A protean designer, Stéphanie Marin systematically involves her team in her work. If we had to cite only one of his creations, the one to which his name is systematically attached, it would perhaps be the Livingstonesthese pebble cushions launched in 2003 when Stéphanie Marin extended her research to design and housing. Even today, they can be found in hotels all over the world. That same year, his workshop became Studio smarin. Since then, we have no longer counted the collaborations, the meetings which will give birth to varied projects, some of which continue to live and evolve, year after year.
Ecoletopie, from Metz à Monaco
It is part of the exhibition The art of learning. A school of creators that Studio smarin is invited by the Center Pompidou Metz to imagine a tool class, entitled Ecoletopia. Present in the Saint-Charles school in Monaco since last year – thanks to the support of the New National Museum of Monaco -, it is also taken up by the Directorate of National Education, Youth and Sports, which develops it within several educational establishments and is now part of from the permanent collection of the Center Pompidou Paris.
The event of this summer 2026 will be the reopening of the 500 m workshop in Nice2. “A space which will accommodate part of our design and prototyping activity and will be divided between the hybrid wood workshop, the hemp concrete and lime workshop, the image design workshop, the usage laboratory and finally an exhibition space“, explains Stéphanie Marin. This is where we will discover part of the exhibition Idiorythmiapresented in the spring at the French Institute of Milan during Milano Design Week 2026; it will bring together embodied conceptual proposals, in the form of tools, tool-objects and system-furniture.
Also worth rediscovering is the research developed by Studio Smarin over the past twenty years, the zero carbon program, the Livingstones made of mycelium, the bounce stations, the Kairos lighting fixtures, the modular and reversible furniture-system… “Visitors will be invited to explore and document their own daily rhythmic negotiations : these stories, games and testimonies, extended in texts, videos and audio throughout the journeys, will gradually constitute a living archive of contemporary temporal tensions“, declares Stéphanie Marin. Resolutely from Nice, this workshop will aim, in addition to remaining accessible to all, to develop all forms of interdisciplinary expression.
