Materials

Estructura: Vareta massissa d’alumini pintada en color mat o anoditzada.
Mesures: 26,2 x 25 x 25 m.

The photographer Oriol Maspons (Barcelona, 1928-2013) was ahead of his time. He portrayed the Gauche Divine, was master of the great Colita and in his studio in the Gràcia district, which he shared with Julio Ubiña, posed the great personalities of the sixties and the models that would occupy the covers of magazines such as Paris Match, Interviu or Boccacio. That same studio became, in turn, an icon of European modernity, thanks in part to its two architects and designers, Óscar Tusquets and Lluís Clotet. The Tusquets and Clotet duo spent 20 years equipping themselves with ideas for objects that are now classics (until 1984). In 1968 they were commissioned to design Maspons’ studio and the need and new pop modernity of the decade, an object still in force today emerged: the Germaine hanger. It was a blacksmith from the Gràcia district who made the first five units of this piece of aluminium that is now launched in nine colours. “We had quite forgotten it, I kept two pieces that have helped us a great deal when it came to producing it again, although it also kept the original plan in Chinese ink”, adds the architect and designer, but the origin of the Germaine comes from a really modern act for 1968: travelling by motorbike. “You can hang a bag, not a helmet, and we realised that we needed a hanger where we could do both, having a motorbike was a novelty,” says Tusquets. In addition to this new need for use in the face of the city’s incipient motor industry, there was a utilitarian trend of that decade that sought to create modular objects that could create, in turn, a larger one: “At that time we were obsessed with creating a system, with making a unit that could then be multiplied; this hanger – it is 25 centimetres wide – could be juxtaposed and with four units we made up a hanger of one metre, but the original piece was always the same”.The new Germaine has the same appearance as when Tusquets and Clotet created it, with a bent rod structure of which, half a century later, the curves have been limited, in order to facilitate its manufacture and which is equally polyvalent. “I don’t understand why we hadn’t fallen into producing it before, if I’ve been using it habitually for decades”. Especially considering that Barcelona is the city with more motorcycles per inhabitant of Europe. Its more than 200,000 owners may also need a Germaine hanger.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Oscar Tusquets Lluis Clotet