Julien Sebban of the multidisciplinary firm Uchronia first burst onto the Parisian design stage in the summer of 2019, when his debut restaurant project, the vegetarian hot spot Créatures, opened on the roof of Galeries Lafayette. The playful oasis (a summertime pop-up now four years running) became an instant selfie-inducing hit, with raised gardens that snaked around colorful tables and seating woven from recycled plastic.
He’s had a full plate ever since. Currently in the works are, among other commissions, four restaurants, two bakeries, his first hotel, and a new retail concept for Sonia Rykiel stores.“Lots of my clients come from Instagram,” says the 29-year-old, whose happy-go-lucky style (think bright colors, oversized forms, and wavy lines) has proven to be social media gold with creatives of all kinds. “We embody a new generation,” he notes of his collaborators. “We move quickly and we’re always learning along the way.”
Sebban honed his aesthetic at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, where his thesis explored the effects of light and color on mood. He graduated with the Uchronia logo ready to go, founding the studio in 2019 as a way to explore those cerebral concepts in interiors, graphic design, fashion shows, art installations, and more. (The name refers to a fictional world that exists outside the constraints of time.) Recent projects include the Right Bank restaurant Forest, which opened in 2021 at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, and Café Uchronia, an eatery at the 2022 Maison & Objet show.
Earlier this year, he released Uchronia Wave, a line of furniture made by French artisans that translates his favorite motif into lacquered peanut-shaped cocktail tables, daisy dishes cast in swirling scagliola (a plaster mixture that imitates marble), and squiggly tête-à-têtes clad in burl poplar veneer. In September he released heavily texturized under-the-sea- themed renditions of the designs. These playful pieces are now trickling down into his expanding residential portfolio, most notably a classic Haussmannian apartment that Sebban has transformed with curving plaster walls, custom tapestries, and a dining table with a top made of raku ceramic.
The many branches of Sebban’s practice will soon fully converge at the five-story Château Uchronia, a 1970s building in the 18th arrondissement that he is updating, bit by bit, into a showroom, office, photography studio, test kitchen, and exhibition/event hall or “performative space.” Here, and across his projects, Sebban embraces recycled elements, local production, and adaptive reuse, twisting existing materials and typologies in interesting ways. “Keep the moldings!” he declares. “It costs less, takes less time, and looks supercool.” uchronia.fr
