Victoria Riqué

Argentina’s 2001 crisis was a turning point for our generation. We were studying Industrial Design at the Faculty of Architecture and Design of the University of Buenos Aires, in a country undergoing a deep economic, social, and industrial crisis. In that context, we began to question what it meant to train as industrial designers in a country where industry had been weakened and where the profession seemed to have few real spaces for development. Toward the end of that year, together with a group of fellow students, we began meeting in a typical Buenos Aires café on Corrientes Avenue to talk about design, context, and the future. We discussed the responsibility of designers, local identity, and the role Argentine design could play in an uncertain scenario. Those conversations made us understand that design could not be approached as an isolated discipline, nor as something purely aesthetic: it had to be connected to industry, culture, people’s real needs, and the possibility of creating value from our own place. Our working partnership was also born from that context. We are Victoria Riqué and Carlos Genoud, industrial designers graduated from the University of Buenos Aires, partners and co-founders of xCruza. From the beginning, we shared a conviction: we wanted to develop products for industry and transform ideas into concrete, manufacturable, and meaningful objects. That is how xCruza was born: as a way to respond, through design, to a question shared by many designers in our regio, how to build industry, identity, and future from South America, for the world.

xCruza was born from our way of understanding design: as a meeting point between society, culture, technology, and the environment. We believe design can articulate these dimensions to transform ideas into products, systems, and identities capable of creating value and improving people’s lives. We design from Argentina and Latin America for the world. This situated perspective allows us to work across diverse contexts, combining identity and innovation, and developing solutions with industrial capability, cultural sensitivity, and international projection. Founded by Victoria Riqué and Carlos Genoud, xCruza is a multi-award-winning Argentine design studio based in Buenos Aires, with over 20 years of experience. We work across industrial design, visual communication, strategy, prototyping, technological development, and production, as part of a strategic ecosystem that allows us to approach projects comprehensively, from initial conceptualization to implementation. Our work moves across different scales and sectors: mass-consumption products, technological systems, symbolic objects, and institutional identity. We think of design as a strategic tool to build value, identity, and future.

For us, design is a way of thinking and transforming reality. It is a discipline that connects culture, technique, industry, market, and everyday life. It is not only about giving shape to objects, but about understanding why they should exist, what problem they solve, how they are produced, how they are used, and what meaning they build over time. Design works at the intersection of form and function, but also through many other layers: technology, materiality, ergonomics, communication, cultural context, environmental impact, and economic viability. Good design is not merely a beautiful or efficient object; it is a solution that manages to balance all these dimensions with precision. From our perspective, designing also means reading the context. In Latin America, design often happens between tensions: between limited resources and great ambitions, between local industry and global markets, between tradition and technology. We are interested in that condition because it forces ideas to be clear, necessary, and possible. We are especially interested in design that becomes real. We strongly believe in the journey from idea to product. An idea can be very powerful, but it only becomes truly valuable when it can be transformed into something possible, manufacturable, usable, and meaningful.

We are especially interested in projects where design can have a real impact: everyday products, mass-scale products, or technological solutions that need to be understood and used by many people. We truly enjoy projects that combine technical complexity with a cultural or emotional dimension. For example, Peabody’s eTermo allowed us to work with mate, a deeply rooted Argentine tradition, from a contemporary and technological perspective. The Electronic Single Ballot allowed us to address a complex system linked to democracy and the voting experience. The FIFPRO World 11 Trophy allowed us to translate the collective values of football into a symbolic and precise object, from a sensitivity very close to the way football is experienced in our region. In general, we are drawn to projects where design is not limited to solving a form, but must also build a language, an experience, and a strategy.

One of our most significant designs is the FIFPRO World 11 Trophy, not only because of the international recognition it received, but also because it strongly reflects our way of understanding design: as a tool capable of transforming values, identity, and emotion into a concrete object. FIFPRO, the global organization representing professional footballers, invited us to redesign the trophy for the World 11 award, the only global recognition decided exclusively by the players themselves. The challenge was to create a piece that would stand apart from traditional sports trophies while representing the collective spirit of football and the values of the institution. Our starting point was the concept of the “goal embrace.” In football, a goal is often celebrated as a collective gesture: players embrace, come together, and recognize themselves as part of the same team. From that idea, we designed a trophy composed of 11 individual pieces that, when joined together, form a single cup. Each player receives their own piece, but together they build a greater whole. This project is especially meaningful to us because it turns the trophy into an experience. It is not only an object to be observed, but a symbolic system that expresses belonging, collaboration, and collective identity. It also involved a major technical and production challenge, because we did not only design the trophy: we also developed and manufactured the piece that is presented to the greatest stars of world football. We worked with high-precision machined aluminum pieces, carefully considering the formal expression, material quality, and tactile experience of each individual award. For xCruza, the FIFPRO World 11 Trophy represents a very important stage for the studio, one in which design, concept, technology, and manufacturing come together in an internationally relevant piece, conceived from Argentina to represent universal values of sport.

The first product we designed for a company was Pompy, a pull-along dog toy developed for Mercotoys, a Brazilian toy company. It was a foundational project for xCruza. At that time, we were very young, but we had a clear conviction: we wanted to design products for industry. Pompy marked the beginning of a relationship of more than 20 years with Mercotoys, and also the beginning of a period of enormous learning. Through toy design, we gained knowledge about education, safety regulations, plastic materials, color, molds, demolding, mass production, and production optimization. That apparently simple universe was, in fact, a great school for us. Many of the technical and production learnings we acquired in the toy industry were later applied to much more complex projects, such as home appliances, technological products, and public-use devices.

We do not have a favorite material in absolute terms. We are more interested in the relationship between the material, the production process, and the meaning of the project. Each material has its own logic, expressiveness, and way of transforming the user experience. We work extensively with plastics, aluminum, steel, glass, electronics, interfaces, and digital systems. Plastics gave us a strong technical foundation from our early years designing toys and mass-scale products. Aluminum and machining processes allowed us to develop objects of high precision and symbolic value, such as the FIFPRO World 11 Trophy. Electronics and software opened the possibility of designing more intelligent, interactive products connected to complex systems. More than one technology in particular, we are interested in the combination of analog thinking and digital resolution: being able to think with our hands, through sketches, models, and prototypes, and then bring those ideas into digital tools, engineering, manufacturing, and production.

We feel most creative at the beginning of projects, when everything is still open and there are many questions to answer. That moment of research, conversation, and intuition is very powerful, because unexpected connections begin to appear between subjects that may have seemed distant. We also feel creative when there are clear restrictions. Technical, economic, productive, or contextual limitations often force us to think better. In Argentina, we learned to design in changing and often complex scenarios. Rather than being only a difficulty, that condition can also become a creative tool: it forces us to synthesize, prioritize, and find solutions with strong criteria. At xCruza, we often say that our work combines concept and concretion. Creativity appears both in the initial idea and in the ability to make it possible.

Above all, we focus on making sure the product has meaning. An object should not exist simply because it can be manufactured or because it responds to a trend. It should have a clear reason, create value, and justify its presence in the world. This is usually one of the main points of discussion during the design process. We seek to “equalize” all variables — function, form, technology, materiality, production, cost, communication, user experience, and impact — so that the result is not only correct, but meaningful. For us, designing means finding that balance. A good product does not come from prioritizing only one dimension, but from articulating many different decisions until they all build meaning.

After more than 20 years, it still happens to us: whenever a new project arrives, we feel a kind of adrenaline to start thinking about it. We love that abyss of the blank page. Then projects take on an intensity of their own. Doubts, tensions, discoveries, adjustments, and moments of great clarity begin to appear. Design is not a linear process; it is often an emotional roller coaster until the product finally becomes real.

We feel great pride and emotion, especially when we see the product in use. Seeing someone drinking mate with an eTermo, voting with a machine we helped design, or receiving a piece of the World 11 Trophy reminds us why we do what we do. Design gains meaning when it leaves the studio and becomes part of people’s lives.

A product is successful when it is used, when people make it their own, and when it endures. It is not enough for it to be formally attractive or technically correct; it has to find a real place in people’s lives. For us, the success of a design appears when the product is understood, chosen, and sustained over time. When it stops being a novelty and begins to become part of a routine, an experience, or an identity. In mass-scale products, this means reaching many people without losing quality or meaning. In symbolic or institutional objects, it means representing values that go beyond the object itself.

We do not usually think about design in such closed terms as good or bad. We prefer to analyze it, to try to understand its context, its purpose, and the meaning it builds. When we look at a design, we ask ourselves what problem it is trying to solve, who it was designed for, in what context it is produced, and how it connects with people. We also analyze the coherence between the idea, the form, the function, the materials, the technology, the production process, and the user experience. For us, a design becomes stronger when all these dimensions are articulated and when its decisions can be read as part of the same intention.

We believe designers have the responsibility to ask questions and try to answer them in the most conscious and least invasive way possible. Every design decision has consequences, so our work requires sensitivity, judgment, and commitment. From Latin America, we also feel the responsibility to create from our own idiosyncrasy, without falling into stereotypes, and while trying to contribute value to society. For us, designing responsibly means taking our work seriously: understanding the context, caring for resources, respecting people, and developing products, systems, and identities that have meaning.

We believe design is evolving into an increasingly strategic and interdisciplinary discipline. It is no longer enough to solve the form of a product. Today, design participates in decisions related to innovation, technology, production, experience, communication, sustainability, and business. The future of design will be closely linked to the ability to articulate complex systems. Objects increasingly incorporate electronics, software, data, services, and interfaces. This requires more diverse teams and designers who are able to engage in dialogue with engineers, programmers, companies, users, institutions, and communities. At the same time, we believe that the design of the future must recover an essential question: what is the meaning of producing something new? In a world saturated with objects, designing better does not necessarily mean designing more, but designing with greater awareness, precision, and impact.

Our most recent international exhibition was at the Ibero-American Design Biennial in Madrid, where two xCruza projects were selected for the exhibition held at Central de Diseño, Matadero Madrid, between 2024 and 2025. In 2022 and 2023, we had the honor of exhibiting our projects at the Red Dot Design Museum in Germany, as part of the exhibitions of awarded projects. In Buenos Aires, we also participated in two of the most visited design exhibitions by the public in highly recognized museums: MALBA, with the exhibition From Heaven to Home, and Fundación Proa, as part of the exhibition Women in Design: Here We Are, presented together with the Vitra Design Museum. We would love to exhibit in design museums around the world and bring Argentine design to every continent. Asia is a place where we would especially love to show our work, because of its strong connection with technology, production, and contemporary material culture.

La inspiración viene de muchos lugares, pero sobre todo de observar el contexto, leer un libro o escuchar música. Observamos la vida cotidiana, los rituales, las formas de uso, los problemas concretos, los objetos populares, las tecnologías emergentes y las tensiones culturales de nuestro entorno. Nos inspiran los antagonismos con los que convivimos cotidianamente: lo popular y lo sofisticado, lo técnico y lo artístico, lo racional y lo emocional, lo comercial y lo social. Esa tensión nos impulsa a crear. Buenos Aires, en particular, es una ciudad intensa, híbrida y contradictoria; esa mezcla también alimenta nuestra forma de pensar los proyectos.

What defines our work is methodology. We work through a logic of divergence and convergence: we start from an initial chaos that allows us to open up a broad network of ideas, approaches, references, and possible proposals. That first stage is very important because it allows us to look at the problem from different angles, without closing the path too quickly. Then, little by little, we begin to organize: to find meaning, set priorities, identify opportunities, and make decisions. In that process, the identity of each project begins to emerge.

We live and work in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Yes, we deeply feel that the cultural context of our country affects the way we design. Not as a literal folkloric reference, but as a way of looking at the world. Designing from Argentina means learning to work within changing contexts, unstable economies, very diverse production capabilities, and a constant need for adaptation. This can be difficult, but it also creates a very valuable design training. It forces us to be flexible, creative, strategic, and highly aware of implementation. One advantage is that Argentina has a very strong cultural tradition and great creative capacity. It also has an important history of design, industry, and critical thinking. The difficulty is that economic instability often complicates productive continuity, investment, and scale. But precisely there lies an opportunity: to design products with their own identity, capable of being born from a local perspective and competing in global markets.

We work with companies of different scales and sectors. Some have their own production structure, while others also need us to support them in managing manufacturing, suppliers, prototypes, or production. Our relationship usually begins with an analysis and diagnosis stage. We seek to understand the company’s real needs, context, goals, market, and capabilities. From there, we define a design strategy and a process suited to the project. We can intervene at a specific stage — for example, conceptual design, product identity, or formal development — but increasingly, we work in an integrated way, from the initial idea to the manufactured product. In many projects, we integrate industrial design, engineering, UX/UI, graphics, packaging, software, electronics, prototyping, and production.

To incorporate design into a company, we believe the most important thing is to build a relationship based on trust, strategy, and teamwork. Design can help organize a vision, identify opportunities, improve processes, build identity, reduce risks, and create long-term value. Design requires exchange, listening, and shared decisions. The best projects emerge when a company opens up information, shares its real challenges, and allows design to participate from the early stages.

Our process begins by understanding the problem: the context, the user, the company, the available technology, and the production possibilities. Then we build a concept that organizes the decisions and move into development: sketches, models, prototypes, validations, and technical adjustments. For us, the process does not end with a good idea or an attractive image. It ends when the design is implemented and becomes a real product.

At home, we are quite minimalist, and we deeply value analog, simple objects, especially those with sentimental meaning. One of our favorite objects is Carlos’s grandmother’s analog clock, which is placed in the same spot it used to occupy in her home. We also love our Bodum French press, for its simple and analog way of making good coffee. Another very present object in our lives is the electric thermos we designed, which accompanies us whenever we travel or go camping. We also have a kitchen table restored by Carlos: it is large, made of solid wood, and works as an everyday gathering place. The fifth object is our children’s pool table, built by a friend who used to live in our house before us. We like it because it is not only an object of use; it also holds a shared story