“Because even if the Olympic Games remain the space of competition and high performance, the Flame remains an object of transmission and the embodiment of peace,” he explains. “In this sense, the Games are a fraternal ambition that sport can and must carry, whatever the current torments of the world.”

While the cauldron will only be unveiled during the opening ceremony when it is lit to mark the start of the Games, Lehanneur lets on that “the torch is the key and the cauldron is the door. Strictly different designs, but they belong together.” Here, he tells us more about his design process and creative journey thus far.

How did you go from studying art to design?
I actually started by studying at the Beaux-Arts de Paris, but I decided to stop, after only a year. I never imagined myself working alone in a workshop. I felt very early on that I needed contexts and interactions to create. I felt the need to be at the heart of an ecosystem between orders, ideas and their achievements. To be honest, at that time I didn't know anything about design, or even any designer's name. I remember during the application interview at ENSCI–Les Ateliers [the French design school École Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle] in Paris that the jury asked me who my favorite designer was. After a long silence, I replied: “the designer who invented the first escalator”. I obviously didn't know his/her name—and neither did the jury—but it allowed me to describe to them my fascination for this surreal and magical object that set the staircase in motion. I am still in love with it!

Where does your interest in science stem from?
I started to be interested in science during my diploma project in design school. At that time, I was doing tests on drugs that allowed me to pay for my design studies. I used to be a guinea pig for pharmaceutical laboratories. I spent whole days in hospital to test the potential side effects of new molecules and new medical treatments before they were put on the market. I discovered a universe in which the body and the mind are intimately linked and this brought inspiration to my Therapeutic Objects project: a new way of conceiving and designing medicines. I like the way science aims to understand human beings in their great complexity. I love how our body alters our psychological states and how our mind affects our physical states. Science, whether astrophysical, biological or medical, is the greatest source of knowledge and a permanent inspiration for my work.

How would you describe yourself as a designer? What do you hope to achieve at the end of the day?
I'm a designer who still doesn't know what design is. Or more precisely: where does it begin and where does it end. I see design as a grey area, a territory without fixed borders. It is actually a great chance, my job is a field of endless opportunities. I feed on complex geometries from nature and rational and irrational phenomena. I want my pieces to be living beings; they seem to breathe, feel and continue to grow. I want them to be works of art and support reflection or meditation.

How did your Paris 2024 Olympics and Paralympics project come about?
I do hate contests. You did not choose your friends by competition; you chose them for who they are, possibly for what they did, but you never asked them what they had to offer before making them your friends. Here, I had no choice and I really wanted to become a friend of the Olympic Games!

The design and conception of the torch are built on three main pillars: equality, appeasement and water. They struck me from the very beginning as the best incarnations of the Paris Games. They are parts of its values but also elements of context. Equality, which is expressed as much in the absolute parity male-female athletes as in the equivalent place given to the Olympic and Paralympic Games, is expressed through the perfect symmetry of the torch. For the first time in its history, the torch plays on this duality and balance. It is through a drawing all in curves and continuous lines that the idea of appeasement is expressed. Because even if the Olympic Games remain the space of competition and high performance, the flame remains an object of transmission and the embodiment of peace. In this sense, the Games are suspended for a moment, a fraternal ambition that sport can and must carry, whatever the current torments of the world. Finally water, our third pillar: beyond its monuments, Paris is an art of living along the water. The Seine is the link and the beating heart and will be the stage of the opening ceremony and several Olympic sites.

The torch is inspired by this by playing on the undulations and reflections of polished metal that has become visually liquid. The cauldron should be presented at the opening of the Games next year as it is normally the case. However, Paris 2024 strives to do things differently, we’ll see what they’ll do! We could say that the torch is the key and the cauldron is the door. Strictly different designs, but they belong together.

What has been the most challenging project you have ever worked on?
Tomorrow Is Another Day is probably the most challenging one. This is a project that I created for a palliative care department in a large Parisian hospital. Tomorrow Is Another Day is like a digital porthole, an additional window in each of the rooms and constantly broadcasting a state of the sky. It offers a realistic, almost impressionistic vision, which can vary from a pure blue sky with a few white clouds to more heavy rainy weather. It is a window open to the sky of tomorrow. A small jump in time, and a small jump in space too because patients can decide their “sky”. That of the service, local and Parisian, or the sky of the dreamed or lost place. Or the one under which his children and relatives are living.

Technically, it is a program that retrieves weather forecast data, in real time, and creates the animated image. The program is designed based on a number of parameters: time of day, color of the sky, cloud speeds and transparency, humidity. It was necessary to reproduce the infinite variations of grey, cloud silhouettes or light intensity. Paradoxically, it was necessary to achieve this sophistication for the patient to be able to let his mind go as we have all experienced, lying in a field with his eyes to the sky. It is rare to be called upon to draw the last object that people will see in their lifetime.

What are some of the design projects you’re currently working on?
I am currently working on a new chandelier for which I have not yet found the title. It is inspired by the complex and fascinating geometry of flowers. I started by choosing an iris, which we had scanned in 3D, then we modified and sculpted it digitally to create the most beautiful and impactful flower we could get. It will be made out of ceramic.

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