Alice Lahana
Alice Lahana is a French artist and designer whose practice explores the intersection of sculpture, craftsmanship, and functional design. Based near Paris, she creates furniture, lighting, and objects that blur the boundaries between art and everyday use, developing a distinctive language shaped by organic forms, material experimentation, and handcraft.
Originally trained in fine arts, Lahana approaches design through a deeply intuitive and tactile process. Working primarily with wood, ceramics, and natural materials, she creates pieces that celebrate irregularity, texture, and the traces of making. Rooted in a dialogue between materiality and emotion, her work reflects a sculptural sensibility that transforms functional objects into expressive and poetic forms.
Interview
I was born in the south of France, and raised in a small city called Nîmes.
I remember a book about Le Dounier Rousseau that I had as a child. I spent entire afternoons contemplating each painting and I hoped very much that by closing my eyes and opening them again I would be transported into the paintings.
I did a lot of very varied jobs, some financing artistic projects, others because I didn’t really have a choice. When I left my studies, I was a building painter and a studio model at the same time, which required a certain organization. I have also been a jewelry seller, translator, hostess, and waitress with a relative level of enthusiasm.
I subsequently joined the Patrick Seguin Gallery, where I had the chance to restore Jean Prouvé furniture, among others. Then I created an online magazine and a marketplace dedicated to young artists & designers (L’Observatoire Magazine). Then I joined the teaching team at Parsons School of Paris. On-site, I had access to a whole bunch of very attractive machines, such as 3D printers and CNCs. So I started creating again, and this time my studio grew significantly. I left Parsons School last year to devote myself full-time to my creations. However, I still give a few courses in a small Parisian interior design school.
I was quickly attracted to design when I was a student at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, but I did not dare to go in that direction at that time, believing that I knew nothing about it and that I had to stay in my place as a conceptual artist. Then in the 4th year, I had the chance to go on an exchange to São Paulo in Brazil, and there I allowed myself to explore new directions, thinking that it would just be temporary and that it was just a matter of satisfying my curiosity. So I took design classes and started hanging out in the carpentry workshop. It was a big revelation for me, and on my return, I applied for a two-year carpentry course. So it was through crafts that I discovered design.
I leave a lot of room for spontaneity and improvisation in my work. My workshop is also my living space, so as soon as I have a new idea, I get started. Experimentation is the foundation of my process. It is through practice that I develop my idea and decide whether it is good or not. I make furniture like a sculptor would carve a sculpture, that is to say, by being interested in the curves, in the way in which the light is projected on it, in its texture, in its different profiles.
In a typical day, I alternate between making a mirror and the prototype of a new piece. All this while also taking care of tasks that inspire me less such as communication, business relations, accounting, etc. No day is the same and I often find it difficult to stop.
I mainly work with wood because I like its lively appearance. It’s unpredictable, natural, fragile, and solid at the same time. Carpentry tools are equally fascinating. When I worked at Parsons School, I developed 3D printing carafes. At that time, I tried to convince myself that it wasn’t so bad if it wasn’t environmentally responsible. And then I realized that I wasn’t comfortable with it. To feel fully legitimate to create, I had to use only natural materials. It seems to me that today we can no longer produce objects without considering their environmental impacts and without making radical decisions about the materials we use. So I learned ceramics to replace 3D printing. Clay and wood now interact together in my work, and I hope to bring in other natural materials very soon.
In the Arles collection, the chair and the armchair have the particularity of only being solid and structured once the last cleat is in place. I like this process because it is only at the very end, at the last step, that the object takes shape.
There is also a paradox in the manufacture of mirrors. The final object appears light, precious, and delicate to us, while the manufacturing process itself is the opposite of that. You have to break a mirror plate, cut the wood in all directions, hollow it out to create a recess, and embed the plate. It’s very physical and requires a lot of deconstruction steps.
I still have a long way to go, but from my personal experience, the most important thing is to experiment without necessarily trying to create a final object, and by considering failures as stages in reflection. Manual work allows a great understanding of materials and unlocks lots of boxes in the mind. In my opinion, it is very important to allow yourself to be surprised by this and to accept that you cannot control everything. It is in the unpredictable that the most creativity is found.
I absolutely couldn’t place it in a movement. What I can say is that my work is part of a very contemporary way of thinking, which drives most young designers. It is the desire to move from one discipline to another, to break down the boundaries between art, design, and craftsmanship, and to imagine domestic objects which could be sculptures, and sculptures which could have functions, through processes that could be both artisanal and technological. It seems to me that the designer movement to which I belong aspires to this, to a desire to break down all barriers and break away from the conventional.
I had the chance to discover Charlotte Perriand’s work in depth when I was restoring furniture at the Galerie Patrick Seguin. She inspires me through her journey as a woman in a male environment, but also for her work on the organic, in particular her drawings and her photographs.
I find the young artistic scene very inspiring in both Art and Design. I am fascinated by the work of Destroyer Builders, Joris Poggioli, Katharina Trudzinski, Hot Wire Extensions, and Simone Holliger.
The free form.
“It is in the unpredictable that the most creativity is found.”
The Questions
(The Proust Questionnaire is a set of questions answered by the French writer Marcel Proust.
Other historical figures who have answered confession albums are Oscar Wilde,
Karl Marx, Arthur Conan Doyle, Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Cézanne…)
A workshop facing a lake, the fire crackling in the fireplace and the sound of the wind.
Wage employment.
I have a constant need for renewal.
Perhaps inaction and denial in front of climate change, but I include myself in it.
My mother and my grandmother undoubtedly.
I asked my friends, they have no idea.
Pretty relax.
Courage.
His ability to keep quiet when unfamiliar with the subject.
Her ability to speak up.
Sorry, I’m early.
I wish I were a dancer.
Being able to go to bed after 10 p.m.
What I do day to day.
A bird.
In the middle of nowhere.
I realize after reading this question that I have absolutely nothing valuable in my house.
Living in fear.
Eating.
Independent.
Their leniency.
Romain Gary, Vanessa Spinosa, Annie Ernaux.
Julie in The Worst Person in the World by Joaquim Trier.
George Sand.
My mother and my grand mother undoubtedly.
Cleo, Lou.
ASMR.
No regrets.
Suddenly.
Tenderness has seconds that beat more slowly than others.
“Through crafts that I discovered design.”
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