Skip to main content
Madd logo
Madd logo

museum of decorative Arts and Design

musée des Arts décoratifs
et du Design de Bordeaux
contact us

39 rue Bouffard,
33000 Bordeaux

The museum is closed but the activity continues. Follow the museum's team during the works.

▲ The madd-bordeaux starts its metamorphosis in 2023▲
During its closure, from 2023 to 2025, the museum offers a rich program in the city and online

More informations

exhibition design

Unintended Beauty

Protographs by Alastair Philip Wiper

from 20.06.2020
to 24.01.2021

The exhibition Unintended Beauty is a photographic exploration inside production sites around the world (adidas, Bang & Olufsen, Boeing, CERN, Kvadrat, Playmobil, etc.). The project offers a rare insight into places of work that are normally kept behind closed doors and reveals the hidden beauty and the incredible complexity of these infrastructures.

Machines that smash atoms together, make fabrics or produce medicines, all result from human collaborative imagination and tell us about who we are: our needs, desires, madness and our vision of the future. The sustainability of this future depends on our ability to create and innovate. This exponential creativity associated with cutting-edge technology strongly contributes to our well-being and at the same time constitutes a threat to life on earth.

These aesthetically fascinating images question the human being and his complex relationship to the machine. The exhibition offers an ethical reflection on production methods, which remains one of the key issues for design.

In parallel with the exhibition Playground - The Design of Sneakers (18 June 2020 - 10 January 2021) where Wiper’s photographs of the adidas production sites in Bavaria and Indonesia are shown, Unintended Beauty opens on June 18 at the Museum of Decorative Arts and Design in Bordeaux.

Meeting online with Alastair Philip Wiper : Thursday 18 June on Instagram 

Free access until August 31: To make your visit pleasant, the madd-bordeaux team has implemented various precautionary measures.
Information: Opening hours, prices, guided tour

Alastair Philip Wiper
British photographer Alastair Philip Wiper (Hamburg, 1980) is known for his unique ability to portray subjects of industry, science and architecture. Through a profound fascination with lines and symmetry, colour and contrast, Alastair masterfully captures the beauty of imperfection. Besides working regularly for magazines such as Wired, Scientific American, Wallpaper, The Guardian and Vice, Alastair has received great admiration and international acknowledgement for his series on Silicon Valley (Silicon Nights) and his book about Bang & Olufsen “The Art of Impossible”.

SHARE YOUR VISIT WITH US
#unintendedbeauty
#alastairphilipwiper
#madd_bordeaux  

Production sites
adidas, CERN, Pernod Ricard, Boeing, European Space Agency, Playmobil, Bang & Olufsen, Technical University of Denmark, Danish Crown, Ørsted, Arla, Kvadrat, Lundbeck, Maersk, Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, Steinway, Niederegger, Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, S.N.S. Herning, Mykita, Harry’s, Jodrell Bank, Hasselblad, etc.

The catalogue Unintended Beauty (published in Spring 2020)
250 x 320 mm – 208 pages – 90 illustrations
Graphic design by IRONFLAG
Published by Hatje Cantz

Wooden mock-up of the ATLAS detector, CERN, Switzerland, 2013
© Alastair Philip Wiper
Odeillo Solar Furnace, French National Center for Scientific Research, France, 2012
© Alastair Philip Wiper
Adidas, shoe factory, Indonesia, 2017
© Alastair Philip Wiper
Radio anechoic chamber, Technical University of Denmark, 2012
© Alastair Philip Wiper
Door to the Radio Anechoic Chamber, Technical University of Denmark
© Alastair Philip Wiper
The large space simulator the test facilities of the european space agency, The Netherlands, 2013
© Alastair Philip Wiper

The museum wants to thank

Château Haut-Bailly,
mécène d’honneur

 

Kvadrat
The Danish Arts Foundation

For their fidelity, the museum would also like to thank
Les Amis et le Cercle du madd-bordeaux
Château Nairac
Farrow & Ball
Les Crus Bourgeois du Médoc
Les Galeries Lafayette
La société de négoce DIVA
Samsung