At heart, with PNY restaurants, I was doing the same thing I do now: telling stories, creating places where something special happens, where people feel good, timeless spaces that endure. Today, with the design of interiors or individual pieces, it’s the same logic. I’ve designed seven, I think. Back then, I was also handling operations. We would design the restaurant, I would finish the fit-out, and the next day I’d switch hats to run the place. So if I got a light wrong or a table layout disrupted the atmosphere, it was immediately ‘in my face.’

Yes, although HEC still taught me the business side of things. I had also studied maths before, in stochastic modelling. That field really stuck with me. Colliding spheres, boundaries… at first glance it seems abstract, but measure theory is fascinating. I did everything orally, so it forced me to visualise everything in my mind. I don’t know how to use any design software—not a single one. When I draw a chair or a table, it’s complete in my head. The team then handles the modelling. At the office, it throws them off a bit because I spend a lot of time staring into space!

Yes, Japanese tea from Maison des Trois Thés, truly the best place in Paris, or Yoshi En online. I drink Gyokuro in the morning—a green tea grown in the shade, so the leaves are very green and delicate—and Genmaïcha in the afternoon. I also love the ceramics that go with it. It’s really beautiful. Nowadays, we have carafes. Carafes are sad. I’m fascinated by our relationship with water. The Japanese have onsens; we don’t really have any rituals with water, which is a shame because it’s important. The only places where you can’t help but slow down, think, and relax are in the shower or the bath.

Yes, we moved in two years ago. Before that, it was a fairly well-known seafood restaurant from the 1980s called Aux Îles Marquises. I really love these murals. The candles, which are older, we actually found ourselves at flea markets. On the façade, it’s engraved ‘salon – cabinets pour société,’ a typical sign of establishments from the 1930s to 1950s, indicating private rooms upstairs. So it has almost always been a restaurant. Today, one of our PNY restaurants is on the ground floor…

Yes, it means that the future needs the past to exist, and that really speaks to me. For me, time is a real preoccupation. I get completely lost sometimes—the years, the memories, everything mixes together. I just read Ada, or Ardour by Nabokov: all his reflections on time are incredible. In my drawings, I like to create a sense of disorientation: when I design a chair or a table, you can’t tell if it’s contemporary or antique. It’s somewhere in between.

The Viennese Wiener Werkstätte. It was incredible. After a very ornate and expensive 19th century, almost caricatural, design became purified. In the early 20th century and up until the 1930s in Vienna, this movement and community of artists revolutionised design: elegant, geometric, blending modernity with luxurious craftsmanship. Later in the 20th century, there were other highlights, notably the Brazilian modernists, who were completely wild and very sensual. Most of the designers there were Europeans, like Jean Gillon, but there’s something warm, very curvy… the rosewood—it’s amazing.

Books are essential. I’m the son of teachers, and I read a lot of poetry and philosophy. I’m not really into Pinterest or Instagram. By referring to books, you discover other images, less popular ones. I read them at home, marking my favourite passages with pastel Post‑Its—which were incredibly hard to find, because fluorescent ones are too harsh for me—then I bring the beautiful, more technical and visual books to the office, into this library. I keep, for example, all the works by Anne Bony, who has done an incredible job. She’s a specialist in 20th‑century design and has published volumes for each period—the 1910s, 20s, 30s, all the way to the 90s. I also like to clear my head by looking at Elements of Architecture, Rem Koolhaas’ book based on his work for the Venice Biennale when he was curator in 2014. Doors, windows, balconies, corridors—each fundamental of architecture has its own chapter. In the one dedicated to corridors, you discover the houses of slightly eccentric people with kilometres of underground tunnels, the corridor from The Shining, or the Japanese engawa, that in‑between space, neither inside nor outside, that leads to the garden…

Yes, it’s essential. Our last trip was a week cycling in Arizona with our daughter. She’s five, so I was the engine! We prefer to be close to nature or to immerse ourselves rather than trying to see ‘everything.’ We’ve also been to Uzbekistan and Kyoto, where I discovered the Villa Katsura—an exceptional former imperial residence. That sophistication in simplicity is incredible.

Yes, I have a fascination with the cabin—those of 1920s ocean liners, or even today’s airplanes… It’s almost perfect architecture, a cocoon on the move. The window becomes your little home, but a cosmic one. A place that’s both tragic and beautiful at the same time.

Yes. Wong Kar Wai made In the Mood for Love, then another film called 2046, and told journalists, ‘It’s the same film,’ with almost the same actors. I find that fascinating. In my installation for Maison&Objet, there are about ten large windows showing cosmic landscapes. In the suite, a couple is probably in the shower after being intimate; the bedroom is naturally a little disturbed. It’s a small cosmos where a scene that could have happened in the past is happening, and will almost certainly continue to happen in the future!

It’s a co‑ownership made up of former painters’ and sculptors’ workshops—the beams were made using scaffolding from the Eiffel Tower! In our apartment, there’s very little furniture; it’s very white. I find that it allows the space to evolve constantly, to be alive. We have a few decorative pieces, mostly in wood, which we change regularly, like the Japanese. My apartment is my refuge. Paris is amazing, but I need emptiness. I relax with books. I still cover the colourful book jackets with a white sheet, annotating them with the title and author. It looks nicer. When we have guests, however, the tableware is very vibrant.

Before, this level didn’t exist; it was a cathedral‑like living room. We added an extra floor and opened up the glass roofs. The first year, without blinds, it was like Mont Blanc—we had to wear sunglasses! Since then, we’ve had blinds installed!