France-Lanord & Bichaton regularly collaborates with artists and designers through exceptional services, innovative processes and loaning of skills.

In 2014, France-Lanord & Bichaton was selected along with four other companies for the Art & Enterprise programme run by the Ministry of Culture and Communication in partnership with the Ministry of the Economy, Industry and the Digital Sector – a project supported by ENSA in Nancy and DRAC in Lorraine.

Cristina Escobar in residency

During her year-long residency at the company, Cristina Escobar, an artist of Cuban origin, created a spectacular installation entitled “The Housing Estate” which was exhibited at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy in 2015. The work, made up of twenty full-scale black tents which are all unique, evokes the social situation of the most disadvantaged people in the arrondissements of Paris.

To create the twenty tents, innovative and complex processes (3D design) were used and a truly collaborative platform was created in order to tackle the technological challenges that had to be overcome. The tents were created from layers of polyurethane (outer shell) through the process of strato-design and worked by means of 5-axis machining techniques, and fibreglass (inner shell).

2015 - Cristina Escobar - “Mirages” exhibition at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy - © Courtesy of the artist