Moneo the designer

by Massimo MarraRafael Moneo diseñador, Juli Capella, Santa & Cole, ETSAB, Barcellona 2004 (pp. 128, s.i.p.)This book, edited by Juli Capella, supplements our knowledge of Rafael Moneo’s work in a discipline that, although deliberately less flaunted, has occupied him as much as many of his architectural works.

by Massimo Marra

Rafael Moneo diseñador, Juli Capella, Santa & Cole, ETSAB, Barcellona 2004 (pp. 128, s.i.p.)

Rafael Moneo’s architectural work and studies are well known and he has won much international recognition for them. But his work as a designer of objects, furnishings and interiors is not so well known. This book, edited by Juli Capella, supplements our knowledge of Rafael Moneo’s work in a discipline that, although deliberately less flaunted, has occupied him as much as many of his architectural works.

Capella immediately clears the field of all possible misunderstandings: “Rafael Moneo is an architect, not a designer; this is very clear.” This is how the introductory essay begins and the provocation is diluted in the following pages that illustrate Rafael Moneo’s cultural path.

The author divides Rafael Moneo’s work into two distinct categories, based on complementary attitudes: the creation of objects incorporated into spaces of his own conception and the design of objects not linked to a specific context.

The book amasses documentation, drawings – with details and diagrams – and photographs of his work as a designer: from 1959 when, still a student, he participated in cutlery design competitions, up to 2002/2003, the year in which he completed the designs of the light fixtures and furnishings for the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles. Next comes a conversation with Rafael Moneo featuring a number of clarifications, intentional ambiguities and sometimes contradictions, which reveal the links between design and architecture.

Rafael Moneo believes architecture can produce emotions, sensations and “atmospheres” and the furniture he designs for interiors helps to fulfil the desire to live these “atmospheres”. The Spanish architect also states that “the desire” is for a building to have its own furniture, with an original design and conceived for a specific space, which highlights the architect’s work in both architectural and design terms.

In this framework, if we are to interpret Rafael Moneo the designer, in it’s meaning today, we must think less about the definition of industrial design and more about defining the intellectual field, in which it manages to assume the significance of an autonomous discipline, even when it happens to be construed as a specific operational approach within the architectural sphere.

This perspective on design is slightly distorted and certainly far removed from its current meaning – especially with regard to the industrial mass production of objects – but it links design strongly to architecture, although without making it descend from it. This interpretation seems fitting when examining the peculiarities of Rafael Moneo: ideas govern furniture and spaces not materials, and if the ideas are good they can be applied to numerous contexts.

Being an intellectual, Rafael Moneo does not associate furniture design with industrial mass production processes. His objects found in the catalogues of certain companies are almost certainly chance episodes and in this context, which many would see as restricting, the Spanish designer calls himself an amateur designer, an architect who sees architecture as all embracing. So, furniture design becomes a study of the relationships this object will potentially create, both with the space it is intended for and the people who will benefit from its function. In this sense, I do not find it at all reductive to consider design as something within architectural culture, indeed I would highlight it as an inseparable part of its personality.

When asked what he would like to design, Rafael Moneo reveals his unwitting preference for the design of chairs, armchairs and settees. Carefully observing the illustrations contained in the text, you realise that Rafael Moneo does not design a chair or an armchair, he continues to re-elaborate chairs and armchairs that are similar but always different, in which the greatest attention seems to be paid to functional research, which inevitably also becomes expressive research. All the chairs, settees and armchairs and auditorium seating he has designed reveal an objectivation of function, but the various solutions studied by Rafael Moneo bear witness to his non-belief in the univocal form/function relationship. You almost see a plurality of solutions, all deferential to a specific form/function relationship, all participating in an equal functional declaration, yet each one with its own individuality and formal definition.

Continuing to read the interview and texts written by Rafael Moneo on design, we perceive a culture, a sensitivity, in which all leads back to the project. This confirms a designer’s approach, if this means the designer’s desire to determine volumes, spaces and details. So, the identification of a design component in the buildings designed by Rafael Moneo stems not so much from the fact that he has designed furniture but from the acknowledgement in all his designs, in all the various scales, of a globalising approach that never separates the abstract thought phase from the concrete moment of action.

Massimo Marra, architect

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