Walden Raft

Appearing to float on Lake Annecy, Walden Raft is a dynamic and contemplative experience which offers a space for reflection in reference to Walden by Henry David Thoreau, a novel of the return to nature and environmental awareness. Archetype of the small rustic cabin set on the lake, it is both an incentive to reread the landscape, as well as an object supporting the projection of everyone’s utopias.
Designed between opacity and transparency, Walden Raft is defined as a place of experimentation, a cabin, a mobile, floating, sound and light living space. The flotation, the mobility, the sound system make this shelter a place neither too far away nor too close to the world of men. It is an intermediate area, at the same time a lookout point, from which we can see while accepting to be seen.

Elise Morin lives in Paris [France]. Trained as a teacher at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, at Central Saint Martins College in London, then at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts in Tokyo. She receives the Solomon R. Guggenheim Prize |USA| the Best of Lab art and sustainability 2012. Elise Morin has exhibited in France at the Centquatre, the Jeu de Paume, the Grand Palais, the Museum of Contemporary Art of the city of Bucharest, Moscow and Tokyo.

Florent Albinet graduated from the Boulle school in 2004 in the bronze frame workshop. He continued his studies in design at ESAD in Reims where he graduated in 2008. Since then, he has worked for Godefroy de Virieu, Delo Lindo, Mathilde Bretillot and Matt Sindall. In 2012, he joined the Paris Ateliers residency where he created his own studio, which revolves around projects linked to events, hotels or coastal infrastructure.