Her practice is grounded in an understanding of sustainability that extends beyond the physical durability of objects. She is interested in their ability to maintain a relationship with their users, sometimes beyond their original function. For her, a durable object is one we continue to find reasons to attach to, care for, keep, or pass on. Sustainability thus becomes a question that is as emotional as it is material.
Material choices are central to her work. Ageing, patina, traces of use, repair, and transformation are approached not as signs of deterioration, but as processes capable of enriching an object's history. Appropriation, modularity, and ritual become ways of allowing objects to evolve alongside their users and remain open to new interpretations.
After studying Environmental Design in Montréal, Ariane recently completed a Master’s in Contemporary Design at Aalto University in Helsinki. These two experiences have shaped a practice attentive to the environmental, social, and cultural issues that define the contemporary world. In a context of ecological crisis largely driven by our modes of production and consumption, she believes it is difficult to design without questioning how we produce, use, and discard objects.
Her recent research focuses in particular on memory, inheritance, loss, and grief. She explores the role objects can play when they become material traces of human relationships, and how they can accompany complex emotional experiences. Through these subjects, she seeks to create spaces for reflection around our relationship with disappearance, transmission, and the value we assign to the things that surround us.
Rather than providing definitive answers, Ariane uses design as a tool for questioning. Her projects invite us to reconsider what it means to keep, repair, pass on, transform, and ultimately let go. Her work advocates for an understanding of design in which an object's value is measured not only by its novelty, performance, or physical lifespan, but also by its ability to continue to hold meaning.