Adventures in Wonderland

The quest for individual expression has guided the life and career of architect, artist and designer Guillermo Santomà, and his theatrical three-storey home in Barcelona is a testament to his ‘visual poetry’.

opposite page: in his HOME OFFICE, designer Guillermo Santomà; chair in foreground by Martino Gamper; armchair by Gaetano Pesce; First chair (in background) by Michele De Lucchi for Memphis Milano; artwork by artist unknown.

He may not exactly be an outright creative revolutionary, but Spanish architect, artist and designer Guillermo Santomà is a design industry outsider who prefers to run counter to accepted models and trends. In an age when the comforting caress of honed oak, soft leather and the wool upholstery of mid-century Scandinavian furniture enjoy an endless revival with myriad new iterations and interpretations, Santomà makes chairs out of cold, hard materials such as glass, metal, rock and moulded EVA foam lacquered with auto paint. His light fixtures blend variously shaped and coloured fluorescent tubes and bulbs with many other materials and have the haphazard appeal of Outsider mobiles and sculptures that light up. Whether his designs function as comfortable seating pieces or not, they maintain a striking sculptural presence that surprises and invites engagement. A phrase often ascribed to his work is ‘visual poetry’. “He is the perfect example of how it is possible to add poetry to function,” says Zeynep Rekkali from esteemed Copenhagen gallery Etage Projects, which has shown several Santomà collections in recent years. “His unique designs, when put into a ‘normal’ residential space or retail environment, immediately add an unexpected spark. this page: Santomà, his wife, Raquel, and their son Jan. opposite page: in the WORKSHOP, on top platform, glass structures for 2016 Dries Van Noten project; glass chair and blue Under Water chair, all by Guillermo Santomà; other pieces in various stages of development.

We have produced custom chandeliers designed by him for shops and are later told that they made the whole interior.” Not surprisingly, Santomà’s professional background is as diverse as his furniture designs and materials. Having studied architecture and design, he has worked for big-name architects such as fellow Spaniard Rafael Moneo, but he also bounced around India for a while designing shops and other spaces on the fly. Inside Santomà’s Barcelona home, one can’t help but think that the latter experience influenced his embrace of saturated colour and confident and liberal use of moulded stucco to customise the decor. He discovered this 1920s townhouse back in 2014, in a middle-class neighbourhood where this seaside city meets the mountains behind it. He maintained its slightly buttoned-up Art Nouveau façade, which stands shoulder-to-shoulder with its neighbours in quiet respectability, but immediately set about redefining the interior to suit his theatrical taste and the living needs of his family — partner Raquel Quevedo, a graphic designer, and their young son, Jan. Once past the entry, visitors are seduced with an explosion of vivid colour — deep indigo and aquamarine contrast with bubblegum pink and pristine white in a dramatic if occasionally hard-to-decipher arrangement of interconnected spaces. Comprising 300 square metres spread over three levels, most of the space opens, at least partially, onto a central staircase that reads like an unexpected Art Deco element in a Piranesi print. At the same time that this composition of stairs and arches visually unifies the space, there are rooms and vistas from which one’s sense of optical and spatial logic is challenged in a way that raises questions about how to get from one room to another. “Visual sensation and optical effects are paramount in Guillermo’s interiors,” says a Spanish design editor who has published Santomà’s work. “Clearly he’s a creator very much engaged in his own vision.” This vision may be the reason why people quickly fall in love with Santomà’s spaces, which feel fresh and invigorated by a sense of youthful, bohemian energy and creativity. Wielding such artistic licence, why wouldn’t a designer suspend his bed over the living room on a metal grate that allows for peekaboo views and overheard conversations between the two spaces? In Santomà’s layering of richly saturated colours, Spanish design authority Marisa Santamaría of the Istituto Europeo di Design (European Design Institute) in Milan can see traces of Mexican architects such as Ricardo Legorreta or Luis Barragán, “but the spaces Santomá has created provide even more drama and theatrical effects”. The use of unexpected contrasts extends to the juxtaposition of traditional Catalan decorative elements such as the iconic hydraulic floor tiles arranged in elaborate geometric patterns that mimic carpets — and are fixtures of almost every bourgeois apartment in Barcelona from the 1880s to the 1960s — with less-pedigreed materials that include vast expanses of wall clad top to bottom in tiny, inexpensive pink bathroom tiles. A graffiti mural by Maria Pratts, on the pink dining room wall, is a witty counterpoint to the elegant gilding on the sea-foam-green doors that open onto the room. Zeynep Rekkali of Etage Projects says he’s always able to spot Santomà’s unorthodox touch whether looking at a chair, a floor lamp or an entire house. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a single quote or an entire book,” he states, “his message is loud and clear.” Visit guillermosantoma.com