009love working together and have a great
dynamic. We have our own areas, but
our visions always match. Even when we
disagree, we know we’re heading in the
same direction.
“Everything we do as a studio is bespoke,
we customise everything. The only thing
we don’t customise are the functional
lights. Not because it isn’t possible, but
because we need more time for that. But
the decorative lights, and everything else,
we do custom. It’s what makes our projects
more authentic, they’ll never be a copy of
something else.”
AMHP: “I love working with light because it
has the potential to move us. Soon we’ll be
completing a new project that is all about
light. It’s very extensive and is taking us a
lot of time to complete. We can’t share too
much at the moment, but what we can say
is that it’s going to be a culinary experience
centred around light.”
CP: “The nice thing about designing lamps is
that you don’t have a ton of requirements,
so it’s easy to have something custom
made. That’s one of the reasons why almost
all of our custom designs also involve
lighting.”
AMHP: “Designing lights is my hobby. We’ve
designed two commercial lights so far.
The first was Shade for Raco. It’s a big,
big lamp made out of a lot of different
contrasting materials. We wanted to make
an artisanal lamp that couldn’t be copied,
using materials - raffia, leather, marble and
brass - that have never been combined in a
lamp.”
CP: “Photos really don’t do the materials
justice. It’s not selling a tonne, which is a
shame, because it’s a very interesting lamp.
Our second lamp, Wink though, (pictured
left) is doing extremely well.”
AMHP: “I love, love, love Wink! It’s by
far my favourite of all the lights we’ve
done. I actually designed Wink without the
intention of creating a product. The founder
of Houtique asked us to do a store for him,
and Wink was something I made to decorate
the interior. I didn’t like what Houtique was
selling, so I created a light to decorate the
store and help sell their furniture. The store
never got built, but the owner liked Wink,
so we decided to see whether we could turn
it into a product. And, bingo, it worked and
did really well.
“What makes Wink so successful, I think,
is that it’s very simple, but expresses
something very strong. It makes people
smile. I think that when it comes to design,
people want emotion. They want to see
designs that tell a story. That’s the power of
really well designed interiors. They trigger
an emotion and take you on a journey.”
CP: “Wink has done very well, but I
wouldn’t say we have a particular milestone
project. Everything has happened step by
step, probably because we are in Valencia.
I’m sure things would have gone differently
had we been in a big city like Madrid.
Things would have definitely happenedfaster, but we also wouldn’t have had the
same opportunities. People here believed in
us. I think that’s what makes the people in
Spain so special. They are much more open
than, say, in Belgium, the place where I’m
from.They gave us opportunities that I don’t
think would have been possible for us at the
start had we been somewhere else.”
AMHP: “We started our studio in Spain
mostly because of our circumstances. We
met in Spain and were living in Spain, so
we stayed. We weren’t thinking of other
countries back then. We wouldn’t have
chosen Valencia today, but Valencia was
were it all started for us.”
CP: “We’ve been thinking about opening
another studio for many years now, possibly
in Madrid. Valencia is a small city, so in a
way it’s a bit limiting, especially now that
we’re working increasingly outside of Spain.
We also feel like we have the potential
to be doing a lot more than we are at the
moment, and maybe Valencia isn’t the right
city to explore that. That said, working
from Valencia is really easy, and there are a
lot of other artists, like Jaime Hayon, who
live and work here and still do things on an
international level.”
AMHP: “Working in Spain has a lot of
benefits, particularly for us as designers.
It’s easy to get things made here. Much
like Italy and Portugal, Spain is a country
of artisans. So, it’s very convenient for us
to stay here and produce our designs. But,
as you know, the economy isn’t very good