LM: Have you always been interested in how technology is married with luxury and speed?
Patrice: The oldest pictures of me, from the late 1970s, show me in an aeroplane hangar holding a screwdriver while my dad fitted a VW Beetle engine to a custom prop plane. TheArsenale is the sum of this passion.
Adam: Well, there’s a picture of me aged 12 with Jeremy Clarkson, back in his afro and leather jacket phase! Motorcars, from Rolls-Royces to stripped-out single-seaters, have always been an obsession, and I’m interested in things that get the heart racing generally. In fact, I once took a record-breaking flight; a few of us flew a Sabreliner 65 around the world in under 58 hours. Technology is intrinsic to both faster lap times and peace of mind, but without the human element transportation can be soulless. Part of me looks forward to self-driving vehicles, but I’m not sure I’ll be salivating over an Apple iCar in quite the same way I do the Ferrari F40.
LM: How do you define luxury, and how did you decide what is worthy of a feature in TheArsenale?
Adam: For me, it’s mainly about freedom. It’s the ability to have your most outlandish fantasies fulfilled, perhaps something unique, and above all something that sets you apart from the hoi polloi. It’s got nothing to do with comfort. If that’s your only stipulation, buy a Lexus.
Patrice: It’s not at all the simple ‘bling bling’ things you can buy. It’s time, it’s choice, and it’s being different. Our sense of luxury is being part of the ecosystem of these amazing designers and being able to choose the ultimate cars, boats and planes in one place.
LM: What are your “stand-out” motion products from the book as you have included everything from yachts to motorbikes?
Adam: Detroit-based designer Joey Ruiter has two products featured in TheArsenale which instantly blew my mind, just because they look so cool. One is the Reboot Buggy, which is like a deconstructed monster truck. It’ll do 150mph, it’ll do jumps, and you could totally valet park it at the Four Seasons.
The other is the Snoped, and if Daft Punk are into winter sports they’d look at home on one of these. It’s pure bad guy sci-fi. But it’s not all high-power stuff; there’s a crocodile-skin skateboard from a French design studio called Watch Life With Curiosity. And others are just ridiculous, in the best possible way, like a car that turns into a helicopter, and a motorbike where you sit astride a Maserati V8. Yet this is all real-world stuff. If you’re stylish, imaginative, rich and/or bonkers enough, you can buy and use all these toys.
LM: Do you think some of these concepts take imagination too far or does art follow function?
Patrice: It’s an interesting question, but should imagination have a limit? A few years ago, only NASA was allowed to go into space, and then Elon Musk’s imagination took him into orbit. The wheel can be reinvented, absolutely.
Adam: With just one or two exceptions, all these products serve a purpose. Fun and freedom is at the heart of most of them.
LM: If you had the chance to try one of these products, which one would it be?
Adam: Any of the personal submarines. They look like so much fun. I’m quite into scuba diving, but I’ve never been deeper than 40 metres and I’d love to explore really deep wrecks and look at creatures I’ve never seen before. These last 50 years, mankind has made space exploration a priority, which is great and all but there’s so much of Earth undiscovered that’s under the sea. That’s a rather noble-sounding answer to the fact that lounging on a superyacht is so cliché, yet if you have a deep-sea submersible parked on your gin palace you are absolutely the man.
Patrice: It’s hard to pick one. I’ll pick three: The ATV Sherp is a blast, an Arsenale-style micro tank. I wish I had one for the streets of Paris. The Cobalt Valkyrie, to take my daughter flying. I love its metallic colour. And the Ortega submersible to visit the sea bed like a super spy. We try to test all the products, spend time with the designers, and act as their ambassadors.
LM: Is there a second book in the pipeline as technology is so fast evolving, and if so, what can we expect?
Patrice: We want this to be an annual catalogue, so each year we’re planning to have a new opus. We’re also working on a green version of it.
LM: Where can ‘TheArsenale’ be purchased, and how much does it cost?
Patrice: It costs 50 Euros and can be bought online on our website www.thearsenale.com. Offline, it’s in 40 of the world’s finest bookstores.
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