Maison&Objet: What’s New? In Hospitality
(France) – Maison&Objet wrapped its 2025 edition, which presented an insight into future trends and products for the hospitality industry.
“At Maison&Objet, we see hospitality as a key element of our differentiation strategy. The industry’s professionals are looking for unique, striking pieces that go beyond the functional solutions available elsewhere. They come to us for inspiration and to discover creations that will make their projects stand out. This is why we have created dedicated areas, such as the ‘What’s New? In Hospitality’ spaces, where we have chosen to work with Julien Sebban, a rising star in the design world. His original and disruptive vision of hospitality, illustrated through bold staging that incorporates a selection of carefully curated products, perfectly meets the specific needs of hotel and restaurant professionals,” says Mélanie Leroy, Managing Director of SAFI (Maison&Objet, ParisDesign Week, MOM).
Sebban was given carte blanche to design the What’s New? In Hospitality by Uchronia space, which aimed to take a fresh look at – and for – the hospitality sector. In the centre of Hall 6, the architect and designer imagined the Hotel Uchronia, a surreal immersion in a unique hotel. Sebban plunged visitors into the world of the weird and wonderful in a 200sqm space that paid tribute to surrealism embodied in a concept hotel.
Divided into three main areas, each zone offered an immersive, offbeat experience, blending art and function in a setting that defied convention. A Café-Bar where day and night are reversed, and the rules of scale and proportion are turned upside down. A Master Bedroom, part-dream, part-metamorphosis, transported us into a room where dreams took over from reality. And finally, a gym and a garden, embodying a fantasy in motion, where energy and poetry came together in a space dedicated to sport and nature.
To find out more about market trends, What’s New? In Decor in hall 7 presented a selection of new products from exhibitors. Elizabeth Leriche invited visitors to discover the colours and materials that will shape the interiors of tomorrow.
Within a large labyrinth marked out on the floor to symbolise the unconscious, she created an immersive, dreamlike journey that disconnected visitors from reality and sought to fill them with wonder. In a cabinet and salon of curiosities, a bedroom of dreams that underlines the importance of the imagination, played on scale and proportion, and a hypnotic corridor, we discover a selection of styles and new products, offering a veritable compass to guide interior designers, buyers and creators in their choices.
Elsewhere, throughout the show floor, exhibitors were separated into sections for hoteliers and restaurateurs to discover brands. Sections included: Signature, Today, Forever, Unique&Eclectic, Craft, and Projects. Each presented innovative furniture and lighting solutions tailored to the technical and stylistic requirements of hotels, restaurants and third-party venues.
Also presented at the fair was the Rising Talent Awards – Korea. Following the trend of ‘hallyu,’ Korea’s cultural ‘soft power,’ the peninsula has become home to many established international architects who work in this highly inspiring setting. The new generation of designers explored the paradoxes between Western influences and the roots of their craft heritage, innovating with ancestral materials and shifting the boundaries between design and art – or vice versa.
For the 2025 edition of the Rising Talents Awards, Maison&Objet pointed its compass rose towards this hotbed of creative activity. Dereen O’Sullivan, head of the Rising Talents Awards programme, explains: “The languages they weave are marked by an assertive futurism, refined originality and a reinvention of sculptural techniques. Moreover, our daily lives are fuelled by this giant of industrial and technological innovation. Finally, even if the Korean creative scene is recognised today, we still have much to discover.”
As usual for the awards, all recipients are under 35 and have set up their studio less than five years ago. Together, they represent an aesthetic that is both modern and respectful of the rich history of the dynasties that once ruled the shores of the Yellow Sea.
One of the winning designers to present decorative lighting is Minjae Kim, a 34-year-old Korean artist based in New York, who designs furniture that acts as an antithesis to architectural practice (he has a degree in architecture) in terms of time, scale and accessibility. His creations in quilted fibreglass, bamboo and wood are like short sentences revolving around an idea. It might be a chair made of translucent leaves, or a lamp balanced by wooden weights. One of these lights up when two brass rods touch.
Maison&Objet returns to Paris 4-8 September 2025.
