FREDERICK GAUTIER
Sobriety, simplicity, serenity, a tool for daily life.” That’s the concise answer FCK Frédérick Gautier offers when asked what feeling he aims to evoke through his designs. The Paris- and Marseille-based French designer creates objects that echo both brutalism and ancient primitivism without losing touch with the contemporary world. Using earthenware that imitates the aesthetics of concrete, FCK crafts minimalist, micro-architectural pieces for everyday life.
Although FCK is now renowned for his distinctive design style, he actually began his career outside the design world. After a few years as Head of Culture at the first French department store, Le Printemps, he transitioned into the film industry, spending about twenty years as an art director, creating visual identities for movies and studios.
FCK gradually gravitated toward design through his love for nature—the importance of living on Earth in beautiful landscapes. This passion, along with his deep respect for agriculture and living ecosystems, led him to attend the National School of Landscape Architecture in Versailles. “While completing my assignments as a student, I constantly created ceramic objects designed to hold food grown in the very spaces I sought to defend,” he recalls. “I love earth—its texture, color, and materiality.”
This lifelong connection to clay naturally brought him back to ceramics. “I wanted to create an urban ceramic series, something close to the aesthetics of concrete, of materials worn by time.” Yet, he adds, “I’m also deeply attracted to concrete for similar qualities.” Through FCK’s work, one discovers that concrete and ceramics share common ground—they are both earth, hardened through fire.
Aesthetically, FCK draws inspiration from the gods of modernism, such as Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, but even more so from the brutalism of South America. “I greatly admire Lina Bo Bardi, Luis Barragán, and Oscar Niemeyer, whom I had the privilege of meeting 25 years ago in Mexico City—a memory I cherish deeply. I also lived in a Le Corbusier building, and despite criticisms of his work being too strict or harsh, those spaces are truly designed for living. They had a significant influence on me.”
What FCK appreciates most about brutalism is the purity of form. However, this quality is not exclusive to brutalism—it is also found in ancient and prehistoric cultures. When closely examining FCK’s water can, for instance, one can see an aesthetic reminiscent of ancient American and African cultures. “I’m drawn to the simplicity and ultra-functional nature pre historical ,” he states. “They were created with almost nothing and remain profoundly minimal.”
