2022 Zarautz

Zarautz 2022

the Zarautz collection is born of a tension: the need to hide the wood and, at the same time, let its essence show through. When I was commissioned to design this hotel, the owner was clear in his request: no visible wood. He had suffered a plague of bedbugs and a fire in his farmhouse, and those memories had turned the wood into a symbol of fragility and risk.

But for me, wood is not just a material; it is a language, a body with memory. I could not simply deny it, but had to find a way to make it present without exposing it. Thus was born this collection, where the wood is hidden under microcement and white paint, but is revealed in folds, curvatures and tensions, as if trying to breathe under the surface.

In bed headboards, its strength is unavoidable. Although covered, the wood insists on showing itself, on claiming its nature. I have worked with seven different types – oak, chestnut, ash, walnut, cherry and beech – so that each brings its own character to the work. The curves and twists of the bed fronts are the echo of this diversity, of a matter that, although veiled, resists silence.

This project, like my sculpture, is a dialogue between the visible and the hidden, between the will to erase and the impossibility of doing so completely. Because wood, like everything authentic, always finds a way to manifest itself.