Laurent Lebot and Victor Massip's Nantes-based company Faltazi is a cool eco-design enterprise with a string of innovations to its name, including a revolutionary online boutique, an environmentally friendly vacuum cleaner, and an ecological kitchen.

Faltazi is all about green, high-tech home design. We’ve made it our business to look at what is used in households and see whether our knowledge of industrial design can improve on what already exists both functionally and environmentally. One of our ongoing projects is Monsieur Faltazi – a next-generation ‘virtual’ boutique that allows customers to choose and buy an item online (in digital form), then receive a solid, 3D version. It works thanks to cutting edge stereolithography technology – a form of photopolymerisation that functions like a 3-D printer with lasers, which heat and solidify ceramic, steel or polyamide power into a shape pre-determined by a computer. The materials used can all be recycled and its ‘made-per-order’ characteristic prevents unnecessary pollution from surplus production or stocking. The process, which has been mostly used in rapid prototyping, is currently very expensive, but we have made some fantastic prototypes, and hopefully, as technology progresses, prices will drop and we can start commercializing properly.

Meanwhile, impressed with Monsieur Faltazi, the home appliance company Rowenta hired us to work on an ecological vacuum project. We wanted to invent a vacuum that would be entirely recyclable, light and resilient.  After many long hours, we finally came up with the Rowenta Shock Absorber, made almost entirely of expanded polypropylene (usually used in bike helmets and car dashboards).  It’s a plastic, so it’s is not carbon-free, but it creates 2/3 less CO2 during production than normal polypropylene, halves waste (because its expanded form allows us to use less material), is very light yet hardy, doesn’t require painting and can be recycled. The vacuum also fits together in just three sections, which dramatically reduces the number of parts required and thus production costs.

We have a long list of other design ideas we will soon be presenting to Rowenta, as well as other companies, but our latest project is an ecological kitchen : Ekokook. It integrates a maximum of ecological and energy-saving materials and offers innovative new waste solutions that will hopefully make a real difference to the environment.

Anna Brooke
Les technologies évoluent vite, ce qui implique de nouvelles approches et notamment la recherche de nouvelles stabilités sémantiques par le design.

Notre activité se déploie sur deux domaines, le design opérationnel et le design prospectif.
Loufoques ou fantasques hyperactifs, les Faltazis sont des atypiques et comptent bien le rester. D'un côté, Victor Massip, designer mécanicien versé dans l'urbanisme. De l'autre, Laurent Lebot, designer et graphiste qui rôde dans les rayons de science-fiction des librairies, se nourrit d'ouvrages de Mattotti, Bill Sienkiewicz, Franck Miller. Ensemble ils produisent affiches, casques de vélos, cockpits d'avions, aspirateurs et objets imaginaires qui idéalement, s'incarneront lorsqu'on aura achevé le réglage des imprimantes à trois dimensions (monsieurfaltazi.com). Veilleurs techniques et renifleurs d'évolutions, les faltazis sont des inventeurs imaginatifs qui retranscrivent dans la réalité des concepts mêlant esthétique, usage et technologie... Si l'idéal de Victor Massip est de poursuivre l'aventure lancée avec son compagnon tout en espérant éduquer le consommateur à devenir citoyen, Laurent Lebot s'imaginerait bien en designer laborantin, penché sur des expériences inédites, du genre "embryons d'objets" ou "graines de ciseaux".

Laurent Lebot
École d'arts appliqués Pivaut, Nantes
ENSCI (École Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle), Paris

Victor Massip
Diplômé en Génie Mécanique et Productique de l'IUT de Cachan
ENSCI (École Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle), Paris
DESS d'urbanisme et développement local à l'IEP de Paris