Architect Joseph Dirand Tests the Limits of Frenchness

Joseph Dirand doesn’t want to be backed into a corner. The French architect’s many projects are wide-ranging, from a former American embassy–turned-hotel in London; a private island in the Bahamas that is being built from the ground up; hull-to-interior makeovers of megayachts; and even designing guest cabins for the French company Zephalto, which offers low-carbon balloon voyages into the stratosphere. Dirand uses each project to adapt his designs to their specific location, and to tell a story that is in harmony with the environment and culture.

Dirand’s education began when he served as a photo assistant to his father, Jacques, who was an interiors and architecture photographer. The younger Dirand found himself attracted to the minimal, post-war architecture of the 1950s, as well as to the artistic movements of the ‘60s, such as Land Art. According to Dirand, his taste was developed early on, due to the visual database he accumulated through assisting his father’s work. While studying interior architecture at the École Nationale d’Architecture de Paris-Belleville, Dirand split his time between academics and commissioned projects, with requests accumulating to the point of him having to ask his professors to adjust his schedule.

Today, Dirand is working on more than 25 projects in the United States and Europe. Dirand describes his style as “Ornamental Minimalism.” Though the words may suggest opposing concepts, the idea of balance is achieved, in which nothing need be added nor removed. “Nothing is useless; everything conveys a sensory experience that we cannot do without,” he says.

L’OFFICIEL: How did you decide to be an architect?

JOSEPH DIRAND: I always wanted to do this job, and was introduced to it through my father. He was one of the greatest architectural and interior photographers in the ‘70s, and shot for The World of Interiors, Architectural Digest, and Vogue. I started thinking about places by imagining the photos they could generate. As a child, I was especially attracted to the homes of architects and other creators, like Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, and Luis Barragán. Their houses were filled with works by artists, ceramists, sculptors, stylists, and photographers: people who have surrounded me throughout my childhood, and whose conversations have led me to a very broad cultural openness.

L’O: Tell us about designing boutiques for Balmain, Pucci, Balenciaga, Rick Owens, and Chloé.

JD: [For the Balmain boutique] I had recreated this idea of the haute couture salon in resonance with the brand, and which juxtaposed the old world with the more experimental, young vision of [creative director Christophe Decarnin]. I had imagined a very minimal mirror, like a set of a Kubrick film. There was this tension between the past, heritage, and modernity. It was a new way of telling fashion based on experience. This project put me on the radar for other luxury groups. [For the other boutiques] we worked for such different and almost opposite brands. I had to tell their stories by immersing myself in their worlds, in what they wanted to convey, and to imagine the most appropriate message to accompany them. I spent a lot of time with these creators, and each project asked me to constantly reinvent myself, because they had nothing in common. It was a very rewarding five-year period, and then I felt like I had tried all the styles, in different places, in different countries. I finally started to lose the motivation to continue this exercise.