Fahad Hariri’s creativity knows no bounds. The co-artistic director and owner of Pinto Paris carries founder Alberto Pinto’s legacy forward with a sense of curiosity that moves between decoration, art and object-making. One of city’s most established interior architecture studios, Pinto Paris is known for its richly detailed spaces, spanning palaces for royalty in the Middle East, private jets and landmark projects such as Hôtel Lambert in Paris, The Lanesborough in London and multiple spaces at the upcoming Wynn Al Marjan Island in Ras Al Khaimah.
With Les Interdits, a new collection of sculptural objects, Hariri shifts that language into a more expressive territory. The collection presents a series of works cast entirely in bronze – a horseshoe crab, a sea coconut, a starfish, a skull. They feel ancient and unfamiliar at once. “The inspiration comes from a long-standing fascination with nature’s most evocative forms – the strange, the ancient and sometimes slightly disturbing,” Hariri explains. “These are objects that reveal the natural world’s more mysterious intricacies.”
The word interdits translates to “forbidden”, but can also suggest something protected. Within design, objects are often expected to serve a purpose. Here, Hariri shifts the focus. “These pieces exist only to evoke… to provoke emotion, curiosity and sometimes even discomfort. They are liberated from utility, yet are meant to live within the spaces of everyday life,” he notes.
The pieces are cast in bronze and produced at the Fonderie De Coubertin, one of the greatest French workshops dedicated to art casting, he explains. “Founded in the 1970s to preserve the tradition of monumental sculpture, the atelier works in direct continuity with the lineage of French sculptural foundries that produced works for artists like Auguste Rodin and many others.” In fact, if one were to draw parallels with historical bronze work, one instantly recalls earlier works such as Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise in Florence. Not in the subject, but the discipline.
Each object captures the exact textures and irregularities of natural forms. But before the casting process began, the search for the original specimen was demanding. “Many of the species are protected and require proper documentation before they can travel.” From developing the mould to achieving the desired surface, creating a piece’s first edition can take up to three months. Every subsequent one then takes about six weeks to produce.
What emerges is a body of work that feels almost suspended in time. The bronze is left in its natural tone, protected only with a light varnish, allowing the material to retain its depth and clarity. In doing so, Hariri brings the viewer closer to the original form – not as interpretation, but as preservation.
In the end, the collection proposes a different way of looking at objects – not for what they do, but for what they evoke. “Ultimately, what I am interested in proposing is a simple idea: Beauty itself can be a function,” he reflects.
This article was originally published in the April 2026 issue of Vogue Arabia.
