Born in 1952 in El Biar, François Laffanour is a gallery owner, antique dealer and art dealer, considered “a major figure in the design market”.

For 46 years, he has specialized in furniture by 20th- and 21st-century architects and designers, notably Charlotte Perriand, Serge Mouille, Jean Prouvé and Le Corbusier.

In 1982, together with Mara Cremniter, he opened the Downtown gallery on rue de Seine in Paris, specializing in modern furniture, in particular furniture by twentieth-century architects such as Jean Prouvé, Charlotte Perriand, Jean Royère and Matthieu Matégot, having begun acquiring them in the 1970s. In 1992, he continued to run the gallery on his own. 

Commenting on a Jean Prouvé chair he bought in 1975, François Laffanour says: “I bought things that other people didn’t want, but whose functional or aesthetic interest I perceived, even if I had no idea of their creator or rarity.

Since the 1980s, François Laffanour has organized numerous exhibitions in his gallery devoted to the various architects and designers of the 50s, including Carlo Mollino, Gio Ponti, Ettore Sottsass, Gaetano Pesce and Alessandro Mendini. Continuing his research, he has also organized exhibitions on American architects such as Charles Eames, Georges Nelson, George Nakashima and Isamu Noguchi. More recently, he also organized an exhibition on Shaker furniture and furniture designed by Pierre Jeanneret for India.