The "Colador" rolling shelf project (2005) marks a significant evolution in Anto Lloveras’s "socioplastic" furniture design, bridging the functional requirements of an active art studio with the aesthetic rigor of industrial minimalism. Designed specifically for the "Camarote" workshop in Madrid, the Colador is a modular, perforated steel shelving unit mounted on wheels, allowing for dynamic spatial reconfiguration within the 100m² atelier. Its name, "Colador" (Strainer), refers to the distinctive grid of square perforations that define its structure, creating a visual lightness that belies its industrial durability. This piece acts as more than mere storage; it is a mobile partition and a "cognitive anchor" that organizes the chaotic flow of a transdisciplinary workspace. The technical design of the Colador emphasizes a precise geometric logic combined with ergonomic considerations. Detailed architectural elevations reveal a structure measuring 1.6 meters in length and 0.66 meters in height, featuring asymmetrically arranged internal compartments. These varied shelf heights—ranging from 0.2 meters to 0.4 meters—are specifically tailored to accommodate diverse materials, from oversized art monographs to technical equipment. The use of white-coated perforated metal creates a moiré effect when viewed from different angles, allowing the piece to subtly blend into or define the studio’s "ordered chaos".
By integrating wheels, Lloveras transforms a static piece of furniture into a "positional fixer," capable of adapting to the shifting needs of collaborative research and artistic production. Within the ecosystem of the Camarote, the Colador functions as an essential component of Lloveras's "SOCIOPLASTICS" philosophy, where everyday objects are treated as elements of a broader relational collage. Documentary photographs from 2007 show the shelf in its native environment, positioned alongside large worktables crowded with architectural plans and digital workstations. The shelf’s perforated skin allows for a degree of visual transparency, ensuring that even when used as a room divider, it does not interrupt the open-plan narrative of the former mechanical workshop. It stands as a "functional readymade," where industrial materiality is repurposed for the "social narrative market" of contemporary artistic life. Ultimately, the Colador rolling shelf exemplifies the transition from industrial labor to the "synthetic thinking" prioritized by projects like CAPA. It embodies the "frugal art" approach—minimalist in form yet maximized in utility—that characterizes Lloveras’s work. By designing high-performance, mobile furniture for his own laboratory, Lloveras asserts that the structure of our environment directly influences the quality of epistemic exchange. The Colador remains a definitive artifact of the Camarote era, representing a moment where the "mechanics of order" and the "fluids of creativity" were perfectly synthesized into a single, rolling object.
Lloveras, A. (2016) Colador Rolling Shelf Industrial Design. [Online] Available at:
