Arnaud Mathouret is a 2019 DesignTO Ambassador. He is a representative of DesignTO Festival’s creative community. As a leader of Toronto design locally and globally, he is an excellent resource for Festival information and a familiar face at Festival events. Learn more about him below.

Meet Arnaud in person at Designer Drinks on November 6, 2018. Click here to RSVP for the event. 

An architect by training and the founder of RVLTR, Arnaud was born in Grenoble, France, where he lived until his early twenties. Growing up surrounded by grandiose mountains which he hiked, climbed and skied his entire life, Arnaud developed an idiosyncratic love for natural landscapes and by extension, the natural order. He is most touched by beauty that is derived from ordering principles and structures found in nature.

As an inherently creative person, it is not until later in life that Arnaud found his calling as an architect and a few years after that, as an architectural photographer and then as an expert in architectural culture and communications. In everything he did ever since he can remember and still to this day, he has brought a creative side that often got him categorized as a bit quirky, but that was always deeply satisfying to his insatiable curiosity and thirst for the new and unusual. These are character traits that he still cherishes and nurtures to this day, as they allow him to see things from a different perspective.

He has had a lifelong love affair with two-wheeled modes of transportation, particularly motorcycles, which he justifies as props for his photoshoots. The overwhelming feeling of freedom that one experiences riding a bike provides an ideal form of focused escape from this over-connected life. He is also partial to golden age hip-hop, German sports cars, jazz, classic menswear, shoes, French cuisine and wandering aimlessly while building stream-of-consciousness narratives in his head.