Mathieu Lehanneur

The award-winning interdisciplinary designer penned this year’s Olympic torch—a modernist take on the Eiffel Tower and its reflection o the Seine—and cauldron.

PARISIAN BONA FIDES

He was raised in Paris’s suburbs but has lived in the city since 1994, when he enrolled at France’s state university of industrial design.

THE PLACE NONE OF YOUR FRIENDS

HAVE HEARD ABOUT

“Musée de Minéralogie is in one of the most high-level engineering schools in Paris, called École des Mines.

It’s a small museum, very old, nobody ever goes there—because, actually, it’s in the school—but it’s open to the public.

Even if you are not fascinated by stones, it’s incredible. It’s an amazing range of colors. It’s not art, it’s not science, it’s not design—it’s just weird things. And it’s supersecret, because it’s not so glamorous on paper.”

THE AUTHENTIC LUNCH SPOT

“I would go to Chez Georges, a very small restaurant [on rue du Mail in the 2nd arrondissement]. Amazing, super-traditional French food but with supergood ambience, not ‘designer’ at all. As a designer, I’d never go to a ‘design’ place, you know? I hate that in a way.”

THE LOCALS-ONLY GARDEN

“When people come to Paris, they go to Tuileries Garden, or they go to Jardin du Luxembourg, a super-bourgeois garden with beautiful ladies and young kids well-dressed, O.K., bof. But Parc des Buttes-chaumont, in a bit less chic neighborhood, is a more interesting, bigger, natural garden. It’s not well organized—it’s more like a part of a forest. In most cases, people who come to Paris stay in the center of Paris because it’s more convenient. But this one is in the 19th arrondissement, in the north of Paris, so it’s quite easy to reach. It merits an afternoon.”