In the Marset showroom, surrounded by the different versions of the "funicuí" lamp, his design from 1979 that is currently being reissued with great commercial success, we talk to Lluís Porqueres.

Lluís personifies the pioneers and self-taught designers here. He is the resistant figure and aware of a way of designing that was developed by refining his gaze and with large doses of intuition in the cultural desert that was lived in the country, to propose a new type of objects and reach a minority audience vid new elements to equip their homes and establishments.

Her hands give off by appearance and gesticulation of a life of conscious contact with objects, a design work marked by testing with materials, hands of experience, which while touching and analyzing models of lamps exposed a l space, she says looking at me, this is fantastic!

On September 14th, in la capell you have the opportunity to hear the testimony of one of the characters who starred in the advent of design on the second day of the Object of Desire #2 cycle, in conversation with Joan Gaspar and moderated by the television presenter and scriptwriter and dio Oscar Dalmau.

M would like you to tell us about "Stoa", how did that pioneering experience ser ?

Wow, that was an interesting time. He ser a company that I set up with my friend Paco Blanco in 1965, who unfortunately died ja many years ago. It was a very pioneering bet. I started ar with some small lamp designs, on experimented with pl astic, taking advantage of its material particularities. We came to have a catalogue with many models that were initially designed by jo or Blanco. Later other designers joined the project, but those were difficult times for this type of production and finally I abandoned the project mainly due to economic difficulties and the recently incorporated ones continued.

With "Vapor" could we say that you defined your way of designing?

This company, another experience of self-publishing of designs, I set up with Jaume Vaquero, my colleague at the time. The name came from the fusion of the two surnames Va(quero) and Por(queras) and at the same time it was an allusion to the context in which we signed up to work, an industrial area of the city. It was a workshop in Poblenou, at a fantastic time because there were many industrial workshops working in that area, and this allowed us to learn and develop new processes. Some graphic designer friends made us a very attractive image fica and in line with the design we wanted to develop.

The designs of "Vapor" have a very different philosophy from those of "Stoa", as m spirit aparentment.

Yes, m has been very useful for me to collect elements that I found on the street or in flea markets to be able to develop designs from them or simply experiment and learn from them.

Vapor's designs are very marked by this way with which I had a l scope, with what I found. Many of the components he used were pre-existing elements from hardware stores, which jo adapted or versioned to build a new object. Prefabricated diffusers for example.

In fet, the key piece of the Funiculí model, the clamp that allows the upward and downward movement of the diffuser, ser an improved adaptation of double clamps that I discovered at the Balius hardware store in Poblenou.

Was it a way of working given the circumstances?

Well, it is clear that today the material possibilities and resources have grown indisputably, and the beginnings of the company ser hard economically, but I worked in this way also because I believed in it. It seems to me an tica way of working and understanding industrial processes, m is to be able to obtain products with low costs, which allow an affordable selling price.

It was a bit on the margins, or in a different position with respect to other scenes or realities of the design of the time. He was a kind of sniper from Poblenou (river).

You have exercised this designer-entrepreneur binomial many times.

Si, now with the perspective of time I think maybe I was wrong. The work of generating and maintaining a company must be done by entrepreneurs. All the workload and problems involved in keeping a company in actiu, especially quan the difficulties tighten manage to eclipse you and sometimes even diminish the capacity of the creative work to develop the design.

So what pushed you to create these self-publishing companies?

Quan I started ar, and for a good part of the years of practice, there was no design culture like the one we live today. Companies were very limited and I suppose that many of us thought m it was agile to undertake the process of producing what we designed trying to open up what was then a new market. It was not only that there were difficulties in production, the companies also did not consider it necessary to draw up catalogues or a commercial network suitable for the products we wanted to produce.

You were part of SIDI...

Si, we signed up for this network and it went quite well, we were able ar start exporting to varis countries in Europe, which was also algo quite new and difficult.

Then you worked in other directions?

Quan I started working ar other industrialists, I saw that it was a very m satisfying job. I could concentrate on the design work and I made some models that were well received, this gave another dimension to the work.

But your functions were not limited to lamp design.

Well, apart from doing some interior design work, on found a comfortable formula with clients who gave me a lot of leeway to propose and execute the projects with my own criteria and few interferences. In the field of object design, always focused on lighting, I worked not only as a designer but also as an art director for a company, Eva LUZ.

This company had a very old-fashioned production and far from what we would understand by a production in design. I managed to direct this shift which, as I mentioned before, was not only a change in product design but a total reconversion in its image and way of entering the market. The result ser really satisfactory.

How did you receive the news of the re-edition of a design m thirty years ago?

It ser great satisfaction and m is coming from the m of the one who had been a co-worker and disciple, Joan Gaspar, who after working with me, began ar to do so for the firm Marset that now produces the Funiculí.

This fet I experienced as a great recognition of my work, and to see that in m it has been a product that has entered the market again with such acceptance, it is very encouraging. They even sell it in the MOMA store, entering the American market is ja something difficult cil, but the fact that this museum has set its sights on it to offer it as its selection is also very satisfying.

This design had a very popular vocation, do you think this reissue has made your lamp elitist?

No, not at all. Despite the improvements that have been fet to the original design, now that there are m is t technical possibilities, and that make the piece m attractive, well resolved functionally speaking and m extend its useful life, I think it continues to maintain its initial philosophy.

Can we say that you have generated a design classic?

Well, jo wouldn't m dare to say so much, but seeing the journey and vitality of this object is a great recognition. I've always tried to work outside of trends but you don't always achieve this durability over time. In m is in my practice I have always been guided by the idea of ephemeral creations, without much transcendence, fet that has now taken on another dimension with this reissue.

However, there has been no recognition from the institutions.

It has not been a space that has interested m much, that of the competitions or the show organized around design.

From your extensive experience, how do you see the current design scene in Catalonia?

Although there is a fantastic range of material possibilities and processes, and I have seen how this work became a consolidated discipline, I find the globalizing and uniformizing language that design sometimes takes worrying. Cultural characteristics must be reflected in the objects that are created in a place. Here this relationship, this cultural legacy was seriously interrupted, but now it is important that it is not the globalization of processes and the market that interrupts it definitively.

Do you mean that matter has to express itself?

Our work as designers does not cease to ser the translation of the material. Understand it as it is expressed and seek an interpretation that does not betray its identity. In my particular case, I have tried to find a balance that would allow me to work between tradition and innovation, adding to my design a load of the past, of experience that I have detected in existing objects to learn from their language.

We want to thank Lluís Porqueres for his effort and dedication to a l preparation of this interview.