Santiago Roqueta

Barcelona, 1944 — 2005

PhD in Architecture, designer, educator, and editor, Santiago Roqueta was a tireless force behind the rise of good design in Barcelona. Founder of Snark Design—later part of Santa & Cole—he championed a vision of design as a dialogue between art, craft, and purpose. His legacy lives on across classrooms, objects, and spaces, as a key figure in shaping a true design culture in Spain.

Born in Barcelona in 1944, Santiago Roqueta began his career in architecture before moving into industrial design, interior design, and education. In 1969, he founded Snark Design—Barcelona’s first design publishing house—with the goal of reviving and promoting works by figures such as Gerrit Rietveld and Salvador Dalí. His own visual language, elegant and provocative, gained recognition through BD Ediciones de Diseño and magazines like On Diseño and Mobelart.

In the 1970s and 1980s, he became part of the movement that reshaped Barcelona’s nightlife, designing venues that would become cultural landmarks: the Posa restaurant, the Zeleste music halls, and the Snooker Club, which won the FAD award in 1985. His way of conceiving space—as a stage where technique, art, and sensory experience converge—aligned with his collaborations with Gabriel Ordeig and Carles Riart, with whom he shared a sensitive, committed outlook.

Throughout his life, Roqueta combined design with teaching, holding positions at EINA, ELISAVA, and ETSAB, where he served as director from 1991 to 1994. From that post, he promoted Design Classics, an editorial project developed with Santa & Cole to highlight the great names in Spanish design. As part of the collection, he authored the monograph on Antoni de Moragas. He also created and led pioneering master’s programs that brought together design, architecture, and craftsmanship.

Awarded the Silver Delta and with work featured at MoMA in New York and the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Roqueta embodied a generous, demanding approach to design—as a cultural tool capable of transforming objects, spaces, and ways of seeing.