Paola Lenti presents a new outdoor collection inspired by Clara Porset, the architect and designer of Cuban origin who became famous in Mexico, where she lived most of her life and still today is considered a pioneer of design.
A close collaborator of Luis Barragán, the architect internationally recognized for his unmistakable use of colour, Clara Porset moved to Mexico during the Thirties’, where she married painter and muralist Xaviér Guerrero, a friend of Frida Khalo and Diego Rivera, thus becoming part of the country’s intellectual circles.
The new Paola Lenti Jardín collection is a tribute to a series of furnishings that the Cuban designer conceived in 1957 for the Hotel Marqués in Acapulco – an example of avant-garde architecture at that time – and later exhibited at the 11th Triennale di Milano, where she was awarded with a silver medal.
Paola Lenti has interpreted, through her unmistakable style and a contemporary annotation, lounge chairs, sun beds and chaise longues of that historic collection, updating the materials without betraying their original spirit. The classic wicker weave has been replaced by the exclusive Twiggy high tech yarn, an enduring, waterproof, non-toxic and entirely recyclable outdoor material. The structure, once in bentwood, is today proposed in gloss varnished aluminum, more performing and longer lasting, in a colour palette matching the upholstery fabrics.
The Jardín collection is the outcome of an in-depth work of recovery of the designer’s original drawings, that Paola Lenti carried out with the precious collaboration of Professor Jorge A. Vadillo López, founder and curator of the Archivo Clara Porset at CIDI Centro de Investigaciones de Diseño Industrial of Universidad Autónoma de México (UNAM).