Designing Chaos: Paris Exhibition Embraces the Unpredictable

In a room filled with suspended shards of bright acrylic and flickering projections, La Gaîté Lyrique’s new exhibition demands immersion. Designing Chaos, on view through October 29, asks: can design thrive by unleashing chaos?

The exhibition coincides with Paris Design Week, positioning La Gaîté Lyrique—a venue more often associated with digital cultures—on the design map. Curated by Adèle Jarrige, it features twenty-two works spanning experimental installations and speculative objects. At the press preview, Jarrige described her curatorial approach as an “act of translation,” explaining, “Chaos, in this context, is a language. Designers are not solving problems here; they’re speaking in fractures.” This multiplicity is evident in works ranging from algorithmically generated furniture to unstable lighting fixtures.

The centerpiece is Fragmented Continuum (2023) by Vienna-based designer Georgina Kalman. This installation consists of modular tiles cast from molten aluminum poured onto cracked stone slabs, creating unpredictable surface patterns. Audience members can rearrange the tiles, creating new forms with each interaction. Kalman, in a video interview projected in an adjacent gallery, described her process as “a collaboration with entropy,” adding, “I don’t think in outcomes. I think in possibilities.”

This emphasis on process recurs throughout the exhibition, particularly in Oscillate (2022) by London’s Studio Mishkin, a sound sculpture driven by participant touch. Comprising metallic rods that produce discordant tones when agitated, the piece resists categorization. Jarrige’s inclusion of Oscillate—an explicitly non-functional object—highlights the ambition to escape the constraints of usefulness.

Chaos is not neutral. As theorist Sanford Kwinter noted in his 1992 essay “Architectures of Time,” chaos carries a cultural weight of destruction and failure. In contrast, the designers featured in Designing Chaos treat unpredictability as a resource. This shift mirrors broader movements in contemporary design, where speculative practices gain traction over market-driven frameworks that dominated the 20th century.

However, the exhibition does not fully address the political implications of its thesis. Several pieces, including Kalman’s Fragmented Continuum and Studio Mishkin’s Oscillate, rely on resource-intensive materials that seem at odds with ecological crises reshaping design discourse. When pressed on this contradiction during the press preview, Jarrige defended the works as “dialectical provocations,” arguing, “If chaos teaches us anything, it’s that contradictions are inherent.” Yet, does this embrace extend beyond aesthetics?

The tension between chaos as concept and material reality is evident in Collapse Protocol (2023), a speculative toolkit developed by Berlin-based studio Körner-König. This piece consists of instructions printed on biodegradable mycelium sheets, advising users on dismantling and redistributing components of a collapsing structure. Körner-König describes it as “a thought experiment in systemic fragility.” Yet, when does engaging chaos become another form of aestheticizing crisis?

This unresolved friction does not detract from the exhibition’s success in unsettling design’s orthodoxies. Rather, it underscores Designing Chaos as a space of transition—a liminal zone for ideas still forming. As Jarrige remarked, “If we leave with answers, we’ve failed. This is an exhibition of questions.”

Paris Design Week has long thrived on polished launches and market-ready prototypes. La Gaîté Lyrique’s contribution offers a counterpoint. By rejecting the false clarity of ‘problem-solving’ and dwelling in ambiguity, Designing Chaos invites its audience to consider that chaos is already here—not a future disruption, but a present condition. Whether designers can translate that condition into meaningful practices remains an open question.