Every year, MAISON&OBJET spotlights the most outstanding names on the international design and decor scene today. In January 2016, Catalan designer Eugeni Quitllet will receive the Designer of the Year award and will have the opportunity to showcase his work on a space entirely dedicated to him.

Since 2015, MAISON&OBJET has choosen one Designer of the Year for each show: two for MAISON&OBJET PARIS (January and September), one for MAISON&OBJET ASIA and one for MAISON&OBJET AMERICAS.

MAISON & OBJET PARIS 2016

The Designer of the Year in MAISON&OBJET

For MAISON&OBJET PARIS, each of these two designers must fit within the profile of each of the Paris shows, that is, a more product design-oriented profile in January and a designer more closely related to the world of interior architecture or decor for September.

For MAISON&OBJET ASIA, the Designer selected will be a renowned personality in the world of Asian creation representing the incredible richness and diversity of this vast area, which is becoming a major player in design creation and innovation, architecture and interior architecture.

For MAISON&OBJET AMERICAS, the personality will be chosen according to the same criteria as for MAISON&OBJET ASIA, with the overriding priority of providing an opening to both Americas, an ambition that forms an integral part of the DNA of MAISON&OBJET AMERICAS’s positioning.

Eugeni Quitllet

Eugeni Quitllet is a Catalan designer, who graduated from La Llotja Art School in Barcelona and readily describes himself as a “Disoñador,” a contraction of the Spanish words for designer and dreamer.

Eugeni Quitllet, photo by Nacho Alegre

Born in 1972 in Ibiza, this industrial dreamer first witnessed a rural stretch of beach become an informal hub for ultramodern electronic music, before growing up in Barcelona, a place of architectural divide where Gaudí’s organic outbursts fraternise with a rationalist marmoreal jewel designed by Mies van der Rohe — the Pavilion.

Now based in Barcelona, Eugeni Quittlet has quickly become a pioneer to watch to understand our ever-changing paradoxical age. Eugeni creates bestselling objects between drawings and sculptures, mastering fullness and voids to reveal elegant silhouettes hidden in the material. His creative vocabulary surpasses the simple relationship between function and style, introducing new objects to the contemporary design scene.

In 2011, Eugeni Quitllet designed the VK-1 headphones for French brand Aëdle, which has become a reference in the market of music accessories.

The Tabu chair is an explosion of life he imagined for Alias (2014), an idea that blossomed into a seat that synthesises nature and the robotics required for its digital sculpture.

In 2015, the Tube chair for Mobles 114 and Dream-Air for Kartell embody the designer’s passion for weightlessness.

The former with its tubular structure, which mixes the 20th century’s vocabulary of modern design, and the latter, which looks “like a scarf in the wind, a dream suspended in the air.”

The same year, he applied the same idea of lightness to create Cloud-io and Vase-o for Kartell, which take the shape of water droplets condensed to form a seat and a translucent vase. He also worked with Lexon and imagined the Dream Tool collection, a series of small flowing landscapes, where functions appear as if suspended in a frame. It has now become his signature concept, which he had already started to explore with the Light Air lamp (2011) and Shine vase (2013) for Kartell.