JOANA SANTOS BARBOSA BIOGRAPHY

“Joana Santos Barbosa utilises traditional Portuguese techniques, such as marquetry and metalwork, in contemporary ways to create a range of hand-finished pieces.”

The Financial Times | UK

Born in Oporto, Joana Santos Barbosa graduated in Architecture at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Oporto in 2006, later deepening her knowledge in Interior Design at St. Martin’s School of Arts and Design in London. Alongside with Architecture, the passion for the Detail motivated her to create her own exclusive furniture design.

Joana soon saw her talent recognized, being considered as one of the Top 10 Contemporary Designers from Portugal. Earning her place in the international design scene, she was invited to exhibit at the XX Triennale International Exhibition in Milan and her work can be regularly seen in the most prestigious design and decoration events in London, Paris and Milan.

Having a refined intuition and a particular way of feeling, Joana has a vein of attachment to the Land and a devotion to the senses. Her creative path is a mirror of her personality and results from the profound connections she early developed with the natural world, the travels that opened her eyes to other cultures and her progress in classical music and dance alongside with her training in architecture. Feeling more comfortable in the field of imagination, she always knew that her life would be surrounded by art.

From her training as an Architect, Joana takes the discipline and persistence in the pursuit of the unquestionable accuracy. From the World she seizes cultures and contexts, dissects memories and rearranges concepts, taking them as starting points for the creative liberation. She is fascinated by the limits of emotions and the threshold of feeling. Her creative perseverance proves to be somewhere between the sinuous elegance and the harsh aggressiveness, the softness of a touch and the strictness of a line, the organic forms of nature and the geometric accuracy, a smooth trace of a sketch and the precision of a detailed drawing.

Joana Santos Barbosa lives in Oporto, a wonderful Portuguese city that has been several times considered the best European travel destination. She lives surrounded by historical buildings, an endless blue ocean, natural parks and wild mountains where she goes horseback riding.

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