At year’s end, the renovated Cairo Islamic Art Museum, a four-year project, will open. Structure, traffic flow, interiors - he has re-imagined it all. He’s also produced best-selling furniture and recently made a piece for Saazs with Planilum light technology - a luminous vide-poche or catchall tray. Gardère sees a “natural connection between designing objects and museums. Each helps tell a story, provides fluidity, makes something intelligible.” When it comes to designing for individuals, “it’s key to envision how every curve and angle of a design meets a specific need. A project’s success depends on how it adapts to different situations, individual styles. I am a cog, the hinge between needs, desires, uses, production, lifestyles… all that has to be taken into account, made coherent.”