Manijeh Torfeh - Architecte d'intérieur - Interior Architect

Actualités

Administrateur — 2008-10-16T18:57:48Z

Expositions, articles, entretiens : l'actualité de la designer et architecte d'intérieur Manijeh Torfeh

Sur cette page seront présentées au fil des mois les dernières actualités de la designer et architecte d'intérieur Manijeh Torfeh : expositions, articles, entretiens.

On this page will be present the latest news of the Designer and interior Architect Manijeh Torfeh : exhibitions, articles, interviews.

Crédits

Administrateur — 2008-10-16T18:57:30Z

Ont participé à l'élaboration du site "Design-torfeh.com" :

Patrice SAWICKI :
Conduite et suivi de projet
Référencement (métadonnées, suivi de positionnement)
Conseils en communication Web
Webmastering éditorial Site web : www.thucydide.com

Fanny NAUDET :
Conseils techniques
Réalisation technique
Webmastering technique Site web : http://fannyndt.free.fr

Interior architecture - An apartment in Paris

Administrateur — 2008-06-09T13:32:02Z


Interior Architecture

Manijeh Torfeh is an lnterior Architect and Designer, with a degree from the "École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Paris" in the lnterior Decorating Department.

Her interior design commissions in Teheran, then in Paris, Nice and Cannes for private clients add still another, less monumental and more intimist dimension to Manijeh Torfeh's career.

In the process of designing the interior decoration and architecture of numerous town houses or apartments, as well as restaurants, embassy offices and headquarters of industrial groups, she achieved such a powerful concentration of her artistic means and impact, that she has now reached a perfect and unique symbiosis of all the styles and genres which helped shape her particular approach.


Interior design

It is as though interior decorating had culminated for a while in the field of design - this kind of plastic poetry totally free of the ties which still bind interior architecture to architecture per se, and concerned only with the orchestration of form and matter. The very essence of the law of creation becomes tangible here, in these incredible stuctures thanks to wich a piece of furniture turns into a painting, a lyrical and geometric abstraction about which one's gaze may wander endlessly.

Manijeh Torfeh interior Architect

Administrateur — 2008-06-03T22:37:56Z

Manijeh Torfeh is an lnterior Architect and Designer, with a degree from the "École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Paris" in the lnterior Decorating Department.


The designer Manijeh Torfeh

She was a prize winner in the contemporary furniture competition run by the " Centre Technique du Bois," and worked as a Consultant with the "Ministère de l'organisation du Plan." After going back to Iran, her native land, in the late sixties, she worked for the Imperial Court. She designed, renovated, transformed and redesigned several palaces, gardens and large homes (the most noteworthy being the Saadabad, Nowshahr. Niavaran and Jahan nama palaces). Manijeh Torfeh's familiarity with the architectural and artistic heritage of ancient Iran and the Qajar period, as well as her in-depth study of Persian craftsmanship, inspired the very personal style of her most recent creations. The latter conjure up visions of oriental palaces, using a blend of the most futuristic lines and materials.

A number of Government Commissions gave her a chance to experiment with many different structures, including a lecture hall at the University of Teheran, an office complex for Iran's national radio and television, a boarding school for mentally retarded children with a three-hundred bed capacity (dormitories and a clinic), public libraries, exhibition halls, conference rooms, hotels and banks.

Her interior design commissions in Teheran, then in Paris, Nice and Cannes for private clients add still another, less monumental and more intimist dimension to Manijeh Torfeh's career. In the process of designing the interior decoration of numerous town houses or apartments, as well as restaurants, embassy offices and headquarters of industrial groups, she achieved such a powerful concentration of her artistic means and impact, that she has now reached a perfect and unique symbiosis of all the styles and genres which helped shape her particular approach.

It is no accident if Manijeh Torfeh is now projecting the essence of her vision through a series of treasure tables, namely, eleven pieces of interior furniture which reflect just as many original viewpoints on her art. It is as though interior decorating had culminated for a while in the field of design - this kind of plastic poetry totally free of the ties which still bind interior architecture to architecture per se, and concerned only with the orchestration of form and matter. The very essence of the law of creation becomes tangible here, in these incredible stuctures thanks to wich a piece of furniture turns into a painting, a lyrical and geometric abstraction about which one's gaze may wander endlessly.

Jahan Nama Palace, Iran

Administrateur — 2008-06-03T22:36:13Z

« Jahan nama » palace, teheran, iran.

The royal Jahan Nama Palace in Tehran dates back to the 17th century, its 3800 sq. m. space originally built under the Ghajar Dynasty.

The Jahan Nama Palace underwent major restoration between 1970 and 1976 at the hands of local Iranian craftsmen aided by French companies, all working under the direction of Manijeh Torfeh as lead interior architect.

The progression of the work was filmed over those six years by the award-winning Iranian filmmaker, Abbas Kiarostami, then a little known budding filmmaker, and turned into a feature film entitled "The Jahan Nama Palace."

The film was shown in numerous art museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMa), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the University of California Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA), the Pompidou Center in Paris, as well as in film museums across Europe namely in Torino (Italy), Lisbon (Portugal) and Athens (Greece).

Pass Too

Administrateur — 2008-06-03T22:33:15Z

Living room coffee table consisting of :

A base made of four colorless, transparent altuglass cross-shaped vertical panels, completed by four horizontal white polyvinyl chloride tabletops.
The lower elements are laid out like cases, the upper elements include colorless altuglass partitions and may be used as exhibit spaces. Variant : The white or colored polyvinyl chloride element may be replaced by marble.


Table Pass To

This coffee table couId well lend itself to a who le stratigraphy. Transparent surfaces are layered on several alternating levels around a simple structure which can, however, enter into a multitude of compositions.

Transparency : the criss-crossing colorless altuglass panels happen to be a barely noticeable base through which the eye can catch an in-depth view of the sides which would otherwise remain hidden. Levels and planes : pairs of white polyvinyl chloride tops are arranged on different planes so as to create four square compartments which, seen from above, look like equal subdivisions of the square table itself, whereas an in-depth view reveals two separate levels which achieve an effect of elegant symmetry.

The lower compartments are shaped like casings, while the upper ones are partitioned by transparent altuglass sections and may be used as exhibit areas protected above by the glass tabletop itself. What we have here is not so much a table in which to put things away, as a complex exhibit space. The upper compartments are like transparent caskets or jewel cases, display cases which may be decorated at one's leisure and filled with precious objects : necklaces, rings, stones or mirrors ...

It works like a kind of treasure table whose top does not only set the outer bounds of a plane surface upon which everything else hinges - a trayon which to place something - but rather the boundaries of an upper level through which everything that lies underneath may be perceived : a window, projection table, or optical surface. A display case rather than a table.

A whole surface esthetic thanks to which what is spread out in depth on several levels is seen on a single plane which serves both as a screen and an opening. The inside is to be read on the outside, and depth on a horizontal surface. Which is to say that Manijeh Torfeh's work consists in bringing volumes up to the surface and showing what is inside right at tabletop level. It is born of the utopie dream of a total surface, or absolute visibility in which volume, gathered up in two of its dimensions and spread thus on a single plane, surrenders fully to our gaze.

What is underneath is being presented to us from afar, so unreachable and yet so close, totally offered up to our gaze and simultaneously withdrawn from our touch by an impassable wall or ramp : the glass top is the very opening which denies the treasure to us, while still offering its image or outline to us as a gift. Transparency is the obstacle.

The piece : 11140 € Tax Excluded

Price of glass top upon request to be added

Lou'ping

Administrateur — 2008-06-03T22:30:43Z

A set which includes :

A console table consisting of a base in the shape of two epoxy coated steel circles painted with color gradations, resting an four spherical legs. The circles are decorated with thirty-two cases showing details of paintings from the Sistino Chapel. Each case is closed by a plexiglass magnifier which highlights those details thanks to built-in lighting.
A 140 x 50 cm (55 x 20") glass tabletop, 16 mm (0.63") thick, projecting forward in a half circle.
A painted double mirror, 37 cm (14 1/2") in diameter, whose frame is made of the same material as the base. Variant : each case may have a neutral background and serve as a jewel box.


Table Lou'ping

Kheops was built around two eyes set in a vertical space : now there are four. Two above and two below. Two binoculars, two eight-shaped figures, two loops. A double mirror above, and two painted plated steel cylinders below resting on smaller spheric legs and serving as a base for a glass tabletop in the form of a half circle.

All the lines here are rounded, aerial, supple, endowed with a magnetic force which hypnotically captures our gaze. Here too, we must draw near and take a closer look at what is going on. Our gaze turns irresistibly to a serie of small plexiglass magnifiers which adorn the blue outer rims of the two eight-shaped figures. "Look!" Such is the silent message delivered by these slightly disturbing eyes.

And what is there to see ? Thirty-one magnifying glasses over the surface of each loop are lit from within to unveil what looks very much like a series of fragments from MichelangeIo's "Last Judgment". Sixty-two magnifying glasses thus take us on a lightning tour of the Sistine Chapel. We catch sight through them of a few intimate scenes : a monumental torso twisting unusually, an angel's face, a naked colossus, or the forefingers of man and God just about to touch. We are given an extremely fast and sweeping view of the threedimensional scenography which spreads over the walls and dome of the Chapel, as though the Last Judgment's fantastic drama had been parcelled out in a series of flat and fixed images blown up by the magnifying glass of an art-loving diamond dealer.

We have been summoned here irresistibly to witness this unexpected reconciliation between man and God, so it may never be said that we did not know ... Yes, our faces are really at the center of the Sistine Chapel, reflected in a double mirror : I see myself as the one who sees, as a seer, I see myself as a voyeur.

This llturgy of the seeing eye - or if you like, this high art voyeurisme - goes hand In hand with a baroque italianism in which fragmented images remind us at once of a dizzying spread of postcards and of the precious decorum of a Renaissance palace. These ringed eyes are there Iike binoculars, lenses which might be focusing on views, scenes, or some kinds of impressionistic souvenir album. But Art also throws back to us our own gaze on it, because eyes are nothing but mirrors.

Console table. The piece : 9035 € Tax Excluded

Mirror. The piece : 5767 € Tax Excluded

Price of glass top upon request to be added

Kheops

Administrateur — 2008-06-03T22:28:31Z

A set consisting of :

A console table whose base in epoxy coated steel is painted with color gradations. The front part is decorated with 8 cases containing details of Botticelli paintings. Each case is closed by a plexiglass pyramid which highlights those details thanks to builtin lighting.
Two chromed steel half moons.
A 120 x 40 cm (47 x 163 glass tabletop, 16 mm (0.63") thick, projecting forward in a half circle.
A mirror, 43 cm (17" in diameter, whose frame is of the same color and material as the base. Variant : each case may have a neutral background and serve as a jewel box.


Table Kheops

There is something quintessentially Egyptian about the mirror above and the cylindrical table base below. Each of these two "eyes" is circled by a highly polished emerald green and chrome steel frame suggestive of an automobile's metallized rims. But the vertical relationship which binds them together is radically challenged by a translucent, horizontal glass top magically poised on the hollow cylinder below in a precarious and perfect balance.

Did we Say Egypt ? Are we not being stared at from below the table by the eye of Ra at once blank and aglow with a singular glint ? The circular steel bands around these two "eyes" are adorned with a string of eight diamond-shaped pyramids which deflect our gaze to the periphery and momentarily pull us away from the contemplation of our own reflection in the mirror.

Let us therefore draw closer and behold "The Birth of Venus" and "The Primavera", refracted and magnified fourfold at every angle of these sixteen pyramidal magnifying lenses. They glitter like diamonds illuminated from within by a ray of light which brings out different parts of the paintings : the face of Venus, a milky white arm, a smile, or one single detail from a head of hair. We glimpse at Botticelli fragments as seen through a kaleidoscope or magic lantern, or else enclosed in a Cubist setting which unfolds moments of Art through a series of dazzling shortcuts.

But these magical pyramids are just so many display cases awaiting for the jewels to be shown and gazed at in them. Each of these small glass alcoves can welcome a new image, a new object and thus turn into a receptacle for our most cherished treasures. Change the setting and the show goes on. We stand entranced by this picture box, this real pharaonic treasure.

Our minds are now teeming with visions of ltalian theater dressing-rooms and prima donnas' dressing tables trimmed with lights. Visions too of the Venus of the Scala, her face circled with diamonds, musing on her own image in the mirror and revelling in her own beauty. My body, my belongings : so speaks the defiant, ever mute and motionless face.

In short, "Kheops" is the incarnation of a futuristic, and most precisely, "post-modern" vanity : art is seen through a magnifying glass, like a jewel. It is the most precious thing left to us beyond the body's ephemeral beauty. The fleeting grace of a face and the eternity of art : our sole treasures.

Console table. The piece : 8911 € Tax Excluded

Miror. The piece : 3820 € Tax Excluded

Price of glass top upon request to be added

Gamma

Administrateur — 2008-06-03T22:26:02Z

Trestle table consisting of :

Tubular stainless steel folding trestles, 25 mm (0.98") in diameter, with a pear-shaped marble medallion set in a machine-tooled wood crescent coated with metallized epoxy.
A 100 x 200 cm (39 x 79") glass top, 19 mm (0.75") thick. Variant: A reversible plywood tabletop coated with metallized epoxy, including one Iight and one dark surface.


Table Gamma

Once again, what goes on underneath is the most intriguing part. The trestles of this desktable consist of four stainless steel tubes upon which a glass tabletop rests.

What is so special about these trestles ?

First of all, their shape. The steel tubes are elegantly curved : like a pear, a tear, butterfly wings, or whatever, but surely not like columns or the legs of a table. Two marble medallions, set inside a sculpted wooden crescent, appear to be suspended in the inner space formed by the outside curve on the far sides of the table. Parallel curves thus echo each other and are ultimately summed up by the cold tear motif. A precious stone, a pendant or an ear ring ... in celebration of the jewel once again. Steel, stone and wood – but this wood, painted with metallized epoxy, already seems to be one with the minerai world, as though a lengthy proximity with the hard, cold marble and steel had considerably hastened a thousand-year-Iong fossilization process. What a strange mimetism indeed whereby the jewel draws everything into itself and heralds its presence in all kinds of materials !

The piece : 9141 € Tax Excluded

Price of glass top upon request to be added

Extensor

Administrateur — 2008-06-03T22:24:17Z

Living room coffee table including :

A base consisting of four colorless, transparent altuglass tubular corner columns, completed by four white polyvinyl chloride tabletops. The lower elements are laid out like cases. The upper elements include colorless altuglass partitions which may be used as exhibit spaces or mini greenhouses.
A 140 x 140 cm (55 x 55") glass table top, 10 mm (0.39") thick. Variant : The white or colored polyvinyl chloride elements may be replaced by marble.


Table Extensor

The idea is the same here as in "Pass Too" : it is an exhibit table, a display case-table whose very complexity is structured underneath the glass tabletop through the empty intervals of the openings at the base. Lower casings and partitioned compartments alternate on two separate levels like showcases which are closed off by the tabletop. But the specificity of "Extensor", as its name implies, lies in the fact that the base no longer consists of criss-crossing altuglass panels, but of four corner columns made of colorless and transparent altuglass tubes whose height may be adjusted. Compartments may thus be arranged within the space set off by these columns, and levels may be adjusted by altering the size of extensible legs. This table may be high or low, depending on how one wants ta show.

The piece : 12675 € Tax Excluded

Price of glass top upon request to be added