OntwerperSpanish / Argentine-Spanish
Lievore Altherr Molina
1 actieve items
Lievore Altherr Molina was a Barcelona-based design studio active from 1991 to 2016, formed around the partnership of three designers with different origins and training. Alberto Lievore was born in Buenos Aires in 1948 and graduated in architecture from the University of Buenos Aires before relocating to Barcelona in 1976, where he first worked within the Berenguer collective alongside Norberto Chaves, Jorge Pensi, and Oriol Pibernat. Jeannette Altherr was born in Heidelberg in 1965, studied industrial design in Darmstadt, and moved to Barcelona in 1989 to continue her studies and work as a freelance stylist. Manel Molina, born in Barcelona in 1963, trained in interior and industrial design at EINA. The three came together formally in 1991, creating a studio whose scope ran from furniture and product development to strategic consulting and art direction.
The studio built its reputation through long-term client relationships, most notably with the Italian manufacturer Arper. The collaboration with Arper produced the work for which the studio is best known internationally. The Catifa family, launched in 2001, became one of the defining stacking chair programs of the early 2000s and has sold over a million units globally. Its shell form - resolved in polypropylene, adaptable to multiple base configurations - demonstrated the studio's ability to produce designs that function commercially at scale while maintaining formal precision. The Saya chair, introduced in 2012, pushed that approach toward more expressive territory: a wooden chair whose hourglass-shaped back reads as a graphic signature, earning the Red Dot Best of the Best award in 2013 and selection in the ADI Design Index the same year. The Leaf seating collection from 2005 extended the studio's range into soft indoor and outdoor seating.
Beyond Arper, the studio worked with Andreu World, Foscarini, Santa and Cole, Vibia, Bernhardt Design, and others across Spain, Italy, Germany, and the United States. The work across these clients shared a consistent approach: humanist in orientation, minimalist in execution, attentive to the constraints of manufacturing and context. Lievore in particular had a reputation for thinking about design in terms of timelessness - objects that do not date themselves through stylistic novelty.
In 1999, the studio received the Spanish National Design Award (Premio Nacional de Diseno), recognizing the accumulated quality of its output across the decade since its founding. In 2016, Manel Molina departed to establish his own studio, Estudi Manel Molina. Lievore and Altherr subsequently joined with Delphine Desile and Dennis Park to form Lievore + Altherr Desile Park.
In Swedish auction records, the studio appears primarily at Stockholms Auktionsverk, which accounts for the majority of the 44 recorded lots. The material is almost entirely seating: chairs and armchairs make up 37 of the lots, with tables accounting for a further five. Top results include a set of 12 Saya chairs at SEK 11,000, six Saya chairs at SEK 9,000, and a group of Catifa 70 armchairs at SEK 8,000. The auction presence reflects the wide distribution of Arper products through Swedish contract and design retail channels during the 2000s and 2010s.