Materra-Matang, Habiter (avec) l’île de Porquerolles

Living (with) Porquerolles Island
Lou-Poko Savadogo, Lucien Dumas and Ophélie Dozat
Where do the materials that make up the objects around you come from? Are they specific to one region or another? How do you switch from living materials to building materials?
The Materra-Matang trio is an architecture, research, and furniture workshop involving Clara Meneguz and Mathieu Marot. The studio was invited to Porquerolles Island, where the Villa Carmignac is located, to design an outdoor installation that resonates with the surrounding forest environment.
Committed to the territoriality of each of their productions, Lou-Poko Savadogo, Lucien Dumas, and Ophélie Dozat naturally began the project by exploring the island’s forests and shores, and then collected the stories of local builders. The result is a rich atlas of wood, plant, and mineral species.
Although the island’s endemic resources are abundant, it seems that the infrastructures provide little or no means of exploiting them. This small overseas territory has no sawmills and fallen or cut trees are not used because there are no drying or storage facilities.
This fact has become the driving force behind the virtuous circle Materra-Matang set up. To produce seats and objects from collected wood, the studio created a drying unit that reveals the process of transforming natural material into building material.
The studio designed a shaded outdoor bed housing boards of fresh wood and cork. This immediate function is complemented by the drying and pressing of the materials used, which will then be transformed into stools, tables, and other objects.