continued from page 129 reigning style, form, or ideology—and equally resists the
dominant language of consumerism. “Spanish design is about sympathy with
the product and the user, not the ‘consumer,’” Capella says over a long lunch
at the Moo Restaurant in his Hotel Omm, a five-star hotel from 2003, around
the corner from the Passeig de Gràcia. “The new generation is not interested
in selling products; they’re interested in interacting with the user. The new
concept is not, ‘I’m a designer, and I must do the best design to sell a lot.’ No,
it’s different. They want to sell, but they also want to make something useful.”
But even the more playful designers, such as Mir and Padrós, need to strike
a certain balance with the market. Educated in London at the Central Saint
Martins School of Art and Design, they returned in 1996 to Barcelona, where
they have followed in the footsteps of Capella as producers-curators of the
new Spanish design. Over the years, they have created original concepts for
companies like Dune, Metalarte, and Nanimarquina, such as the Collector,
a clear glass lamp that can be placed over objects for display, or the Flying
Carpet, which comes with foam pads to turn areas of the rug into surfaces for
lounging. Neither was probably destined for large sales, however. For the past
three years, they have also been curating and designing exhibitions, along
with Mai Felipe, for the Spanish Institute for Foreign Trade—Spain Again,
Spain Color, Spain Playtime—that track thematic trends in the country’s lighting and furniture.
“We of course need to survive,” Padrós says. “We have to make something
that can be produced and sold. We are doing products, and we are also doing
exhibition design, which is something more reliable because you know that
there’s an opening date. But we also are very interested in working on projects
that will never be reproduced. Sometimes it’s like a self-commission, so we
put together a little exhibition and show it. Sometimes museums or institutions ask us to propose something for a show. Maybe it’s more experimental,
but it’s something our generation is working on.”
Three years ago, one of the edgier companies in Spain, ABR, was taken over
by Marc Hernández and Toni Pallejà (both 29 years old), and they have been
attempting to revive the brand. The novelty of the products they have
introduced—such as the Maria USB drive, by Luís Eslava, a memory disk in
the form of the Virgin Mary that lights up when you plug it into a computer, or
Cul is Cool, by Ramón Ubeda and Otto Canalda, an ass-shaped stool modeled
after Michelangelo’s David and advertised with mild S-and-M imagery—has
made them instant classics. But even ABR has had to pull back and revise
its catalogue, picking a few classically minimalist pieces from the company’s
portfolio that could work well in the international marketplace, and introducing new furniture that is Modernist but with a uniquely Spanish flair for color,
pattern, and line.
In Spain, probably the most promising form that the impulse toward personal
expression has taken is the tendency of architects to produce all the furniture
for their projects—a Modernist tradition that has somewhat fallen into disuse.
The 39-year-old ultraminimalist interior designer Francesc Rifé continues the
practice in his restaurants, offices, showrooms, and residences. Many of his
pieces, which reduce the distinctive Spanish line to its barest silhouette, are
put into production by companies like Joquer, Gandia Blasco, and Concepta
Barcelona that are making inroads into the U.S. market, appearing each year
in increasing numbers at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, in
New York.
“They come to us and ask us to design products, but we don’t design only
one product,” says Sònia Pellicer, a 28-year-old project architect at Rifé
Design. “We always design a collection of different pieces. But, because we
have designed objects specifically for our projects, when we work with a new
company or a company that we usually work with, we tell them, ‘We also have
this product—if you want to produce it, it’s yours.’”
