ENSCI

Higher National School for Industrial Creation / Twinned with the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York as part of the Foundation’s Franco-US exchange programme (2010).

Charlotte Perriand and Jean Prouvé were not content to merely revolutionise the whole of industrial design. They also set up their own school. In 1982 they founded the Higher National School for Industrial Creation, also known as ENSCI-Studios. Situated in the Bastille neighbourhood of Paris in former workshops of the Jansen firm of interior decorators, it is a public institution, under the auspices of the ministries of culture and industry, and the first of its kind in France. At the end of a course lasting five years, the school offers two types of diploma : « industrial creator » and « textile designer ». It also offers two post-graduate courses leading to specialist higher degrees in « Creation and contemporary technology » and « Innovation by design ». « In this fast-moving industry, the dominant technologies are not just those based around wood, metal and heat-sensitive plastics. They now focus on the use of new materials (or familiar ones re-visited), composites, functional textiles and so on. There are also the micro- and nano-technologies, digital simulation technologies, technologies linked to the living world etc, » according to the school’s website. Among the ENSCI’s former pupils are such well-established names as Jean-Marie Massaud and Matali Crasset.