involved hard-blue resin seats. For Gas, a
collaboration with Milan-based Kaleidoscope
magazine, Santomà drew inspiration from
pop artist Ed Ruscha’s Twentysix Gasoline
Stations. When he found out that the Spazio
Maiocchi location was a former garage, that
settled it. One of the challenges he faced
was to make the design strong enough. This
was possible because the material could
easily be bent, something he discovered by
working it by hand. Just like suitcases with
rounded corners. In this sense Gas translates
the essence of Rimowa, a travel brand that
can boast years of research resulting in a
uniquely behaving material which is given
a new function here in Milan. ‘It needed
to look very symmetric. We didn’t weld a
thing, we only used screws. The inside is
super rough: we deconstructed the entire
interior and build it up with new resin seats.
The car is actually very well-made, in a
bad way.’ It was essential that the car could
still be driven. The film that proves this is
an important part of the installation. Did
the client understand why the film had to
be made, and money made available, right
away? (The ‘new’ car was put on the trailer to
the desert of Monegros in the northeast ofSpain, where a team of image-makers with
drones and other high-quality equipment
captured the driving Santomà – ’an amazing
experience’ – on screen). ‘In advance, they
said: “We’ll see.” But when we showed them
the film, with glistening moonlight reflecting
on the new skin of the car, they saw that it’s
an inseparable part of the installation.’
What material is next? Santomà is
pondering a book; he’s been writing science
fiction and also poetry for a long time. Then
there’s the exhibition at a Chicago museum
next year. He’s not sure what he’s going to
show yet. Something architectural. The plan
is to spend this summer in Mexico with his
family and to build pavilions there. Trying
and testing. Maybe in the countryside, maybe
in the middle of the city. Barcelona won’t be
keeping him down. The city’s stuck. Too many
rules. Too little space. Too expensive to think
freely. Wouldn’t selling his house be a ticket
to freedom? I think out loud. His green eyes
dilate, he’s suddenly right back in the here
and now. That question was too Dutch, too
pragmatic. Did I forget that he designed every
inch of it himself? ‘But, this is our home!’ ●
guillermosantoma.comWhen invited to apply his progressive outlook on
materials to an installation for Rimowa, Santomà
wrapped a car in the luggage brand’s signature
aluminium and doused the interior in resin.‘You must love pink,’ I say. He can’t answer
that, simply because he’s not sure. The
colour doesn’t matter much, he says. ‘In that
moment I felt I needed to paint it pink. The
space had to look like a palazzo, very kitsch,
like novecentismo is kitsch. In the end, the
green, white and pink are all equally impor-
tant.’ He says the bright pink colour, which
is on everything from the walls to the light
switches and sockets, was ‘a logical continu-
ation of the mosaic tiles’ that he bought for
the cylinder-shaped bathroom (without a
ceiling, which means unobstructed views
from the floor above).
He has just returned from Milan
where he created a fiery installation involv-
ing a car covered in aluminium panels for
Rimowa, the brand of the famous ribbed
trolleys. When Rimowa approached him,
the idea of ‘something with a car’ had been
waiting for years in one of the proverbial
drawers of his mental closet. The mate-
rial of which the cases are made is a metal
alloy with magnesium that behaves slightly
different from ‘regular’ aluminium, says
Santomà. ‘That’s the beauty of this installa-
tion.’ In addition to the exterior, the interior
was also given a radical makeover, one that
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