Marco Sousa Santos

An inescapable name in contemporary Portuguese design, Marco Sousa Santos has built a solid and plural career over more than three decades, spanning product design, curating, teaching and cultural criticism. A graduate of the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of
Lisbon, Sousa Santos rose to fame in the 1990s as the founder of the ExperimentaDesign studio, and later with the creation of the BRANCA Lisboa brand – a design label that stands out for its minimalist elegance, local production and valorisation of Portuguese wood as a raw material of excellence. Her approach to design is both functional and poetic: each piece reveals a quest for formal simplicity, without giving up a strong conceptual and sensory charge. His work has been widely recognised, with a presence at international fairs such as Maison&Objet (Paris) or the Salone del Mobile (Milan), and with pieces included in the collections of design and contemporary art museums.