De La Espada charts human centred design for 2027
Luis De Oliveira's keynote reflects on craft, reason and nostalgia to shape the Portuguese furniture maker's next chapter. New designer collaborations and a Lisbon gallery await.
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In a keynote that returned to foundational principles, Luis De Oliveira, co founder of the Portuguese furniture house, articulated a vision for the coming years shaped by the Age of Reason, reflective nostalgia and design history. His central thesis: that craft and human skill must anchor the future against an increasingly abstracted world.
De La Espada, founded in 1993 by Luis De Oliveira and Fatima De La Espada and opened in London in 1996, has long worked from a factory in Northern Portugal where industry unites with small scale production, advanced technology with handcraft, and craftspeople apply expertise to create structurally enduring furniture. The reflection De Oliveira offered draws on this embedded understanding of how objects come into being.
The aesthetic evolved from influences including the Arts and Crafts movement, architects such as Tadao Ando, Luis Barragan and John Pawson, and Scandinavian design from the 1950s. That lineage informs the work ahead. New launches arrive in November, craft forward in intention. More substantially, 2027 will bring a gallery in Lisbon and a significant designer collaboration yet to be unveiled; both mark the next expansion of a house that views the object not as endpoint but as conversation between hand, eye and inhabitation.
Imagery courtesy of De La Espada (@delaespada).
