Instituto Cervantes Milano

Cristina Omarrementería (Valencia, 1988)

"The craftsmanship of iron and the natural 

oxidation of seawater as a color palette."

Designer Cristina Omarrementería is in love with metal, a noble material that has accompanied her since childhood. Her projects are a contemporary interpretation of traditional Spanish forging. She draws inspiration from old Spanish railings, paying homage to the everyday wrought iron elements that often go unnoticed. For the designer, iron combines strength and sensuality, delicacy and beauty, and she enjoys highlighting the craftsmanship of anonymous blacksmiths.

The creative process, spontaneous yet rigorous, is fundamental for Omarrementería, as her projects take shape directly by working the material, without exact measurements or prior 3D plans. It is a 100% analog process.

Iron flowers is the title of one of the collections presented in this exhibition, created almost without sketches or computers, through trial and error, together with craftsman Jose Sebastiá Sanjuán. Iron flowers consists of a chair and a table conceived as a set of outdoor furniture, painted in colors and decorated with iron flowers.

EM (Escenario Mediterráneo) is a collection for which the designer has conceived a chair and a vase, pieces built with a single material, wrought iron. The iron reacts instantly to the environment; upon contact with water, all paints disappear, and the pieces take on a brown color that changes to red depending on the light reflected by the water and sand.

Inés Sistiaga (Barcelona, 1992)

"Human biology, technology, and textile research."

Inés Sistiaga is a textile designer and researcher. After studying jewelry at Escola Massana in Barcelona, she moved to the Netherlands to earn a degree in design at Design Academy Eindhoven. She graduated with honors in 2018 from the Design for Wellbeing department.

Her work, primarily focused on the exploration of materials and textile structures, develops studies ranging from functional to aesthetic and from technical to decorative. Through trial and error processes, Sistiaga explores visual languages and material constructions using both artisanal and digital technologies. For the designer, textiles are a tool. Her research materializes in proposals in the field of design and interior design.

In this exhibition, the designer presents Tailored Bond, an archive of anatomical explorations through textiles. Inés Sistiaga starts from information and trauma visualization technologies and transfers the mechanics of the body's soft tissues to knit patterns, conceiving the fabric as a construction with physical properties. This project proposes a conversation between code, thread, and body that humanizes our relationship with the industry and focuses on the differences in our physiognomies, creating second skin textiles that connect technology with the individuality of human biology.

A collection from this project is exhibited in this show and consists of eight pieces in shades of green and yellow that can be used as bracelets, knee pads, and elbow pads. Each piece is adapted to the specific area of the body concerned, respecting its physiognomy.

Eli Gutiérrez (Valencia, 1980)

"Wood, an organic material source of inspiration."

After completing his studies in his hometown, he moved to London to earn a Master's in Product Design at the Royal College of Art. He lived in Milan and Paris, where he collaborated with some of the most renowned design studios such as Patricia Urquiola, Philippe Starck, and India Mahdavi. In 2016, he opened his own studio between Paris and Valencia, focusing on product design, installations, interior design, and concept creation.

In his projects, the emphasis is on function, material, and detail. An unconditional love for craftsmanship combined with a true sensitivity for color, materials, and textures gives his language a distinctive character.

In this exhibition, Eli Gutiérrez presents Chess, a piece that emerges from the convergence of craftsmanship, design, and innovation, where its lines allude to a new language within the fan. These lines create the characteristic "checkerboard" pattern that makes it easier to fold the fan once you want to store it, transforming it into a versatile and small object. The piece is made with strips of different types of wood that intertwine, giving rise to the structure of the fan itself.

Another piece by the designer is the Omma lamp. The ancient Frisian term omma, meaning "breath," indicates the main character of this lamp collection, as it gives the impression that the light "breathes" through the two wooden leaves. The collection can be described as "leaves of light," available in pendant, table, floor, and wall lamps. The lamps are completely modular: each module can be combined to create a linear version in which the "leaves" rotate up to 180 degrees, allowing a range of lighting adaptable to different work environments and lifestyles.

Eli Gutiérrez also presents the Kasa lamp in this exhibition. Kasa in Japanese is a conical hat. The piece consists of a 2D-shaped wood veneer that folds onto itself and attaches to the main lamp's "arm," where the light is located. The rounded veneer panel of the lamp has a slightly conical shape, tapering from the edge to a central point. A curious mushroom-shaped metal appendage reflects the light onto the panel, which in turn quietly illuminates the surrounding space. Kasa is a decorative lamp with two faces: one with a somewhat playful behavior, the other much more reflective.

Marta Ayala (Córdoba, 1987)

"Her interest in materials and their functional and 

aesthetic possibilities has led her to work with artisans."

Marta Ayala is a product, furniture, and industrial design engineer. Her work focuses on the relationship between humans and their environment through objects. She always seeks to explore and utilize new materials and new ways of experiencing the world. Throughout her career, the designer has worked for the Ciszak Dalmas studio, Doiy Barcelona, the Madrid Design Festival, and La Casa Encendida. Her work has been exhibited at CasaBanchel, Madrid; Milan Design Week, Ventura Lambrate fair, and Lille World Design Capital. 

Additionally, in 2013, she received one of the Injuve Awards, which stimulate and recognize the effort and commitment of young people whose work is relevant in various fields of society.

Functional and disassemblable furniture that acquires new functionalities is part of her identity. For this exhibition, Marta Ayala presents the Gurumelo table lamp. 3D printed in biodegradable PLA plastic, a material derived from lactic acid, sustainable and with a pleasant glossy finish. This piece explores digital self-production methods and seeks a contemporary design language.

Another project by the designer is the Entreplanta benches. The goal of this series of pieces was to create a versatile meeting point that responded to these values: commitment to society and integration, and respect for the environment. The choice of materials was very important: the benches are made from waste not considered "noble," and the goal was to recover this waste as potentially beautiful material. The design revolved around maximizing and optimally using these materials, adjusting dimensions to avoid material waste, and ensuring the pieces' durability over time. The various elements were crafted by artisan carpenters in Madrid.

Marta Ayala also presents the Tondo stool or side table, a piece that can serve both functions. Tondo explores the materiality and nature of cork oak bark through proportions and minimal processes applied to reveal the cork's natural qualities.

Amalia Puga (Vigo, 1996)

"We are becoming increasingly aware of the value of objects. 

Society, in general, is beginning to care about being more

self-sufficient, and for this, it relies on local artisanal solutions."

Amalia Puga is a product and materials designer. She designs to tell stories and create an impact on people's perception and behavior. She is inspired by traditions, creating projects that find collaborative solutions among people, in order to revalue small communities with enriching history and culture. Since 2019, she has collaborated with the Asociación de 

Redeiras de A Guarda (Pontevedra), artisans dedicated to making fishing nets, to give visibility to their work and the importance of women's roles in fishing villages.

Awarded the 2020 Adi Gold Medal for her project Entre redes, carried out in A Guarda, a small fishing village in Galicia. A place where, throughout history, local collaborative work among women has been essential for the village's economic growth. The redeiras are a collective of women weavers of traditional Galician nets whose craft is disappearing. To pass on this know-how to new generations, they must innovate and diversify their work, but always maintaining the origin and identity of their tradition.

From the same project, Saia is inspired by old fishing traps. It is handmade with nets recovered from the sea. It is an imperfectly dyed material woven onto a lamp structure following the same traditional process, tools, and technique used to make and repair fishing nets. The Saia lamp is a reinterpretation of the traditional baskets used to collect "argazo" seaweed. Easily transportable, it is designed to fit into any environment.

The Bolina chair is made with ropes knotted around individual curved metal structures, which are joined together by fishing knots, without the use of screws or glue. The result is a highly resistant structure that maintains its shape and natural characteristics.

Raquel Buj (Palencia, 1979)

"Continuous creative experimentation 

through materials provided by nature."

Raquel Buj is an artist, fashion designer, and architect. She conceives her studio, Buj Studio, as a laboratory for experimenting with new materials from very diverse fields, mixing craftsmanship, digital fabrication, and biofabrication. Her work has received several awards and recognitions, including the Samsung Ego Innovation Project award (2017) MBFWM, the mention for Research and Design at the Ibero-American Design Biennial (2019), and the IADE 2021 emerging design award. Her pieces have been exhibited at Casa Encendida 2020, Artbatalion Plaza de España 2021, Manuel Piña Museum 2022, and the Can U sustainable exhibition in Shanghai, China 2022. Her collections stand out between art and fashion, such as Growing Landscapes 2018 and NIDOS 2021, selected and presented at MBFWM, or the Carnaval de las Especies compañeras, Matadero Madrid 2022.

In this exhibition, she presents the Ungüentos project, which is an invitation to reflect on the ecological complexity of our clothing through a threefold proposal: a collection of garments, a material laboratory, and a ritual performance. Her garments, more than simple clothes, are second skins, sensitive coverings that envelop us, like an intimate and caring ointment. Through them, we can reimagine our aesthetic horizon beyond the anthropocentric canon of modernity.

The project is inspired by Ovid's classic poems Cosmetics for the Female Face, where the author compiles an ancient recipe book for skin care and beautification. The natural elements that compose these ointments (petals, lupins, daffodils, barley, yero, egg, natural wax, myrrh, incense...) are used for biomaterial experimentation in a laboratory that gives physicality to the poems. Finally, a performance activates the skins that the garments cover and makes visible the space that Ovid ignores: the hidden dressing room of ritual care. In that invisible place, the dancers dress and undress, changing skins in a ritual dance that requires different gestures that, like the garments, are made of body and vibrant matter. In this exhibition, Raquel Buj presents Piece number 5 of the Ungüentos project. This piece was created with bioplastics based on agar and carrageenan, ammonium salt, colophony resin, myrrh, natural pigments, barley cooking liquids. Additionally, we can see other pieces from this collection also created with natural wax, bioplastics, potato and corn starch, and crushed dried flowers.

Helena Rohner (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1968)

"Designing based on the artisan and the 

relationship with this figure and its limits."

Helena Rohner is a jewelry and product designer. For over twenty-five years, she has been designing sustainably, both in terms of the materials used in her creations and the artisanal production processes of her collections. Her unmistakable style is characterized by her way of playing with materials, refined lines, and the timelessness of her pieces. She always seeks harmony and beauty, creating organic, subtle, and colorful forms. Inspired by nature, she lets herself be carried away by its elements to find the essence of each of her jewels.

In her collections, she uses materials such as porcelain, rope, or wood, which she mixes with metal and which, at first, were not considered suitable for jewelry design. For some time now, she has also been using a polymer extracted from potatoes or cassava, PLA, a completely biodegradable material. This material has led her to work with 3D printing and to create a collection that she herself defines as "handmade pieces of the future."

Helena Rohner has received great recognition in the field of design and in 2015 was awarded the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts.

For this exhibition, Helena Rohner has created a "still life" composed of various pieces from her collections. We find a necklace made of 3D printed beads mixed with gold-plated metal, multicolored bracelets also created in PLA-3D. The earrings, ring, and brooch combine stone and porcelain with metal respectively. The two Anaga candles, made of natural wax, are an exclusive project of the Cerabellav brand. One last piece completes this still life. A concave bronze form, which can function as both a paperweight and an independent decorative element, reminiscent of a smooth stone or an unfolded leaf.

Helena Rohner designs what she desires, looking around for what she does not see or would like to see differently. She handcrafts timeless jewelry and pieces that become part of the individual and the home.

Silvia Fernández Palomar, Silvia Ferpal (Madrid, 1990)

"A contemporary reinterpretation of popular culture."

Silvia Fernández Palomar is a designer and artist from Madrid. In 2019, she received the National Design Award. Currently, she runs her studio, ferpal.studio, where she works for institutions such as the National Library of Spain, the Venice Biennale, Oysho, Harvard, and Unu Motors. She combines her practice with her artist profile, exhibiting at the Frac Museum and Azkuna Zentroa.

She graduated in Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid. Her professional work has developed in agencies and strategic design consultancies such as Ogilvy & Mather and Designit.

She spent two years in New York, which allowed her to understand design from a more strategic perspective. She collaborates with the City of Madrid in the famous San Isidro 2018 campaign with the typeface she designed inspired by the city: Ferpal Sans, which is currently one of Madrid's official typefaces and is featured in this exhibition. In 2018, she received a scholarship from the Spanish Academy in Rome in the design category for the development of the project Libros Ilegibles (Illegible Books) by Italian designer Bruno Munari. In 2019, the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation awarded Fernández the National Award for Young Designers of Spain, recognizing her work in strategic, graphic, and innovation design.

For this exhibition, the designer has specially created posters using the Ferpal Sans typeface, a non-geometric sans-serif typeface with handwritten gestures. The designer was inspired by the ceramic signs indicating the names of Madrid's streets, made by the Toledo ceramist Ruiz de Luna. These signs were made over several decades, from the 1930s to the 1960s, at the Official School of Ceramics in Madrid.

Silvia Ferpal has composed several images that capture elements of culture and, more specifically, popular Madrid gastronomy, such as Churros con chocolate, the clock with the phrase "It's time for a bocadillo de calamares in Plaza Mayor," or those including "buñuelos," "cocido," "bravas." Others refer to places in the city such as the Rastro flea market, the Latina neighborhood, or Plaza de Tirso de Molina.

Júlia Esqué (Barcelona, 1986)

"I am interested in the relationship between

 objects and the people who use them."

Júlia Esqué is a designer. Before starting her own business in 2019, she spent the early years of her career working between Barcelona and New York. Her interests range from lighting, furniture, and accessories to textile applications on various objects. She has collaborated with companies such as Moooi, Santa & Cole, Mobles114, Paloma Wool, and Nomad Coffee. She holds a degree in Product Design from Elisava University in Barcelona and a Master's in Product Design from ECAL, Lausanne, Switzerland.

Her design practice is based on experimentation and working with her hands. Never systematically, she does not use color wheels or theories. She uses intuition, which allows her to have a slightly freer perspective always tied to the object she is designing. In this project, she presents the pieces of the capsule she designed for the Spanish fashion brand Paloma Wool. Júlia Esqué started the creative process from a prototype for some rugs and had to create a model to understand how the warp and weft (the vertical and horizontal lines) worked. This led her to create some mock-ups with paper and cardboard to understand how it would work and how different colors and tones could be applied. She abandoned paper because it limited her in terms of color combination and started working with computer palettes, printing and working them, cutting and assembling them to create multicolored textures that would give rise to the prints of the collection.

In this exhibition, Bretona and Diplomática, two screens designed for Trípode, an iconic project by Santa & Cole, are also present. Diplomática features thin striped tape and Bretona thick striped tape. The pinstripe and Breton striped tape are the result of an intervention on the classic raw tape. An overlay of the initial finishes inspired by the 90s, in the references of Anni Albers and her Bauhaus research, which converge to enrich the rhythm of the taping.

Ingrid Picanyol (Torelló, 1988)

"Uninhibited creative thinking is reflected in 

a design practice that responds to specific needs."

Ingrid Picanyol is a creative director, graphic designer, and photographer based in Barcelona. She loves working with forward-thinking clients who understand the power and influence they can have, and helps build brands that everyone wants to choose tomorrow. Before running her own studio, she worked with Suki Design Studio, RoAndCo, Javas Lehn Studio, and ByFutura.

She founded her own studio in 2014 and works with clients worldwide. Although all her projects are customized to design needs, she always seeks to align innovation in a fresh, inclusive, and environmentally responsible way. Since she started designing, Ingrid Picanyol has focused on sustainability, working for cosmetic and food brands that care about their production processes and are committed to making responsible packaging using recycled materials or biomaterials.

In this exhibition, she presents several packaging projects such as Today I Saw Eden, a brand focused on well-being and connection with nature through pieces of natural stone. Dalston Coffee, a specialty coffee roastery with artisanal processes where the packaging perfectly reflects the values of this spirit in which the processes are meticulously cared for.

Finally, the visual system The Park Office is shown, a project based on the iconic visual language of the Excel program, which merges various recognizable plant elements of park life. The project conveys an apparent contradiction by merging two different spaces like a park and an office. In this way, urban life approaches what connects us to nature

Verònica Fuerte (Barcelona, 1980)

"Designing in a way that goes beyond 

aesthetics, where the method of doing,

 treating, and thinking is also added."

Founder and creative director of Hey, Verònica Fuerte is also a designer and illustrator. After earning a degree in Graphic Design from ELISAVA and a Master's in Typography Design from EINA, she worked for several design studios in Barcelona. In 2007, she founded her studio, Hey, and it has been growing ever since. She received the prestigious ADC Young Guns 7 award in the industry. She primarily works on graphic and illustration projects for clients worldwide.

Hey is an abundance of colors and shapes, but above all, accessible design. Its philosophy and materialization of ideas are not based on trends but on recreating a much more accessible, somewhat democratic style, something that people can understand, always seeking to explore the simplicity of beauty.

In this exhibition, we find the Spectrum scarf, locally produced with a unisex design, where Hey's graphic style, inspired by Catalan modernism in general and Antoni Gaudí in particular, can be noted.

For the editorial project of Livraria Lello, the idea was to immerse in over a hundred years of history, heritage, and culture to create an editorial experience that could convey to the public the soul of this emblematic Portuguese institution. Livraria Lello was founded by José Pinto de Sousa Lello, a dreamer who wanted to contribute to a more cultured world, with more readers and more books. The publications of this project managed to capture the determination and optimism of Livraria Lello, in a large-format editorial book. With pages of captivating images, fluorescent colors, and color photographs and illustrations, Hey managed to tell the rich history of the world's most famous library.

Daydream is a branding project created with marbling, a printing process that involves drawing shapes on water and uses a type of light and floating paint so that the colors do not mix. It is an analog process where there is no control over the result, giving a certain sense of freedom and the spontaneity of a dream.

Mirian Miguel (Salamanca, 1984)

"Between artisanal tradition and biomaterial production."

Mirian Miguel is a product designer graduated from IED Madrid. Founder of PLAF_estudio, a Madrid-based studio dedicated to product and graphic design, committed to environmental respect and slow design. She seeks to integrate craftsmanship and the know-how of masters into her projects, always focusing on crafts rooted in the Peninsula.

For this exhibition, Mirian Miguel has specially created the Nodriza project, where various pieces dialogue with each other about who would be the "wet nurse" in our homes today and the importance of an essential food like milk. An emotional element comes into play, milk, as it is a food that humans drink from birth and continue to consume throughout life. The jug would function as the "wet nurse" in today's home, once the breastfeeding period is over.

One of the jugs and a plate are made of glass. Glass is a reusable material, and the fact that these two pieces are handmade by glassblower Luis Machi in Albacete gives them a more sustainable character. On the other hand, the designer used casein (a phosphoprotein present in milk) to create a replica of the jug and plate with this biomaterial. Casein is very useful for generating fully degradable bioplastics.

The process followed by Mirian Miguel to obtain a kind of moldable casein mass is as follows. She mixes casein with acetic acid (in this case, vinegar) trying to separate the protein from the whey. This is done by heating the milk to 80 degrees and gradually adding the vinegar. The result is a curd-like mass, which is then left to dry under compression to form a rigid and fragile element, but which takes the shape of the mold. Vegetable binders such as agar-agar are also used, dissolved in the milk water, glycerin is added, and poured onto various surfaces, both smooth and textured. As a form of experimentation to see the casein's ability to record textures, the designer made the plate and jug with this mass. The pieces of the Nodriza project were made with partially skimmed sheep's milk from the Leche Gaza farms in Zamora.