Paris-based Martin Szekely (*1956) is one of the most acclaimed designers of his generation, working simultaneously for the industry—with international companies such as Nestlé, Heineken, and Hermès—on private commissions, and on limited-production creations. Since the beginning of the 1980s, his work has developed as a "return to the source" of furniture, deploying an aesthetic drawn from the reduction of gestures and attention to materials, rather than through a form of minimalism, with which it is often associated. Combining cutting-edge technology with conceptual simplicity, he uses materials such as concrete and wood, cork and marble.