, and impatient with tradition. But he was also the product of one France\u2019s historic institutions. At the age of 14 he went to the \u00c9cole Boulle, a school named after Louis XIV\u2019s cabinet maker, Andr\u00e9-Charles Boulle, and set up to train apprentices in the art of marquetry.<\/p>\n

After graduating, he studied at the \u00c9cole Nationale Superieure des Art Decoratifs. He also went to lectures at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers by the architect and designer Jean Prouv\u00e9, whose ideas about prefabrication would have a lasting impact on Mourgue. He spent six months interning as a furniture designer for the Stockholm department store Nordiska Komaniet. His travels in Sweden and Finland, in those days Europe\u2019s leading centres for innovative design, gave him an important new perspective.<\/p>\n

Furniture from the Djinn range manufactured by the Airborne furniture company, which also made Mourgue\u2019s Joker and Montreal designs. Photograph: Olivier Mourgue<\/p>\n

Mourgue was still a student in 1959 when he designed Joker, his first chair to go into production. One of his teachers at the Boulle school introduced him to the Bernard family, founders of the Airborne furniture company. He caused something of a stir at Airborne\u2019s factory in Montreuil, on the outskirts of Paris, when he arrived on his Solex moped carrying a full-scale prototype. It was the beginning of a long collaboration. Airborne launched Joker in 1964 and made the Djinn range, which included a two-seater sofa and a chaise longue. The company also manufactured a version of Montreal, the lounge chair that Mourgue designed for the French national pavilion of the 1967 Expo.<\/p>\n

In 1966 Mourgue had set up his own studio in Paris. His projects included a consultancy for the motor manufacturer Renault for a low-cost version of the Renault 4 and lighting for the French company Disderot.<\/p>\n

Despite Mourgue\u2019s radical approach, he was part of the teams that designed the French national pavilions for both the Montreal Expo in 1967, and the one in Osaka in 1970. He designed the Bouloum chaise longue for Osaka and gave it a playfully anthropomorphic human form. But then the French state has always been determined to present itself as modern and forward looking. It was the Mobilier National<\/a>, the state-run foundation originally set up in 1663 as the Royal Furniture Depository, that made the Montreal chair from fibreglass.<\/p>\n

The Mobilier National was also responsible for Mourgue\u2019s most radical project, an experimental scheme to equip 500 flats in the prefabricated Grand\u2019Mare social housing development in Rouen with a furniture system. The architect was Marcel Lods, one of Prouv\u00e9\u2019s collaborators. Mourgue used factory-made steel and glass components for the project; Lods designed the 80m\u00b2 floor-plan. Mourgue came up with a series of prefabricated units that could in theory be used to take the place of internal walls to equip it. There was a sleeping pod on wheels, a kitchen that could be shifted as required and an integrated bathroom unit that could be plumbed in where needed.<\/p>\n

Olivier Mourgue\u2019s travelling studio, one of a series he created in the 1970s. Photograph: Olivier Mourgue<\/p>\n

Mourgue had a personal fondness for mobility. In the 1970s he built himself a series of travelling studios, one based on a Land Rover, another on a VW van. By now married with children, he took his family on an extended tour of central Europe on a specially adapted Saviem truck made by Renault for military use. In the 1970s he began to teach, first in Paris at the \u00c9cole Nationale Sup\u00e9rieure des Art D\u00e9coratifs, then, after moving to Brittany, at the \u00c9cole des Beaux Arts in Brest, where he was a charismatic and inspiring presence for 30 years, retiring in 2004.<\/p>\n

Alongside his design work, Mourgue pursued painting and sculpture. He created a series of what he called \u201cImaginary Gardens and Little Theatres\u201d, exhibited in 1992 at the Sainsbury Centre at the University of East Anglia, among other places. They can be seen as a more personal exploration of possible futures.<\/p>\n

Mourgue is survived by his wife, Anne Turlan, a kindergarden teacher, and their five children, Thomas, Mikael, Armel, Gaetan and Maria.<\/p>\n

Olivier Mourgue, designer, born 15 April 1939; died 5 October 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Olivier Mourgue always wanted to design the future. Growing up in Paris in the 1950s, he took against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":936118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[449,458,459,64,63,460,134],"class_list":["post-936117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=936117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/936118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=936117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=936117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=936117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}