From the white plastic bed for the Prisunic catalogue (1966) to the Culbuto armchair issued by Knoll, and from the Lip watch to the private apartments of the Elysee Palace, Paris, (1983), the furniture and objects conceived by Marc Held have been emblematic of the renewal of French design, following the line of Scandinavians such as Alvar Aalto and Arne Jacobsen...With his gallery L'Echoppe on the rue de Seine, Paris, and then with his agency, the designer and architect Marc Held also took part in major projects for IBM and Renault. This book traces fifty years of design, whose success with the public at large has contributed to a great liberation in our style of life. The generosity of his vision has remained faithful to the humanist values that guided his childhood in Bagnolet, where he was born in 1932. Having settled in Greece, on the island of Skopelos, over twenty years ago, Marc Held still continues to build houses and furnish them with his creations, working closely with Greek craftsmen.

Olivier Gagnere appeared on the French design scene in the 1980s. Through his contact with the Memphis group of Ettore Sottsass in Milan, he developed his spirit of fantasy, great formal liberty, all with a touch of humour. In Japan, on the island of Kyushu, he immersed himself in the ancestral craftsmanship of the porcelain makers in the studios of Arita. He designed his earliest pieces of furniture for Artelano and Pierre Staudenmeyer's Galerie Neotu. He went on to collaborate with the Galerie Maeght to create works in Murano glass and with the Galerie Edition Limitee for works in earthenware. In 1994, his designs for the interior of the cafe Marly, in the Louvre, brought him great renown and have led to many collaborations with crystal works Saint-Louis, porcelain manufacturer Bernardaud, En attendant les Barbares... With Olivier Gagnere's artful mastery of every material, he is just as at ease working with porcelain as with iron, crystal, wood, leather or bronze. He blends simple and timeless forms with carefully sized volumes, in a range of bright contrasting colours. Steeped in the most classical traditions, he marks every one of his creations with a gesture, a demeanor that is a signature of his times. Text in English and French.

Marc Held entered history in 1965 with his famous Culbuto armchair, followed in 1966 by his furniture manufactured by Prisunic. Over a period of fifty years, he created some 150 furniture pieces, notably participating in 1983 in the interior design of the apartments in the Elysee Palace. Beginning in the 1970s, he also designed singular works of architecture, for individuals and for corporate clients such as IBM. At the end of the 1980s he chose to focus entirely on this passion of his when he settled on the Greek island of Skopelos. Interested in vernacular architecture, he dedicated a widely acknowledged book on Greece, Maisons de Skopelos, precis d'architecture vernaculaire published by Editions Skopelos.net, in 1994, to it. It was also on Skopelos where over a period of thirty years he built eight exceptional villas: Lemonia, Maistros, Nina, Loukas, The Temple, Mourtia, Myrto and Kapsari. Each house is an architectural manifesto in its own right. These eight villas, in spectacular sites beside the sea, built with local materials and in accordance with the construction techniques of the island - all the artisans were from there - with the magical landscapes in which they are integrated, are eight lessons on the notion of genius loci, which so inspired Marc Held's architecture. Photographed by Deidi von Schaewen - with spectacular shots taken via drone-mounted cameras - his eight beautiful villas are also presented with his drawings and plans developed during their conception phases. Text in English and French.