EDIT NAPOLI 2025 APPLICATION
PROJECTS
Two projects are submitted to EditNapoli 2025:
Èiretà – a vase deeply rooted in Marseille’s local materials and their histories.
Acampa – a range of furniture made entirely from local Luberon wood, assembled without screws or glue, enabling a truly local and sustainable manufacturing network.
Both projects are presented below, and you can find more of my work here.
Welcome.
ABOUT ME
I’m Antoine Seguin, a 30-year-old designer based in Marseille.
After six years working in various design studios, I am now pursuing a more personal and independent approach.
My work sits at the intersection of design and research, with a strong emphasis on materials and local know-how. In response to the pressing environmental and social challenges of our time, I seek to reveal the ascetic aesthetics of the necessary sobriety we must embrace.
Trained as an industrial designer, I see manifesto projects not as isolated gestures, but as seeds for broader transformation. They are necessary tools to question our relationship to the world through objects – and to envision alternatives that, while singular, are conceived with the potential to be scaled, shared, and rooted in everyday life.
With Italian roots on my mother’s side and living in Marseille – a city now twinned with Napoli – I see meaningful parallels between these two places in their relation with know-how, materials and territory.
Acampa furniture range
Acampa is a furniture collection based on all-wood joinery, assembled without glue or screws, enabling a local and sustainable manufacturing network.
The project emerged from research into the tree species found around Marseille. This exploration quickly led to the Luberon region, known for its diverse forest resources and a network of local actors well-suited to support such initiatives. Two wood species became central to the development of this project: cedar and cypress.
The Luberon’s cedar forest originated from a 19th century reforestation campaign, following centuries of deforestation caused by agriculture and grazing. Thanks to its natural regeneration capacity and its resilience to the 1952 wildfire, cedar gradually expanded its range, resulting in what is now the largest cedar forest in Europe.
Cypress, on the other hand, plays a quieter role today. Present in the Mediterranean landscape since Antiquity, it has traditionally been planted near Provençal homes as a windbreak, a sign of welcome, and a reserve of timber for roof repairs. Its cultivation has declined, and today only a handful of producers continue to work with it. Outside of these few circuits, cypress wood is most often burned or processed into pulp.
Though their histories differ, both species face the same challenge: how to be valued again. Few sawmills are equipped to process them, demand remains limited, and their potential uses struggle to find a place in contemporary practices.
Some recent construction initiatives have begun to work with them, but these remain highly specialized. By exploring alternative forms and applications, we expand the possibilities for these resources and help re-anchor them in our daily lives.
Acampa offers a response to this situation, a furniture range made entirely from local materials. Cypress, naturally resistant to moisture, is used for outdoor pieces. Cedar is suited for indoor environments.
Beyond the objects themselves, the project opens a horizon: a renewed connection between local resources, place-based production networks and contemporary uses.
Acampa stool, prototype.
This prototype validates the wood joint technique, its resistance and ease to be manufactured.
Open-ended machining, allowing easier industrialization.
Acampa range is composed of a stool, two benches, a table and a shelf. Elements are under production for Art-O-Rama Marseille 2025 (last week of august).
Èreità vase
Èreità is a vase born from the meeting of three materials tied to the history of Marseille: clay, rope, and aluminum.
Through a study of these materials and the gestures behind them, the project offers a snapshot of the living crafts and knowledge that continue to shape the region, highlighting how they endure, adapt, or transform over time.
The body of the vase is made of clay, shaped by slip casting in a complex mold designed to reveal the technical precision of the process. This work was carried out in collaboration with EmiCeram, a ceramicist based in l’Estaque (Marseille).
The rope comes from the last artisanal rope-making workshop in the region. While its main activity now focuses on buying and reselling, certain practices, such as natural pine tar treatment of hemp ropes for ship caulking or custom rope production, still call upon inherited tools and gestures. Here, the rope connects a centuries-old maritime story with the necessary adaptation of their models that allows a craft to continue.
A raw aluminum tube completes the piece, nodding to a major industrial past. Provence was once a global center for aluminum production, fueled by bauxite mining in Les Baux-de-Provence. Left unaltered, this element functions as a single-stem vase that can be paired with the main piece to create a more open floral composition.
More than a speculative project about how resources should be used, Èiretà offers a snapshot of the current state of three local material industries. It stands as a first step, one that calls for further explorations into alternative applications rooted in today’s realities, possibly reviving practices like in-house rope-making rather than relying on global import-export chains.
Èireta vase was first shown during my solo exhibition at Essence Marseille. The vase is distributed in their store since then.
