Architectures that fit in your hand
Scale determines presence, but not importance. There are architectures that are explored with the whole body, and then there are other architectures, equally present, that are discovered with the fingertips. They are small, almost invisible at first glance. But they balance, with humble precision, the entire work. A switch. A knob. A plate that consolidates proportion and scale in just a few centimetres.
At Font Barcelona, we think of each mechanism as a micro-architecture: a structure with exact limits where form is subject to use and use opens up possibilities for design. It is in this small geography that something occurs that architect Anne Holtrop calls ‘possible architecture’: a territory where everything, even the smallest thing, can be architecture if it is capable of proposing a relationship, a rhythm or an experience.
The proportions are refined as if it were a scale drawing. The thickness sufficient to give presence, the emptiness necessary to allow for gesture. Ergonomics becomes a study of paths: the distance between the hand and the wall, the exact resistance of the push button, the temperature of the metal. Everything is measured, but nothing seeks to impose itself. It does not seek prominence; it only provides function and balance within a space, within a whole.
“Each of our collections is based on the same idea: modularity. Modules that build systems, versatile structures that allow you to design everything from a single switch to more complex compositions that combine USBs, sockets, regulators or push buttons. No matter how many elements make up the whole, there is always an underlying harmony, a kind of silent order that allows everything to fit together naturally.”
Modularity here is a technical solution, but also a language. A set of rules that offers freedom. As in architecture, which unfolds in layers, mechanisms allow us to establish hierarchies, decide what appears and what is hidden, what is repeated and what is unique.
When the hand touches a mechanism, it understands things that the eye cannot see: the texture, the weight, the temperature of the metal… In that almost imperceptible second when the light comes on, the intention of the design is revealed. That is why at Font Barcelona we conceive of mechanisms as architectures that fit in the hand, connecting rooms, rhythms and bodies. A bridge between engineering and the manual precision of the habitable.