The third annual festival will be held in February 2020. Its programme will include over 250 activities, featuring 66 exhibitions, 12 installations and the participation of over 400 design experts.
MDF20 will open on 29th January with two exhibitions: Nature Morte Vivante by Patricia Urquiola and I Work! Because that’s what I’m like, at the Fernán Gómez Centro Cultural de la Villa venue.
The festival will also be featuring Giorgetto Giugiaro, Bruno Monguzzi, Mario Ruiz, Elvis Wesley, Willie Williams, Enorme Estudio, Mayice, Juli Capella, Izaskun Chinchilla, Waugh Thistleton Architects, Oteyza, Francesca Zampollo, Carlos Fontales or Saenz de Oíza and H Muebles.
The functionality of design, its power to drive change, its social and educational facet, new materials, sustainability and responsible consumption will be some of the core topics on the programme.
This year, the festival will be counting on new venues, including CaixaForum, the ICO Museum, Tabacalera, El Instante Fundación and the Palacio de Santa Bárbara.
Turin will be the guest city of Madrid Design Festival 2020. Through its exhibitions and forums, the festival will reveal the history and current landscape of design in a city that became a UNESCO “Creative City” in the field of design in 2014.
The Barcelona Design Week and Madrid Design Festival will be joining forces in a project that aims to tackle future global challenges faced by both cities.
MadridDesignPRO will be hosting three one-day conferences with relevant figures in Spanish and international design who will take part in talks, workshops, masterclasses and shows.
Festival OFF will count on 62 spaces, including galleries, shops, architecture and interior design studios, restaurants and pop-up stores.
Early bird tickets are now available on www.madriddesignfestival.com to attend these conferences with a 25% discount.
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Since its recent foundation in 2018, the Madrid Design Festival has sought to be known as an international event that advocates the value of design and its power to drive change in the broadest sense. During its first years, the foundations of this festival have focused on showing a democratic view of design where the hybridisation of disciplines and the cross-cutting nature of concepts will offer a plural programme that signifies the importance of an essential discipline for society’s development and progress.
In barely two years, the Madrid Design Festival has become a great showcase for the work of designers, brands, institutions, schools and spaces by using a formula that brings together the festival’s own activities and guest activities. Once again, Madrid will be championing design in February 2020 to offer the general public an ambitious programme, with over 250 activities led by over 400 experts, including 66 exhibitions and 12 installations.
The MDF20 programme represents an X-ray of the world we live in to help us decipher the future world. The festival will allow relevant figures from the Spanish and international design arena together with emerging talents to give voice to some of the most pressing issues society will be facing in the near future through a programme that will highlight the functional side of design, its power to drive change, its social and educational dimension, new materials, sustainability and responsible consumption.
Madrid Design Festival has built the identity of this event on the “Redesigning the World” premise, alongside professionals, brands and organisations who share this same purpose. In its third year, the Festival takes a step further to boost the visibility of this “world under redesign” by adding new ideas, venues and institutions to enrich a dialogue that will stimulate the creation of a design culture, from Madrid for the entire society. Therefore, a large part of the MDF20 programme will offer proposals and initiatives that may start locally but go far beyond to solve global matters and major universal challenges that society should face responsibly and in good conscience.
This year’s festival, headed by Álvaro Matías, relies on an advisory committee made up of Deyan Sudjic, Juli Capella, Marisa Santmaría, Ippolito Pestellini and Pilar Marcos.
Designers, iconic brands and futures
The Fernán Gómez Centro Cultural de la Villa venue will be home to the exhibitions produced by the festival. Nature Morte Vivante by Patricia Urquiola is an extensive display of the work produced by the most universal Spanish designer, through a grand exhibition that includes some of the pieces she’s created for industrial production, craft production and the cross between them both. Organised by Ana Domínguez Siemens, the exhibition gathers the pieces around six still life paintings that explore a series of recurrent themes in her line of work and mindset.
I work! Because that’s what I’m like shows how industrial design has shaped today’s scene. Through nearly 100 items exhibited and the opinion of several well-known designers, this exhibition analyses some of the products that have helped improve our lives. The exhibition will include works from as far back as 1950 and right up until today. This project is the initiative of gallery director Moisés Pérez de Albéniz who has loaned most of the pieces on display from his own private collection. This exhibition will also be taken out onto the city streets by JCDecaux, using street furniture to claim the functionality of objects in our everyday life.
The Fernán Gómez venue will also display the shortlisted projects for the Toca Madera competition for young professional designers. This competition, organised by AHEC (American Hardwood Export Council) and AIDI (Association of Industrial Design Engineers), asked participants to design long-lasting objects using wood as the main component.
The COAM venue will host the exhibition called H Muebles. Between industry, architecture and art. The exhibition will look into the Huarte family’s great efforts to modernise Spanish society in several industrial and art fields through its modern furniture business, H Muebles.
The COAM venue will also display the shortlisted projects for the Rado Star Prize Spain 2020 competition. In its third year and with the theme Feel the Future, this competition has sought designs that use old or new materials and make the most of craftsmanship to portray their view of the future. Gala Fernández, Ramón Úbeda, Guillermo Santomá, Inma Bermúdez and Hakim El Kadiri make up this year’s panel of judges.
Furthermore, in honour of its latest watch collection, Thinline Les Couleurs™ Le Corbusier, Rado will give a talk with the Le Corbusier Foundation on 14th February as part of the Madrid Design Festival 2020. That same day, they will announce the winner of the Rado Start Prize Spain 2020 competition.
This venue will also be showing the winning projects of the Andreu World Design Award. This international award is one of the oldest design competitions and its specific field makes it unique: the design of chairs and tables. On the occasion of this exhibition, there will be a forum with Spanish businesses that promote international competitions and awards to support talent.
The Palacio de Santa Bárbara will be transformed to exhibit Tomorrow’s Homes organised by IKEA alongside Ikano Bostad and the SPACE10 research lab. The Swedish brand aims to create a better day-to-day life at home for people. With this in mind, it intends to anticipate what homes and houses will be like in 2030. A home understood as more than the structure of a house, as it includes the neighbourhood, neighbours and services.
The Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas (MNAD, National Museum of Decorative Arts) will take part in the festival with six exhibitions. Hope and Utopia. Design from 1900 to 1939 will look into the history of design, mostly European, created and produced between 1900 and 1939. 4th Exhibition of modern silversmithing and jewellery, organised by the Modern Jewellery and Silversmithing Association (AdOC) and the Museum will display original and new items and preliminary drawings by 40 designers of jewellery and gold/silver pieces. Now on. Graphic Artists in MNAD 1900-1936 will be showing for the very first time one of its least known collections: a selection of watercolour sketches for posters painted between 1900 and 1936. On the other hand, the exhibition called Los Diez were also postmodernists will show an eclectic selection of furniture developed and prototyped by the Madrid-based studio called Los Diez at the start of their career as product designers back in the 90s. Tot Cor. The Design of Love is a collaborative, artistic project organised by the artist Pepa Reverter with the support of the Miquel Valls Foundation who helps ALS patients. The Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas (National Museum of Decorative Arts) will complete its proposal with Black Tears, a research project on the use of art as an instrument to transform society. The result of this project is a 2x14m tapestry made by 2,245 women from 46 different countries. The purpose of this is to raise awareness about the trafficking in women and girls for sexual exploitation.
The Museo del Traje (Fashion Museum), with its exhibition called Open by Design. Industrial Design and Urban Product in the 60s, will propose a view of some of the most iconic pieces in industrial design from the 60s that belong to its collection: from the Boomerang model of the FASE desk lamp to the iconic Brionvega Radio designed by Richard Sapper and Marco Zanuso.
Tabacalera will be joining the festival this year with Tout va Bien, the first retrospective exhibition devoted to the artist Joan Rabascall. It includes his works and series from the 60s, when the emerging mass culture and pop culture started to change society, and right up until his most recent work. It also displays installations created specially for the Tabacalera space.
The ICO Museum will be taking part with its Sáenz de Oíza. Arts and Trades exhibition organised by Marisa, Javier and Vicente Sáenz Guerra. In honour of the 100th anniversary of the birth of this Navarra-born architect, this exhibition will explore the relationship between Oíza’s architecture and the artists and craftsmen he worked with: Eduardo Chillida, Pablo Palazuelo, Jorge Oteiza, Antonio López and Carlos Pascual de Lara, among others.
Di_MAD/ Design Centre will host three exhibitions: Fresh Product 2020, a project that will reveal the year’s best products designed by Madrid designers or produced by local businesses. Murcia will be the guest region for this year’s Fresh Product 2020. The Complementary 2020 exhibition will show projects by designers and design studios that are a model of creativity, innovation and sustainability and have the power to fuse trade, craftsmanship and design in each project. Lastly, the Slow Fashion Next 2020 exhibition will reveal business proposals to tackle the major challenges involved in buying fast fashion.
The festival exhibition proposal is completed with tours and workshops that have been specially created by three key museums in Madrid’s cultural landscape, to help us discover the items linked to design in their permanent collections.
The Museo Arquelógico Nacional (Spanish Archaeological Museum) will organise guided tours on Designs for the Future, the First Objects Designed by Man. On the other hand, the Museo del Romanticismo (Romanticism Museum) will organise guided tours on Hairstyles in the Romantic Era. Lastly, the Museo Cerralbo (Cerralbo Museum) will organise 4 tours with the theme Design before design. 19th-century interiors of the Cerralbo Museum.
Furthermore, CaixaForum will also be contributing to these guided tours with its History of the building tour that will reveal all the different facets of this emblematic building; and Painting. A permanent challenge, that will show the key topics of the homonymous exhibition that brings together a relevant selection of works from La Caixa Collection.
Turin will be the guest city of Madrid Design Festival 2020.
In 2014, Turin became a UNESCO “Creative City” in the field of design and will be the guest city of this year’s festival. One of the activities hosted by the festival with a view to highlighting the Italian city’s design proposals is the brand exhibition called MARCA, which displays everyday objects that can be customised by the end user to show some of the latest designs from Turin. Within the MadridDesignPRO programme, Madrid will be welcoming Giorgetto Giugiaro, one of the key designers worldwide, who is especially linked to the car industry. Also within the MadridDesignPRO framework, Turin’s promoters will reveal some of the most outstanding events on the design calendar.
Street installations across the city
Madrid Design Festival will pepper the streets with installations across the capital.
MINI will rely on the Mayice architecture studio to create and build Electric Green, an installation that urges us to reflect on the need to preserve nature in the city. A sustainable lighting experience produced with minimum power consumption and materials that will turn the iconic vertical garden of CaixaForum into a dreamlike space.
The Explanada del Rey in the Casa del Campo will be another of the must-sees in the city with MultiPly, an 8m wooden pavilion that will be built jointly by the Waugh Thistleton Architects, the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC) and ARUP. This installation is an answer to the greatest challenges in our time: the growing need for housing and the urgency in fighting against climate change. They propose bringing together modular systems and sustainable building materials as a solution.
Wood fibre understood as a new element to produce volumes. This is the starting point of the Astral Bodies installation made by Finsa. To conceive and develop this installation, they will rely on the Enorme Studio architecture studio. Playing with colour and working on the material with a 3D approach, they will create diverse meteorites that will show visitors the many uses of wood fibre and open a new imaginary world.
During the festival, the men’s clothing brand Oteyza, that will be in the Paris Fashion Week in January 2020, will be coming back to Madrid to introduce, alongside Madrid Capital de Moda, their proposal called Forma pasajera del viento (The Fleeting Shape of Wind), which is a street installation that combines fabrics and other materials such as wood.
In a performative action, this proposal will give birth to an ephemeral installation that can be admired during the festival.
Madrid Design Festival / Barcelona Design Week
The Madrid Design Festival and Barcelona Design Week will work together on a group project where students from design schools from both cities will seek ways to tackle the future challenges faced by these two cities that have so much in common. Together with the consultancy firm Soulsight, they will develop a strategic design project and its conclusions will be introduced at the venue called Espacio Fundación Telefónica. The result of this work will also be shown as an installation at the next Barcelona Design Week.
Furthermore, the Telefónica Foundation will be hosting a special programme of design-related activities throughout February.
Over 60 professionals will join round table discussions and forums in MadridDesignPRO
COAM will be the main venue hosting professional activities on 13th, 14th and 15th February for MadridDesignPRO with a programme that includes conferences, masterclasses and workshops.
Giorgetto Giugiaro (one of the most relevant car designers worldwide), Bruno Monguzzi (Swiss graphic designer who created the visual identity of the Musée d’Orsay, among other things), Mario Ruiz (industrial designer who won the Spanish design award Premio Nacional de Diseño 2016), Pepe García (founding member of CuldeSac), Francesca Zampollo (founder of the online school for food design, onlineschooloffooddesign.org, and the International Food Design Society), Willie Williams (visual artist and stage designer for artists as famous as U2, The Rolling Stones and Lady Gaga), Oscar Guayabero (industrial designer, teacher and exhibition organiser); Elvis Wesley (designer and contributor to brands such as Camper), architect Juli Capella, and Max Oliva (co-founder of TEAMLABS), will be some of the experts taking part in the programme.
Thanks to the support given by Acción Cultural Española (AC/E, Spanish Cultural Action) through its Programme for the Internationalisation of Spanish Culture (PICE) with its Grants for Visitors, the Madrid Design Festival will be welcoming international professionals linked to the design universe: Deyan Sudjic (director of the Design Museum, London), Renata Becerril (exhibition organiser and design critic), Gilly Craft (director of the Koubou Interiors architecture and design studio), Jean Blancaert (gallery director, exhibition organiser and critic), Patrizia Catalano (writer and exhibition organiser. She is in charge of international events for the Interni magazine), Frank Millot (manager of Partnerships & Special Events at MAISON&OBJET) and Jennifer Olshin (partner of the gallery devoted to modern design, Friedman Benda).
Aristocrazy Design Bootcamp proposes a co-creation initiative that supports creative talent. A unique educational experience that will take place on 13th, 14th and 15th February at the COAM venue. This year, a group of students and teachers from international schools will take part in a basketmaking workshop given by the well-known Galician craftsman Carlos Fontales.
Also, the COAM venue will be hosting the Madrid Design Festival Awards on 12th February.
More proposals, more design all over the city
Cosentino, at its Cosentino Madrid City venue will take part in the Madrid Design Festival with its Carved in Stone exhibition. Here we will be able to admire the winning projects of this competition that have been devised by the most famous award-winning studios in the United Kingdom: Cartwright Pickard, Foster + Partners, Hugh Broughton Architects, Ian Ritchie Architects and Tonkin Liu. Furthermore, Cosentino will announce the winner of the 1st Window-Dressing Competition together with Escuela Artediez. The proposals prepared by this venue will be completed with a collage exhibition made by one of the best-known Spanish designers, Emilio Gil, and a talk by interior designer María Villalón.
SACo (Association of Modern Craftsmen/Craftswomen) and Mazda join forces to create the Artis-Manus exhibition on the past, present and future of avant-garde, designer and high-quality craftsmanship. The display at the El Instante Fundación venue will show the tradition, value and future of modern craftsmanship through a selection of works made by different expert craftsmen/craftswomen. The Sierra + De La Higuera studio will bring this exhibition to life. The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of workshops, talks and round table discussions. The venue will also host debates on modern craftsmanship.
The ABC Museum will contribute to the Madrid Design Festival with its workshop called Papercut: Illustrating with papercuts, placing the spotlight on inspiration and creativity to create illustrated stories.
In the former slaughterhouse, Matadero Madrid, the Mutant Workshop will be writing the script for the first episode of Cli-Fi series, a 6-episode TV series on the future of our cities should they undergo an extreme renaturalisation.
Medialab Prado will count on the #EDCD Forums on digital design and culture, a cycle of on-going activities regarding digital creative practices. #EDCD aims to create a meeting space between different educational and professional entities with students and people who are interested in design. The forum will have workshops, launches and audiovisual showings.
Only YOU Hotel Atocha will once again be part of the Madrid Design Festival as the festival’s official hotel.
IED Madrid will repeat as the Official School of the Madrid Design Festival. For a month, its premises will host the great design party, to bring the general public, not only experts, closer to this professional practice that is changing the world we live in. The activities proposed are split into several programmes, namely IED Design District, IED Lights Forum and the following exhibitions and installations: Future perfect, a group initiative that will propose speculative scenarios through the voices of the new generation in design; A block-chain lab, that focuses on reusing plastic and will host a talk by Jorge Penadés; and the New Furniture for Co-Living exhibition at the Finsa21 Space.
On the other hand, the well-known designer and illustrated Pep Carrió will give a talk on his career as a creator within design and plastic arts at the Francisco de Vitoria University, which is the festival’s guest college. Also, its Emerge Diseño (Emerging Design) project will show the students’ end-of-degree projects outside the university. They will be on display at the COAM venue and at the MadridDesignPRO proposals.
The Navarra University will be joining the Madrid Design Festival within MadridDesignPRO with a talk on research and narrative design given by Domitila Dardi and Andrea Anastasio at the COAM venue.
Showrooms and Festival OFF
Madrid Design Festival will strengthen the involvement of the Madrid business network with over 65 venues, including showrooms and OFF spaces. Restaurants, interior design shops, design studios and other shops will be taking part in this.
Roca Madrid Gallery, Basque Living and Vescom will be the showrooms of this coming festival with design-related proposals, from screenings, exhibitions and installations to forums and round table discussions.
Camper, Neolith Urban Boutique Madrid, Madrid Capital de Moda, Escuela SUR, the Wunderman Thompson ad agency and Soulsight will be contributing with several proposals centred around design.
FESTIVAL OFF will count on: _2B space to be, Abanuc, Ábbatte, ACDO. Álvaro Catalán de Ocón, Banni Elegant Interiors, Batavia, Bisley, Bolon by Missoni Home, Carrillo Center Diseño, Cesta República, Chic & Soul, Davinia Mobiliario de Cocina, Despacio Concept Store, Diptyque, Dmad, Domesticoshop, Échale Guindas, Eileen Ng Handmade, El Departamento, EX – PER – IM – ENT – O, Farinetes Galletas Decoradas, Gancedo, Gandía Blasco, Gastón y Daniela, Hotel ME Madrid Reina Victoria, IKB 191, iSiMAR, Kikekeller, Kilombo Rugs, Koff – Herman Miller, La Fábrica, LAB Lamarca, L’Atelier Óptica, Mad Lab, Maite Conde Antiq & Deco, MINIM, Mosaista, OAK, Oliva Iluminación, Open Design Área, PEFC, Plantea Estudio, Real Jardín Botánico, Sala Equis, Simply Rickshaw, Studio Squina, Tiempos Modernos, Tienda-librería Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Tocamadera Design Store, Usera Usera, Vertisol, We Crave, Welcome ALVIC, Woop Rugs, Comestibles La Fábrica, El 5 de Tirso, La 21, La Bobia, Matute, Mercado San Miguel, NuBel, Raimunda
