Jorge Arturo Ibarra, Luteca’s former director of design, was born in San Diego, but grew up south of the border in Tijuana. Most of his childhood was largely spent experiencing two worlds at once. After completing most of his early education in Tijuana, Ibarra moved to San Francisco to pursue industrial design at the Academy of Arts University. He had originally been interested in studying architecture, but ultimately became more interested in imagining what the insides of buildings and houses looked like instead. In his final year of college, one of Ibarra’s classes was sponsored by an Italian design brand and he was selected for a year-long internship by the company.

Moving back from Europe, he was set on finding a Mexican company to design furniture for. Up until his move to Italy, he had mostly considered himself American, but once there, he really began appreciating his Mexican heritage and became more driven to pursue his goal of designing furniture that would compete with what Europeans were doing. By pure coincidence, he came across Luteca in 2016, which was already working towards the goals that he had in mind. They met, hit it off and they have grown together ever since. In his designs, Ibarra frequently nods to Mexico’s rich history of 20th-century brutalist architecture.

In 2023, Ibarra co-founded the design studio Deceres with his wife Denise, which is now available through Luteca’s Paris and Mexico City showrooms.