design disco club lands at lafayette anticipations in paris
For Paris Design Week 2025 (find designboom’s ultimate guide here), Design Disco Club, a week-long exhibition running until September 12th, 2025, organized by publishing house Pli office, takes over the Rem Koolhaas-renovated Lafayette Anticipations, reframing contemporary design through the energy of disco. Conceived by curator and founder of Pli office Christopher Dessus, with scenography by his design and interior architecture studio Paf atelier, the project gathers more than forty emerging designers, architects, and fashion houses to examine how creation today is driven by shifting industrial, human, and emotional rhythms.
The exhibition positions the disco theme as a structural metaphor. The reference point is the 1976 track Disco Inferno, where repetition, acceleration, and collective euphoria translate into design terms. Disco, in this reading, is a prism that reveals how labor bends under the weight of time, how repetition gives rise to both weariness and wonder, and how collective rhythms can reorder the values of creation.
image © Paf atelier
Paf atelier’s scenography as temporal experiment
Scenography by the Paris-based team at Paf atelier translates these ideas into a spatial and perceptual experiment. Visitors step into a deep-blue floor punctuated by harsh light bursts, reflective surfaces, and theatrical shadows. Objects appear isolated or clustered, illuminated like performers in a nocturnal score. The composition draws on Baudelaire’s poem The Clock, where time fractures, suspends, and multiplies, destabilizing linear perception. Here, design is not displayed as a static form but as a constellation of pulses, interruptions, and rhythms—an environment closer to a dancefloor than a gallery.
Design Disco Club brings together design studios such as Uchronia, Soft Baroque, and Odd Matter, and figures like François Azambourg, Samy Rio, and Fabien Cappello. Textile works and objects by Petite Friture and Lambert & Fils appear alongside emblematic fashion pieces from Marine Serre, Dior (Galliano), Jean Paul Gaultier, Marie-Ève Lecavalier, and Thierry Mugler, forming a cross-disciplinary assembly.
Design Disco Club functions as both an exhibition and a forum. Alongside the displays, talks organized with Isabelle Moisy-Cobti and the Fonds de Dotation Quartus open space for reflection on architecture, design, and fashion. The event also coincides with the release of JTM – Disco Inferno, the second issue of Pli office’s magazine.
Pli office takes over Lafayette Anticipations with Design Disco Club | installation images © Florent Michel
the exhibition reframes contemporary design through the energy of disco
the project gathers more than forty emerging designers, architects, and fashion houses
examining how creation today is driven by shifting industrial, human, and emotional rhythms
the reference point is the 1976 track Disco Inferno
conceived by curator Christopher Dessus with scenography by Paf atelier,
Adrianus Kundert, Fontaine
Frédéric Pellenq, Old Oak, New Flame Sculpture
Maria Jeglinska Adamczewska, Visage vase
Julien Carretero, Ateliers Delacroix. Balises
GROOVIDO, Medium Board
Gaspard Fleury-Dugy, Disco Totem
Studio Sho Ota, Surfaced Stool
Uchronia, Flower Coachella
project info:
name: Design Disco Club
designers exhibited: Adrianus Kundert, Alain Gilles – Glass Variations, Bureau, Daniel Zamarbide, Camille Viallet & Théo Leclercq, Dirk van der Kooij, Döppel Studio, Exercice – Glass Variations, Fabien Cappello, François Azambourg, Frédéric Pellenq, Garnier Pingree Design – Petite Friture, Gaspard Fleury-Dugy, Gobezzia, Grégory Lacoua, Groovido, Haus Otto, Julien Carretero & Ateliers Delacroix, Kwangho Lee – Lambert et fils, Laurids Galée, Maria Jeglinska-Adamczewska, Odd Matter, Only Only Studio, Marie et Alexandre – Petite Friture, Pierre Charrié, Quentin Vuong, Samy Rio, Sashaxsasha, Soft Baroque, Stéven Coëffic, Studio Douze Degrés, Studio Élémentaire, Studio GGSV, Studio poirier bailay, Studio Sho Ota, Uchronia, Xavier Brisoux – Glass Variations
fashion garments: Marie-Éve Lecavalier, Jean Paul Gaultier, Marine Serre, Dior par Galliano, Thierry Mugler
location: Lafayette Anticipations | @lafayetteanticipations, Paris, France
curator: Christopher Dessus | @christopher_dessus
assistant curators: Fannie Tomas (design), Jeanne-Léopoldine Claustre (fashion)
scenography + production: Paf atelier | @paf_atelier
organization: Pli office | @pli_office
musical piece: Bureau Bruit
sound installation: Bientôt Minuit
lighting design: iiode
lighting installation: Only Light
set construction: Eotna
graphic design: Créations du Val d’Oise (CVO)
dates: September 6th – 12th, 2025
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