With the Madrid Design Festival, which throughout the month of February animates the cultural spaces of the Spanish capital, begins the waltz of events, biennials and design weeks that all over the world – and especially in Europe – link the international debate to the various local contexts, constantly jolting insiders around the globe.
Although Madrid is not the main hub of the Spanish furniture industry, the city has a deep design culture in which architecture, design, craftsmanship, civil activism and urban culture converge. Now in its third edition and in constant growth, the Madrid Design Festival proves to be one of the most interesting platforms on the continental scene.
Madrid is the ideal “battlefield” to host this type of event. We chose five exhibitions to tell the story of our hectic visit, thanks to which we were able to discover (or rediscover) five fantastic locations.
In Plaza de Colón, just a stone's throw from the emblematic socket-shaped tower (el enchufe de Colón), is the Fernán Gómez cultural centre, which is the main venue of the festival. Here we find four major exhibitions, including Patricia Urquiola's solo show – the first in Madrid – and an installation by the Madrid based Enorme Studio. "Nature Morte Vivante" focuses on the production of objects by the famous designer born in Oviedo who, after founding her own studio in 2001, has worked with the world's best furniture brands, toured the world through its material cultures, and experimented with new and original techniques, typologies and aesthetics. It is the first time that the designer – Cassina’s art director – celebrates her own work and not that of the company she works for.
Astral Bodies – presented for the first time at Milan’s Salone del Mobile 2019 – is the result of the collaboration between Enorme Studio and Finsa, a Spanish company specialised in the production of wood agglomerates. The layering of the panels and the play of colour form shapes that resemble meteorites, which show the properties of the material and create new spatial imagery.
Among Teruel’s ancient ceramics, refined 17th century cabinets and icons of modern design, the link between craftsmanship and industrial design is reconstructed at the Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas. Here you can also discover the postmodern projects of the Madrid-based studio Los Diez, which began its journey in the 1990s with the motto “irony is the eroticism of dialectics”.
The Matadero is a cultural institution that in the spaces of a former slaughterhouse welcomes a centre for active citizenship combined with a centre for contemporary arts. One of the pavilions, the Central de Diseño, hosts the exhibition “Producto Fresco 2020”, which is a reconnaissance of the best of Madrid's design produced industrially or artisanally over the past year.
Another cultural center born from the recovery of a 1700’s barracks, the Conde Duque, hosts installations and performances by brands that choose design in its various forms to send a message to customers and citizens. The exhibition “Joan Rabascall. Tout va bien” is instead a fierce criticism of mass consumerism and the mass media. Production and communication are represented by an iconic object: television, which is both a design product and the medium with which companies have influenced consumer desire and taste for years.
It would be interesting to understand what Joan Rabascall’s opinion is about the international network of design weeks, which are an evolved and sometimes not too noble instrument of promotion for the furniture industry. Could this be the next object of criticism from the artist? His exhibition – and the institution that hosts it – shows, however, that Madrid is a city open to different voices, which does not exclude minorities and critical opinions, and is capable of conceiving hybrid, ambiguous, contemporary cultural forms.