Jorge Penadés

Spanish designer Jorge Penadés was born in a coastal village near Málaga in southern Spain and studied Interior Design in Barcelona before eventually graduating from the Istituto Europeo di Design (IED) in Madrid with a Master’s Degree in Experimental Design and Conceptual Thinking in 2014. The following year, he founded his eponymous studio, Oficina Penadés, in Madrid.

Penadés’ work is pointedly atypical; he utilises unusual materials in unexpected ways—taking, for example, packing materials like styrofoam and centring them as a focal element in furniture pieces in his Paraphrase Series (2017), or combining leather scraps with resin to create a reconstituted material for his Structural Skin Series (2016-7) of lighting and furniture objects. The Structural Skin Series is not only a comment on the wasteful practices around leather usage in the fashion industry, and a proposal for recycling these industrial remnants, but also represented the young designer’s breakthrough. In 2016, Penadés collaborated with Hermès on a mirror as part of the series, and further pieces from the collection have been shown at Rossana Orlandi during Milan Design Week. Penadés has also exhibited at Lima Design Week, London Design Festival, Bratislava Design Week, and at the Vitra Design Museum—where his work is also part of the permanent collection—to name just a few.