Inga Sempé (born 1968) is a French designer known for creating technical items, including furniture, lamps, and other design objects. She has collaborated with manufacturers such as

Ligne Roset Ligne Roset is a French modern furniture company that has over 200 stores and more than 1,000 retail distributors worldwide. The company was founded by Antoine Roset in 1860 in Montagnieu, France France, officially the French Republic, is ...

, Alessi, and

Baccarat Baccarat or baccara (; ) is a card game. It is now mainly played at casinos, but formerly popular at house-parties and private gaming rooms. The game's origins are a mixture of precursors from China, Japan, and Korea, which then gained popularit ...

. In 2007, she received the

Red Dot Design Award The Red Dot Design Award is an international, annual design competition for product and industrial design, brand and communication design as well as design concepts, in which the Red Dot quality label is awarded to winners. The Red Dot Design A ...

Early life

Inga Sempé was born in 1968 to Mette Ivers, a Danish graphic artist and painter, and Jean-Jacques Sempé, a French graphic artist. She studied at ''Ecole Nationale Superieure de Création Industrielle'' (ENSCI) in Paris, graduating in 1993. She married designer Ronan Bouroullec and has two children. Inga Sempé lives and works in Paris.

Career

In 1994, Sempé collaborated with Australian designer

Marc Newson Marc Andrew Newson (born 20 October 1963) is an Australian industrial designer, creative director, and artist who has worked in many industry sectors including furniture, product, and transportation design, luxury goods, fashion, and fine art ...

, and from 1997 to 1999, she worked with French designer

Andrée Putman Andrée Putman (23 December 1925 – 19 January 2013) was a French interior and product designer. Life and work Childhood and youth (1925–1944) Andrée Christine Aynard was born into a wealthy family of bankers and notables from Lyon. H ...

. Beginning in 2000, she collaborated with Italian design companies Cappellini and

Edra Edra s.p.a. is an Italian manufacturing company specialized in the creation of innovative designer furniture. History The name "Edra" is a modification of the Greek word "''έδρα''", meaning a place for philosophical discussion. Founded in 19 ...

while establishing her own company in Paris. Sempé focuses on creating sustainable and simple, yet not

minimalist In visual arts, music, and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in the post-war era in western art. The movement is often interpreted as a reaction to abstract expressionism and modernism; it anticipated contemporary post-mi ...

, objects. For Sempé, functionality is paramount, and the choice of material must support it. She is known for creating versatile designs, such as lamps that can be extended like accordions and a suitcase

prototype A prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process. It is a term used in a variety of contexts, including semantics, design, electronics, and Software prototyping, software programming. A prototype ...

for VIA that can replace a hotel wardrobe by adjusting its size. She collaborates with Italian, French, and Scandinavian design companies, designing furniture, decor, and various objects for brands including Alessi,

, Tectona,

HAY Hay is grass, legumes, or other herbaceous plants that have been cut and dried to be stored for use as animal fodder, either for large grazing animals raised as livestock, such as cattle, horses, goats, and sheep, or for smaller domesticate ...

, LucePlan, Moustache, and the American manufacturer Artecnica.

Works

Many of her lamps feature fan-like lampshades that create diverse light and shadow effects. The ''Plissé'' pendant lamp, produced by Luceplan, is designed with

pleated A pleat (plait in older English) is a type of fold formed by doubling fabric back upon itself and securing it in place. It is commonly used in clothing and upholstery to gather a wide piece of fabric to a narrower circumference. Pleats are cat ...

material that can be unfolded like an

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German language, German ', from '—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a Reed (mou ...

. In 2009, the lamp manufacturer Moustache introduced the ''Vapeur'' series of pendant and table lamps, distinguished by their unique lampshades made from densely folded

Tyvek Tyvek () is a brand of synthetic flashspun high-density polyethylene fibers. The name ''Tyvek'' is a registered trademark of the American multinational chemical company DuPont, which discovered and commercialized Tyvek in the late 1950s and e ...

fleece. This thin, paper-like material is available in either white or printed with delicate, fine lines in soft colors. The Swedish lamp manufacturer Wästberg offers her clip lamp, which can be used as a table lamp or hung on the wall.

Exhibitions

*In 2003, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris dedicated an exhibition to Inga Sempé. *In 2024, the Triennale Milano hosted an exhibition titled ''Inga Sempé, La Casa Imperfetta'' ("The Imperfect House"), curated by Marco Sammicheli.

Recognition

* Fellowship at the

Villa Medici The Villa Medici () is a sixteenth-century Italian Mannerist villa and an architectural complex with 7-hectare Italian garden, contiguous with the more extensive Borghese gardens, on the Pincian Hill next to Trinità dei Monti in the historic ...

(2000–2001) * 8000-

Euro The euro (currency symbol, symbol: euro sign, €; ISO 4217, currency code: EUR) is the official currency of 20 of the Member state of the European Union, member states of the European Union. This group of states is officially known as the ...

Major Design Award of the City of Paris (2003) *

(2007) for her upholstered furniture ''Moël''. * Guest of honor at the

Stockholm Stockholm (; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, most populous city of Sweden, as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in the Nordic countries. Approximately ...

Furniture & Northern Light Fair (2012).Andrea Eschbach: ''Designerin Inga Sempé. Beobachterin des Alltags.''

Neue Zürcher Zeitung The (''NZZ''; "New Newspaper of Zurich") is German language daily newspaper, published by NZZ Mediengruppe in Zurich. The paper was founded in 1780. It has a reputation as a high-quality newspaper, as the German Swiss newspaper of record ...

, 3 May 2013, retrieved 15 October 2015.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Sempe, Inga 1968 births Living people French industrial designers French furniture designers Product designers Artists from Paris French people of Danish descent Furniture designers from Paris