Lider exhibition space for Casa Cor Minas 2022

Founded through its founder’s hard work, João da Mata, “Lider never put its essence aside: the attention to every detail during the fabrication of its high quality furniture, from the choice of its material to the product’s final delivery”.

The brand proudly holds its function as its own productor as a characteristic that makes it stand out on the market, counting on a grand industrial park, located on Carmo do Cajuru, where not only a great diversity of production takes place – carpentry, metallurgy, upholstery, sewing – but also the best technology makes the best use of local artifices. 

From nature to culture: creation as an collective work

The crescent technical complexity of objects in the contemporary world makes it almost impossible for a single person to conceive and construct such things without recurring to a broad creation and development team: factory workers, craftsmen, designers, executives and specialized consultants. Thus, even though it may start from a singular drawing, a piece of furniture is, often, a collective work built both in space and time.

Through the transformation of raw materials to the final product, the work of countless anonymous hands add up to a collective work that turns brute nature into culture. Lider’s history and creative and fabrication processes underline this collective dimension seen in the most elevated human creations. 

Building voids: architecture as a collective experience 

Architecture is an inseparable part of urban space and social living. Even though it often results in individualized actions,  its effects reverberate collectively. After all, the built objects are the ones that shape our experience of space, defining voids through which we can move, act and interact with each other. 

For the sculptor Jorge Oteiza, the sculpture itself isn’t the external visible shape that presents itself to our senses, but the invisible void such shape builds in its interior. This idea can be perfectly transported to the architectural scenario: even though the materiality of buildings is the first impression we get from it – its walls, floors and ceilings – its architecture is done, essentially, through its voids. Whenever materiality ceases to exist, architecture starts. 

Therefore, to conceive architecture consists of building voids to shelter life and promote encounters. Building voids, not only as a poetic imagery, but as concrete action, is necessary architecture. 

Thus, space organizes itself from the building of voids which invite permanence and meeting. 

Infinito Coletivo

Here, some of Lider’s many technological possibilities are applied to architecture scale and associated with a wide living and social square of collective delight, conceiving spaces whose uses aren’t pre-defined. 

Four modules are places on the extremities of this square-like space, exploring a few of the brand’s technologies: cobogós on industrialized wooden sheet shelves, glued laminated wood perforated panels, different weaves of nautical rope and straw braiding on metallic sheets with CNC cuts were used as perforated elements, joining limits between exterior and interior, exploring light and the beautiful view of Parque do Palácio. 

In the middle of this great living square, blue upholstered modules of various densities were displaced as an invitation to visitors to dive in, on a playful exploration of the place. A reflective glass membrane involves the set, infinitely multiplying this collective space.

Enjoy.