For more than a century, Villa Noailles in the south of France has served as the centre of artistic fervor, first as the residence of Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles, art patrons who dedicated their life to the promotion of modern art, and now, for the last 20 years, as the site of two internationally renowned festivals focused on contemporary design, photography and fashion. For this year’s “Design Parade” a special focus was given to Marie-Laure de Noailles with the exhibition “Collage” that brings together her personal scrapbooks along with collages by Étienne de Beaumont, Georges Hugnet, Antoni Clavé, and Max Ernst.

Twenty-four scrapbooks, filled over almost fifty years by Marie-Laure de Noailles with images, photographs, letters, drawings, postcards, reveal the existence of an intellectual, artistic, elite and sociable multiplicity. Carefully dated, the pages illustrate the activities of each day, week, month. The initial albums, started in 1928, consist above all of photographs and a few articles, carefully positioned and glued; the layout is simple and spacious. Very quickly, the scrapbooks took on a specific form. Patrons of surrealists and friends of Max Ernst, whose works they collected especially the collection of collages from his work The Hundred Headless Woman, the Noailles seemed particularly interested by this form of art. Probably influenced by this same spirit, Marie-Laure de Noailles started to arrange her albums differently. Thus, in a skilfully organised disorder, are arranged several staves by Auric and Rorem, a note from Jacques Lacan, a drawing by Balthus, a photograph by Man Ray, a concert programme, and articles cut-out from local newspapers on a meeting of boules players or the impending arrival of extraterrestrials.

The couple did not hesitate in hanging alongside each other and against any rules of the time, works which in principle had nothing in common — a Goya alongside a Dalí. Indeed, within the scrapbooks, these overloaded pages, where images, texts, paintings, articles, drawings, and advertisements overlap, follow this same iconoclastic process. Similarly, it is an elaboration which allows us to catch a glimpse of this taste for the eclectic, the vitality of their perspective, and the formal intelligence of these extraordinary patrons. Hence, it is a journal and a unique testimony. Perhaps, also an art work — a “work in progress” over a period of fifty years.

Set in a modernist villa, designed in the 1920s for Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles – an art-patron couple who put their Modernist residence at the disposal of avant-garde artists – Design Parade couldn’t be a more fitting place for nurturing young talent. Now in its 10th year, Design Parade has witnessed the ‘coming of age’ of a number of contemporary practitioners. Following a simple and straightforward concept – an open call for participation, from which a jury selects 10 candidates who are then invited to exhibit their work at the Villa – Design Parade usually constitutes the first arena where designers who are fresh out of school test their ideas and see them positioned in the wider context. Juxtaposed to solo exhibitions of previous years’ winners as well as influential contemporary practitioners, the work of 10 selected designers takes on a different, more nuanced note – at the same time more serious and concrete as well as pleasantly naïve.

The selection of ten designers also implies a curatorial choice from the jury – this year composed of Pierre Charpin, the famous French designer who is also at the centre of a solo exhibition at the Villa, Fabien Cappello, a young designer based in London, last year’s winner Laura Couto Rosado, Barbara Coutinho, Jean-Marc Drut, Philippe Jousse, Catherine Tsékénis and Nathalie Du Pasquier. The way selected works form a narrative, a dialogue between each other contributes to how they will be understood and appreciated. This year’s selection, though, doesn’t lack eclecticism. From modular furniture to a folding sled, from organic materials to hybrid electronic devices, from recycled objects to conceptual lighting, from re-invention of ornaments to hi-tech use of bamboo, from the form of music to experiments with electrolysis.

Formally impeccable, these projects nevertheless fit neatly within the canon of design practice today. But is this the role of Design Parade? Its close connection with industry – the winner is awarded a year-long scholarship at CIRVA (International Glass and Arts Research Centre) – gives this competition a no-nonsense flair. All exhibited projects could, potentially, be put into production, and explore issues that are far away from notions of critical design that are at the centre of design research today. While this does not reduce the value of exhibited projects, it does position them in a different strand, posing a necessary question – can Design Parade really serve as the barometer for design practice today?

During the last century, Villa Noailles in Hyères, France, was an evolving experiment in International Style as well as the home of many Mondrians and Brancusis, Giacomettis and Lipchitzs, Dalis and Rays. Designed in 1923 by Rob Mallet-Stevens for Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles, prominent ‘art collectors and modernism enthusiasts’, the villa went through many changes, following the eccentric taste of its proud owners. Nevertheless, after Marie-Laure’s death, it was sold to the town of Hyères and nearly abandoned for almost 30 years, before it finally became a temporary home for contemporary international talents, like Viktor & Rolf, Raf Simons, Dries van Noten, Walter Pfeiffer and Scheltens Abbenes.

In 1996, after nearly 30 years of slow decay, Villa Noailles was put on disposal of the Association of the International Festival of Fashion Arts. Honouring the villa’s heritage, the Association used the space to nurture new talents in fashion, art and design, eventually setting up a rich cultural program it now hosts. Besides the initial fashion competition, Villa Noailles is known for its annual photography and design festivals, the latter of which took place last week. Design Parade showcases a selection of 10 product designers, offering assistance to young professionals in realizing their projects and developing their careers by a residency program and research scholarship, creating lasting bonds with the laureates.

The 9th Design Parade appeared to have broken with the festival’s past. Usually showcasing carefully crafted and formally refined objects, this edition offered nuanced reflections and conceptual research rather than well-defined products. Starting from the winner of this year’s edition, Laura Couto Rosado, the selection favoured a sort of a new wave of ‘critical design’, displaying projects on the “extreme perfection of this technological revolution” with a series of blown-up doll house furniture produced with a 3D printer by Silva Lovatsova, “manifestation of technology in design” with a new printer concept by Axel Morales, rather than “the process of design conception” with a series of imaginary furniture by Malak Mebkhout.

Laura Couto Rosado’s winning project developed a technical enquiry into properties of quartz crystals. Often used for high-tech components, the crystal’s piezoelectric properties were exploited by connecting a frequency generator to an amplifier and a transformer, turning quartz into a 21st century musical instrument. For the author, the project is “magical, not because it is technically advanced, but because it reveals the poetry inherent in existing technology.” Conceptually elegant and formally intriguing, this project seems to signal a new era for design where technological evolution should possibly become ever more concerned with issues of historical continuity, meaning and humaneness inherent in any object, material or production process.