As the third edition of Lisbon Design Week kicks off across more than 90 venues today, it’s clear that Portugal’s craft culture is the event’s defining strength. Running until Sunday, the event focuses less on polished brands and sleek product lines, and more on the tactile stories behind each piece and participating project.
While other European creative scenes trade off their industrial manufacturing prowess, a lack of major furniture brands and clearly established career pathways means that many Portuguese designers pay more attention to materials, techniques and connection – to the land, to traditions and to each other. The result is a creative culture of experimentation and learning by doing. For many, this involves stepping away from computer screens and into workshops, where artisans take a hands-on approach to making furniture and objects, exploring traditional and innovative techniques with freedom.
For Portugal-based French designer Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance, this allows him to explore beyond the expectations of his established practice. His “Made in Situ” project – on show at Lisbon Design Week – creates designs using a location’s raw materials and knowhow of local craftspeople. Such work doesn’t allow production at scale but still finds a market as a new generation of interior designers seeks to furnish projects with pieces that reflect a sense of place. The heads of international buyers are also turning as they look to take away a slice of the Iberian peninsula.
This year’s edition of Lisbon Design Week also encourages collaboration between collectives such as Bora and Luso Collective, the latter founded by Tomás Fernandes and Natasza Grzeskiewicz (pictured above left), and disciplines from wood and glass to ceramics, textiles and metal. Visitors benefit from these exchanges too, with much of the week’s programme unfolding in working ateliers where audiences get to meet people rather than brands. Even in commercial venues, the directive is to host a maker and shine a light on a craft: event attendees will be able to see ceramicists working in the windows of real-estate offices while showrooms stage live tapestry stitching.
Such events are a reminder that, unlike other European design capitals, Lisbon’s design scene is typically more intimate, open and accessible. And while there is still plenty of room for growth and professionalisation, as well as more top-down support, staying close to its craft roots has paid off so far.
Lutz is Monocle’s Lisbon correspondent. For more design news and analysis, subscribe to Monocle today.
Bom dia from Zürich, where the sun is shining, the white port is flowing and our HQ on Dufourstrasse is bustling with visitors from across town, Switzerland and around the world. Off the back of our Portuguese market in London, some of the country’s most interesting craftspeople and brands have set up their stalls to not only dispense olive oil, woven rugs, ceramics, jewellery and garments but also to tell the contemporary story of “Made in Portugal”.
To kick things off on Friday eve we were joined by Portugal’s ambassadors to Switzerland and the UN mission in Geneva, along with the Swiss director for Visit Portugal. After a brief discussion about the Iberian nation’s role in the world, its manufacturing dynamism and a few travel tips, the conversation shifted, as it often does, to why a country that makes everything from cars to ships and drones to sweatshirts has not yet managed to produce a global retail powerhouse or fashion brand? How could it be that a country that manufactures so many implements for the Swiss-watch industry (not to mention the provision of manpower to staff factories up and down the Jura) has not managed to produce its own homegrown watch brand? Unsurprisingly, the answers were varied. So too the solutions for getting Portuguese brands on more shelves and spinning in showrooms across the globe.
“We’re makers, not marketers,” suggested a Portuguese Monocle subscriber based in Zürich. “That’s the problem. We’re solid Catholics but we never inherited any of the brand flair of the Vatican.” After a few more glasses of white from the Algarve I overheard a small group of Portuguese from Geneva suggesting that bureaucracy and taxes stifle entrepreneurship, while a diplomat said that there’s too much focus on the making and not enough on the power and margins that come with intellectual property.
If you pick up the June issue of Monocle, you’ll encounter a new Portuguese player who just might be on the runway (literally) to becoming a global brand in the defence-and-security space. While Tekever didn’t take a stand at our market (wouldn’t have been a bad idea as we had enough military types in attendance), they are fast making a name as the drone supplier of choice to forces around the world – while proving that ingenuity mixed with some PR clout can not only raise a brand’s profile but also create a beacon to inspire other upstarts across Portugal. Should you not be in the market for high-altitude surveillance over the Atlantic, then you might want to check out a few of the following brands for your larder, beach tote, wardrobe or dining table. There’ll be much more from Portugal over the coming weeks and months as new issues land on newsstands, stories hit screens and interviews go out on Monocle Radio. Obrigado.
