W&I Design
The Wilmotte & Industries design studio explores the areas of “environmental design” and has built a real reputation in the world of industrial design and object design. The studio works with numerous firms and manufacturers in France, Italy, Germany and the United States, in particular. This “architect’s design” is characterised by great care taken over composition and a keen awareness of materials and finishes. Its pure and simple lines aim to convey readability, coherence and the authenticity of the object and a certain form of timelessness.
Iconic

Lampe WASHINGTON, 1984

Tabouret Élysée, 1983

Chaise Palais Royal, 1986
Jean-Michel Wilmotte’s design work came to the fore in the early 1980s and has remained there ever since. In a career lasting over 45 years, his work shows the remarkable coherence and clarity of his approach: painstaking composition, formal balance and simplicity of means are the leitmotivs of an easily identifiable style. The approach highlights the continuing relevance of the object – with no superfluity in drawing – and shows a certain form of elegance in its discretion. He also shares with the great names in the history of design a perfect mastery of craftsmanship, assembly and ergonomics expressed in a contemporary language: beauty at the service of the useful.
Far removed from trends and fashions, fully aware of the history of contemporary design and without provoking any scandals, Jean-Michel Wilmotte’s work is made to last. He gives to his objects a classical vision with an essential sense of balance… a guarantee of lasting over time, as shown in several iconic, timeless and often reproduced objects.

Tabouret Élysée, 1983

Chaise Palais Royal, 1986
Specific projects

Hôtel Lutetia, Paris

Appartements Privés de l'Élysée, Paris

Maison Privée
The designers are indispensable within the firm. They adapt to industrial demand but are also true to the original spirit of the agency and to the demands of the Wilmotte & Associés architects for the design of the tailor-made objects required for their projects. They devote much of their time to “integrated design”.
The work mainly involves developing galleries and hotels (the Réserve Ramatuelle, the Lutetia in Paris, the Cheval Blanc in Saint-Tropez), specific lighting and furniture for museums (the Tribal Art department at the Louvre, the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, the Islamic Art Museum in Doha), town planning, projects involving the headquarters of major corporations (LVMH), and furnishing for a few private residences, which are seen as real research laboratories. Some of these products, designed for a specific place and client, are often published and featured in the manufacturer’s catalogue.

Hôtel Lutetia, Paris

Maison Privée
Urban furniture

Corbeille de propreté BAGATELLE, 2013

Banc double POLARIS, 2000

Lampadaire LUTETIA, 1999
Thanks to the process of urban renewal in the early 1990s, Jean-Michel Wilmotte developed new values for urban identities. Designers began to think about the coherence and streamlining of functions, adaptation to public use and the needs of safety, sustainability and maintenance, making urban design one of the main specialities of Wilmotte & Industries. The timeless approach of the design studio, often focused on old town centres with full respect for the history of the site and heritage, is well adapted to areas that need to be perennial and to belong to everyone. A very large number of redevelopment projects and the creation of street furniture, in France and abroad, have given rise to several different ranges in the sector’s main companies: JCDecaux, Hess, Eclatec, GHM, etc.
Some of the objects produced by the design studio are now icons of the City of Paris: the street furniture and lighting on the Champs-Elysées and the Maréchaux tramway, and the elegant Bagatelle waste bin, of which there are now over 35,000 in existence.

Banc double POLARIS, 2000

Lampadaire LUTETIA, 1999
Furniture

Table basse FIA, 2010

Table MIDLAND, 1991

Chaise KOLEKSIYON, 2018
Furniture design was Jean-Michel Wilmotte’s first love and is still a major speciality at the Wilmotte & Industries studio. Tables, chairs, stools, sofas, armchairs, beds, bookcases, console tables, side tables, coffee tables, chests of drawers, coat racks, nests of tables, sideboards, screens, desks, bed legs, dressing tables… The firm has designed countless models for furniture retailers or for the needs of specific projects.
Over the past 15 years, two collections have stood out in particular: the Wilmotte collection, designed for the US designer Holly Hunt, going very much against the trend towards showy design and aspiring instead to timelessness and elegance in the great French tradition; and the Anatole collection, designed for the Istanbul company Koleksiyon, the result of wide-ranging research carried out on work spaces, to create customised, versatile and efficient environments to foster interaction and hybrid practices.

Table basse FIA, 2010

Chaise KOLEKSIYON, 2018
Lighting

Lampe de table LUTETIA, 2018

Luminaire Light Up, 2004

Lampe ANIMA, 2021
Lighting is vitally important in architecture. It is a subject that has been developed by designers for many years now, both by the giants of the industry and by smaller firms. For architectural lighting, the sector’s major manufacturers, such as Zumtobel, iGuzzini and Thorn, regularly submit highly technical specifications to the design studio, leading to the creation of innovative products that are perfectly adapted to market needs. And decorative lighting is not forgotten with the production of a large number of models designed for Artemide and Lumina, among others.
Depending on demand, the object’s design may be traditional and elegant to adapt to heritage architecture, or on the contrary highly contemporary and innovative, like all the research work carried out since 2010, when LED came on the market as a new miniaturised source of lighting with low energy consumption.

Luminaire Light Up, 2004

Lampe ANIMA, 2021
Home Design

Piano de cuisson

Meuble vasque HERMA, 2022

Sommelier LAGUIOLE, 2004
From the early 2000s, Wilmotte & Industries formed more and more partnerships in the world of home design: for the bathroom or kitchen, tableware, household appliances, door hardware, objects for the home… The aim is clearly to provide individual consumers and to project managers and architects a complete range of elements to complete interior areas, especially in accommodation and hotel projects: wash basins, baths, toilets for Teuco; bathroom fittings for Cristina and CEA; sink vanity units with Margraf; knives for La Forge de Laguiole; plates for Haviland and Pilivuyt; hobs, extractor hoods and oven housing units for La Cornue; light switches for Meljac…
Materials and finishes play an important part in this vision of global design and help towards the total coherence of a development project.

Piano de cuisson

Sommelier LAGUIOLE, 2004
Textile

Tissus LELIEVRE BY WILMOTTE, 2023

Tissus LELIEVRE BY WILMOTTE, 2023

Linge de table JACQUARD FRANÇAIS, 2022
Fabrics are a material in their own right: a manufactured “product” to be sold, but above all the guarantee of a certain style to customise an interior and furniture. From an early age Jean-Michel Wilmotte grasped the wide-ranging possibilities offered by textile design: from the start of his career, in the mid-1970s, he was intrigued by textile creation and by the various weaving techniques, especially the Jacquard machine, and created a range of collections for Suzanne Fontan, Casal and the silk makers Jean Roze and Nobilis. In 2022, rejuvenating this form of craftsmanship, the Wilmotte & Industries studio developed a collection of tablecloths, table sets and napkins for Le Jacquard Français, as well as a collection of furnishing fabrics for Lelièvre Paris.
This taste for textile design can also be seen in the creation of carpets from the early 1980s and is continuing today with the development of several different collections.

Tissus LELIEVRE BY WILMOTTE, 2023

Linge de table JACQUARD FRANÇAIS, 2022