Mix it! A home like a DJ set

By collecting, the common Duden author means the collection of things in order to keep them in large numbers because of their value or their beauty or something else - ideally in a certain order. By a disc jockey, the same Duden author means a person who selects music tracks for an audience and presents them. What he doesn't tell us is that the DJ, as he is also commonly called, must first collect those music titles, i.e. gather them together in large numbers because of their value or beauty or something else, in order to not only pick them up, but also to play them. This would also answer the question of what a DJ does when he's not deejaying: collecting.

This is also what Pil Marques does. Also known locally as DJ Pil. Some call him the best tech house DJ in Brazil. We don't want to lean quite so far onto the dancefloor and will simply say that DJ Pil brought the afterhour to Sao Paulo and institutionalised it in the Hell's Club there and over the noughties became an institution himself, because he collects, selects and presents music tracks for his audience that come very close to the description ornamental-ornate-easy-peasy-dancefloor-sound.

DJ Pil collects music as a profession. And while the DJ is collecting  it makes sense to collect vinyl LPs, polycarbonate CDs and megabytes of mp3 files as well as porcelain in figuratively appealing forms, plastic, sheet metal and glass in a wide variety of shapes and books, books, books. Not randomly, of course. But with taste. Whereby taste is often a, well, matter of taste for outsiders.

You could also see it that way with DJ Pil. His memorabilia sometimes earn the description of kitsch with complete self-confidence. In the eyes of its owner, however, this seemingly trivial item is a luxurious object of value, the obvious banality is the peak of beauty. But how do you bring this beauty closer to other people, especially those who think in terms of Star Wars dolls or PEZ vending machines in categories such as children's stuff?

And so the sorting architect became a curator of artistic kitsch, who not only sifted through the collected items, organised them, discarded this order and rearranged it again, but who also searched for the fitting furniture for these jewellery pieces of triviality and never forgot to look for detail in all the sorting and discarding. The whole endeavour ended in a four-day closing ceremony, during which he and the entire team from his studio - architects, painters and electricians - worked into the early hours of the morning to translate the carefully conceived composition into a vibrant and liveable living space: a little boy's dream in the guise of a pop paradise for adults.

So that was the architect's masterpiece, so to speak. Which in turn was also masterfully captured for us by a good friend of the DJ, photographer Lufe Gomes.

→ You can find inspiration, innovations and timelessly beautiful design in our digital design special for the Salone del Mobile 2026

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