STEVEN LEPRIZE
- Date of birth
1986
- Nationality
French
- Distinguishing features
Leprize heads ARCA Cabinet Making, a French studio that mixes age-old woodworking know-how with innovation to develop sophisticated new techniques and materials.
- website
Biography
Steven Leprizé began making things with his hands at age five, tinkering alongside his father, who ran a museum dedicated to old industrial tools in Brittany. But he soon developed a preference for working with wood.
By age 18, the designer had trained in the craft of restoring antique wood furniture, but his career plans changed when he attended a design course at the legendary Ecole Boulle in Paris. He began using 3D computer, and a collaboration with a fellow student eventually led to the invention of AIRWOOD© inflatable wood.
Since 2014, the 35-year-old designer has headed ARCA Cabinet Making, where he and a team of 12 have built on that spirit of invention, bending, inflating, molding, lacquering, and experimenting with marquetry techniques to create new wood-based materials, objects and designs for both private clients and luxury brands in the realms of product design, interiors, architecture, fashion and the automobile industry.
Leprizé calls himself an “overgrown kid” who strives to keep evolving and to never repeat himself. On the wall of ARCA’s workshop is a favorite quote from Mark Twain that has become a mission statement and a mantra: “They did not know it was impossible, so they did it.”