Fearless, passionate and committed, Spanish designer Alfonso de la Fuente turns 20 years of a prolific career in pushing forward the limits of design thanks to a mix of hard work, humour, colour and irony. He was part of that cool Barcelona that had such a particular style and where people would dare to do anything; always bringing his personal touch. Alfonso has been evolving as a self-taught artist and bringing breaths of fresh air to the decoration scene thanks to his mind overflowing with imagination.When he arrived in Barcelona from Valladolid back in 1997, Alfonso de la Fuente felt in love with plastic recycling, which became the main characteristic of those early years: recuperating materials from the street, mainly plastic bottles, and giving them a new life. That same year he created his first lamp and founded Pichiglas. From 2000, after getting successful with decorative objects and accessories, Alfonso strengthened his dedication to interior design and started developing global projects such as bars, restaurants, shops, locals and clubs. Some of them became a classic in Barcelona such as Fonfone. With these, the designer’s work becomes known internationally.Year after year his work evolved and became more elegant, sophisticated. On one side, he kept going for the recycling and reusing processes adding everyday objects go beyond their functionality so that they become part of a thoughtful and funny composition; on the other side, the designer was changing the usual materials such as plastic by more noble ones such as wood, glass and metals.His peculiar style is characterized by the combination of plastic, volumes, perspectives, the treatment of light and the use of colour. Recovering old moulds or pieces of stock and re-updating them Alfonso plays with geometric designs and eclectic environments to create an atmosphere. In this sense, he made unique lamps with jellyfish-like structures and very special optic effects based on the recurrence of translucent elements, mainly bottles. Transforming plastic and painting it melts and loses its real meaning. In new creations, for example, the wanted effect is the look and feel of baroque lamps: the transparency of plastic, the accumulation of bottles and the structure of the lamps remind of the crystal and opulence of old lamps in big halls.In a period in which absolute minimalism triumphs, Alfonso de la Fuente revolutionizes the decoration of spaces with a common denominator; an explosion of creativity, ideas and colours. It is surprising his capacity to create textures and objects starting from the idea of reuse; to build concepts based on an exquisite simplicity to achieve a result of unprecedented expressive power. “Today, we must tell things when we create, surprise and shock, but never losing our essence, what defines us. I like to recover something existing in order to transform it and tell my own story” states Alfonso. © all the rights reserved chiaraye.net This genius of the mixing and reinterpretation has managed to earn a deserved nice in the national and international artistic panorama thanks to his creative sharpness, his capacity to inspire, his passion and sensibility for the design that is visible in every piece of work. Lamps and lighting, furniture, facing, flooring, his creations will never cease to amaze.After successful creative interior projects such as Happy Pills candy shops, the latest works include in 2017 the bar Migas Terrace and the restaurant Migas Mercado in the trendy district of Guomao in Beijing (China) where his lamps create a sensual and glamorous ambience and the restaurant Rilke in Barcelona in 2018 wherein a secret room kept under lock he has created a spectacular installation on the ceiling with hundreds of glass bottles.Alfonso de la Fuente’s future objective is to serve Pichiglas “à la carte”: site-specific projects, exclusive installations, windows and of course unexpected and unpredictable lamps.
