Lluís Porqueras
1930
He started his career in design without knowing much, and specialized in it little by little: The exile after the Civil War carried away all of the intellectuals in Spain. The ones of us that started doing design were desperately searching for the origins. My generation recovered the rests of a shipwreck. And when we recovered them, we started working without exactly knowing what we were doing. Even the word design was in a certain way little used, or used in a very strict sense. Afterwards, however, the word design has absolutely lost its value, nowadays everything seems to be...
He started his career in design without knowing much, and specialized in it little by little: The exile after the Civil War carried away all of the intellectuals in Spain. The ones of us that started doing design were desperately searching for the origins. My generation recovered the rests of a shipwreck. And when we recovered them, we started working without exactly knowing what we were doing. Even the word design was in a certain way little used, or used in a very strict sense. Afterwards, however, the word design has absolutely lost its value, nowadays everything seems to be design.
In 1979, Porqueras founded another company, Vapor, with Jaume Vaquero. Their objects went against the tide of High Tech design, predominant at the moment. That is the name that articles created with the most advanced technology, in which metal was much used, received. Vapor, instead, did soft and warm lamps, such as the Claris hanging lamp in M114 s catalogue; the Finisterre marker designed together with Joan Gaspar and edited by Santa & Cole in 1992; or the Chang lamp, a double shaded lamp that has a certain oriental air. Vapor also worked on projects like the Camper establishments, or participated in the Casa Barcelona for the Cultural Olympics in Barcelona 92. During the 80 s the official taste of the times of the dictatorship still impregnated part of society, and design was done with a didactic intention, so that people would start accepting innovative ideas on materials, shapes The Vapor venture was a business failure, but the fact that many of its models are still in force nowadays show that we did a good design work. I know now that a designer does not have to focus on manufacturing. In 1995, Marset bought Vapor s catalogue, so many of their projects are still edited to the date: "It is like a secret pleasure, that fulfills me. It is like a little and intimate act of vanity."
Lluís Porqueras stayed for three years at Targetti, working on the lamp collection Barceluna. From 1998, he contributed with his phenomenal memory and his extensive knowledge on fabrication techniques and materials as an advisor in Eva Luz and in the projects studio he shared with Cristian Diez, with whom he still creates objects. "I have been obsessed for more than forty years with doing a lamp: THE LAMP. I am still trying. Inanimate objects have a special magic. They awaken a certain eroticism for the person who wants to possess them, that is what motivates buying them.
