Max Enrich with his TUBS I LLUMS lamps Claudia Mauriño
Max Enrich's
designs
(Barcelona, 1987) have so much character that they decide for themselves what they want to be. His family of
TUBS I LLUMS
lamps
,
exhibited until June 30 at the
Il-lacions
gallery
in Barcelona, works and of course illuminates, but this was not what Enrich was after when he created the model of glass tubes of which part collection. It was the shape of the object that mattered and it was precisely the shape that gave him the idea that the arches that rested on the back of their partners cast a beam of light, which is what they now do without this function having altered the essence of its original design.
The eight lamps of TUBS I LLUMS, in fact, do not allow to adjust their focus, nor do they incorporate any type of screen or lampshade. The light shoots out of its stainless steel tubes towards a very specific area of the floor or wall, something that must be recognized that does not make them too useful for reading and the rest of the uses that most models of lamps that can be purchased on the market. "It is what distinguishes me from stores like Ikea or Habitat," says Enrich. "Since I don't have to worry about liking everyone or following strict regulations, I can afford to design a lamp that dazzles or that simply serves to keep its owner company."
The eight lamps of TUBS I LLUMS do not allow adjusting their focus, nor do they incorporate any type of screen or lampshade.
The light shoots out of its stainless steel tubes towards a very specific area of the floor or wall.Claudia Mauriño
And to argue that his lamps are really very useful, he gives the example of a candle that his wife lights some nights when she comes home tired from work.
“It doesn't smell like anything, it barely gives off light and many times my wife even forgets it's there and goes to another room, but I see that lighting that candle comforts her.
For me, this use of light is as important as any other ”.
That same tension between functionality and form, between the whimsical and the useful, is very present in the other Max Enrich furniture.
Their repertoire of Stabile tables, for example, are not exactly stable despite what their name seems to indicate, so if one is not careful and arbitrarily piles things on their surface, they can end up defeating.
Bilma, Max Enrich's dog, with TUBS I LLUMS Claudia Mauriño
Its 110kgs table, meanwhile, can easily hold the magazines, vases and ashtrays that you want to place on it, but it has the peculiarity that what keeps it firm is a black granite rock of the weight indicated by its title. There will be to those who seem an absurd addition, but it is even more so to look for all the why's to the creations of someone like Max Enrich, a designer who, after abandoning his architecture studies, decided to follow in the wake of Bruno Munari, Philippe Starck, the group Memphis and many other designers to whom if there was one question to guide their work, it was just the opposite: but why not?
According to Max Enrich, his own Barcelona apartment is full of objects that he has accumulated for no other purpose than to brighten his eyes: from scissors that work but with which he does not intend to cut anything, to a precious thermos that he has never used. or collector's chairs in which no one ever allows anyone to rest. If you have them at home, it is simply because you adore them. “A piece of furniture has to be functional, okay, but the thing is that a client often comes to me who needs to fill a corner of his house whatever it is. And that a small table makes a corner cozy, isn't that a function? ”.
