Philippe Starck in Buenos Aires!

Although not for the first time, Philippe Starck is in Argentina...

I've just met him personally today, at the cocktail held to announce the launch of the new Yoo buildings at Nordelta, inspired and designed by Starck. Charming, funny and smart, dress in a fashion only permitted to artists and of course, with a lovely brunette by his side.

But who is Starck?

Philippe Starck was born in Paris on January 18th, 1949. He studied at Notre Dame de Santa-Cruz in Neuilly-sur-Seine and then at the Nissim de Camondo school in Paris. But he spent most of his childhood playing under his father's desk (an airplane designer), cutting, pasting and nailing stuff to bikes, motorcicles and other everyday objects. He liked doing and re-doing the world surrounding him.

Although he became Pierre Cardin's artistic director by the age of 20 and by the seventies he was already designing furniture and interior decoration, it was by the 1980s that he became internationally popular. In 1979 he founded his enterprise "Starck Products" and many Italian editors began to commission furniture pieces. The President of France asked him to redecorate some rooms at the Elysée Palace. He also decorated the traditional Café Costes, on Rue Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, and designed Paris' National Decorative Arts School and Bordeaux's Airport's Control Tower. Also in Paris, he decorated Jean-Paul Gaultier's boutique and two restaurants: Bon and Bon 2.

But, he also took his unique style outside of France, to the main cities of world. In New York he designed the Royalton and the Paramount, the first of his classics in hotel decor. Also the Hudson. In Hong Kong, he decorated the Peninsula Hotel, followed by the Delano Hotel en Miami, the Mondrian in Los Angeles, the Clift in San Francisco and the Faena in Buenos Aires. In London, apart from Gaultier's boutique, he also did the Sanderson hotel and the San Martin's Lane. He has many other works in the making in Australia, Turkey and Mexico. Museums around the world are happy to exhibit his art.

Brilliantly crazy and smart, he is a breathless artist, drawing out of necessity and pleasure, for himself and for others. For Philippe Starck, design is not only a tool for creating daily-life objects, it is above all an act of creation that mixes passions, desires, motivations, quests and our perception of our environment and world. In each of his designs he puts his heart, creating objects that are often good other than just pretty. 

Have you seen the juicer he did for Alessi?

In today's cocktail I heard him say that he loves Buenos Aires...