Pop-up book
Cathédrale de Poche
A Gothic nave that rises 240 mm from a book closing to 3 mm. One uninterrupted vault across twelve spreads; the rose window is a single knife stroke.
12 spreads · 214 glue points · 2019
Spread 01 · The studio
A sheet of paper is a building lying down.
PLI is a four-person studio above a print shop in the Croix-Rousse. We engineer paper: score it, slit it, glue it in the one place you will never find — so that a flat thing becomes a standing one the moment it is opened.
The mechanism is the message. We count success in the small gasp that happens between thirty and ninety degrees: the nave rises, the box squares itself, the fern unrolls.
- Founded
- 2014, Lyon 1er
- Record rise
- 240 mm from a 3 mm closed book
- Stock
- 170–300 gsm, grain long, always
- Clients
- Publishers, chocolatiers, one perfumer
Spread 02 · Selected works
Four pieces that lie flat and refuse to stay that way.
Packaging
La Boîte Qui Se Souvient
A chocolatier's gift box folded from a single die-cut sheet. No glue, no tape; it squares itself with a soft click and remembers how to close.
1 sheet · 0 glue points · 2021
Artist edition
Herbier Mécanique
Ferns unroll on paired V-folds while a paper wheel turns the seasons behind them. Edition of three hundred, each numbered on the stem.
300 copies · 4 mechanisms · 2022
Window theatre
Vitrine d'Hiver
Five layers of paper snow for a Grasse perfumer, lit from behind and deep as a street. It folds to 11 mm for the courier.
5 layers · 11 mm flat · 2024
Spread 03 · The winter window
The Grasse window, rebuilt in cut paper and mathematics.
Five layers deep, nothing photographed. Move your pointer across it — the street leans with you.
Vitrine d'Hiver, 2024 — five layers, backlit, rebuilt in code. Cut nowhere.
Layers move on scroll · tilt follows the pointer
Spread 04 · How a fold is made
Four verbs, in order.
01
Sketch
Pencil, scalpel, yesterday's cereal box. Twenty ugly mock-ups before one elegant one — we break each on purpose.
02
Score
The blade cuts halfway; the bone folder persuades the rest. A crease is a hinge you cannot oil — placement is everything.
03
Tune
Open, close, listen. A good mechanism whispers. Glue tabs move by tenths of a millimetre until it does.
04
Multiply
Dies are cut; sheets run in Lyon and Turin. Every hundredth copy is opened slowly, by hand, to hear it.
Spread 05 · Commissions
What must rise?
We take six commissions a year and answer every letter on paper. Tell us what must stand up — and how flat it has to lie.
bonjour@pli.studioAtelier PLI · 14 rue Burdeau · Lyon 1er · Thursdays, the door is open