Twenty minutes into the 1982 sci-fi movie Tron, we’re transported to Flynn’s, a buzzing downtown hangout rammed with dozens of cacophonous arcade machines, many with dystopian names such as The End, Code Wars and Space Paranoids.
Arcadia, hand-made in Bellême, Normandy, by Hervet Manufacturier, is an attempt to capture the magic of Flynn’s – and indeed that whole era of gaming – in one supremely plush piece of furniture. The two men behind it, Cédric and Nicolas Hervet, are cousins from a family of craftsmen going back four generations, although Cédric also served as creative director for electronic music legends Daft Punk. That band’s retro-futuristic aesthetic has some echoes in Hervet’s objets d’art, which include skateboards, standing lamps, “babyfoot” tables and audio installations, some of which can be seen at their Parisian showroom on Rue Volney, a stone’s throw from the Ritz.
