Interviews and reports

...

How did your interest in design begun?

In our case,  our first interest was the world of architecture,  we discovered how great architects had faced the object world giving it a real importance, and perceiving it as one more piece, but not least, in the defining of the material environment emerged because of the implications and requirements of the Second World War II, we are talking about the great architects and artists emerged from the Bauhaus, about the dutch neoplasticists of the group De Stijl, the soviet constructivists, etc. that lately formed the Modern Movement and the interesting critical regionalisms.

Because of a variety of personal avatars I, Javier, ended up studying industrial design and my brother Jose Luis, interiorism, aiming to cover a range of design as broad as possible, in order to create a design studio, as happened, which we could take very different orders.

Could you explain how is the day by day in the studio díez+díez diseño?

To oversimplify, we can say that our studio’s daily work is done directly by Javier because Jose Luis works for fifteen  years in B + R Arquitectos Asociados, a major madrilenian studio of architecture, so the initial focus and development of the project is 80% of Javier, José Luis functions as a sort of critical sector, facing the project from the objective perspective of a mere observer, this distance allows him to make sporadic corrections or comments that might make someone foreign to the project, untainted by the subjectivism of the creative act, but using the proper tools and approaches of a design expert.

This is also true for the type of orders that we are receiving nowadays, basically product design, we guess that the day we begin to take orders focused on the interiors world, this current approach will be inverted.

When a project comes to the studio, what is your usual method of work?

We must admit that after being about 12 years as a studio we have created a working system some kind of peculiar,  the approach we seek to establish when we receive an order  is based on a conceptual analysis of the object ordered, never from the perspectives of the design world but from any other field of creation, whether literary, philosophical, films, etc. is what we have been calling transversalit, or in the words of Richard de Bono, lateral thinking.

From this conceptual starting point, we try to write but above all thinking about the object, often using it as an excuse to think about the world, in the physical environment, which will be recorded later in the draft and materialized as a product.

Then, and about what we call conceptual soul,  we begin a brief process of sketching whose results are permanently contrasted with the synthesis of previous process, and that at any time tells us, in a way of markers in the middle of the fog, the ideal way to follow. From the election of a particular solution or proposal is when our process recalls the path of project orthodoxy with the known studies of variables, versions, volumetric analysis, industrial processes, etc.

Industrial design, public furniture ... You speak about "going from the short story to the novel”, what would a space of díez+díez diseño be like?

We would like to create spaces that become truly lived, not merely walked or occupied, we would like these areas to work, understanding in its true dimension the film metaphor, as a life  atrezzo of life, but never as its protagonist, the real protagonist in life must be the people, never the object, in some way that’s what we already do in the product design field, creating objects, things, functional but quiet, things in some way, aesthetics, but discreet.

What's the demand on your design?

Basically ideals of essentiality in the product and closeness to the user.

By essentiality we understand the stripping of our work of everything that might be superfluous, unnecessary, gratuitous that prevent us from perceiving the original eco of the archetype that we are facing, we would like that essentiality might be not confused in any way with the handy and vacuum minimalism, which today has become a mere empty label and reduced to a simplistic recipe of formulations ad hoc.

Because of the proximity to the user, we want to show that the first and final destination of our work is the buyer, or more generally the user, never the covers of magazines, exhibitions or showcases, or the museum catalogs.

Design is a word on the lips of everyone, What is design for you?

Design is only a working tool, a way to face the order that a customer makes to us, that results in a product, not forgetting of course the buyer or the user of that product, which for us is the real target of our work, or paraphrasing Munari, of our profession, something that we are very clear in díez+díez diseño is that we are buyers and users rather than designers, we would never design anything that we do not want to find in the houses we live in ,in the places where we work or in the cities we walk.

What is not tolerated in a project?

We would worry if in some of our work the form, the image, the aesthetic were predominating, or lack of that conceptual soul we talked about before, we understand that in our work, the formal component is essential, especially being immersed in a society where image predominates and where the reflection against current vertigo is  endangered, but we intend that this image has always some content, we are concerned about a society of instant and superfluous knowledge against a deep and slow knowledge.

Funtionality or beauty?

We believe that this is a false dichotomy and hopefully overcome, a good design is one in which the balance between these two factors, among others, is in equilibrium,  we may respond by asking two questions, first, the fact of an object functioning in a proper way, according to the requirements for which it was created, do not make it close to a  serene and beauty state?; second, would beauty not be perceived, as could the poetic or irony, as other type of functionality?

What is the work you’re most proud of?

It's an easy question to formulate but difficult to answer, one must understand that each project was born from very different orders, customers widely divergent, and came from creative processes with different vicissitudes, to put it another way, we assume and accept all our works despite its imperfections or difficulties encountered in the process of creation.

May we cite two, VIRTUAL bookcase, produced by Miscel · Lani, and  GODOT bench, produced by Escofet 1886, in those two products converge more clearly  the essential elements of our work: essence, transversality, serenity and functionality.

Do you believe that natural materials can fit into vanguard projects?

They can and should do, but always from the perspective of a situation like the present, the one of a global scenario where finding that the resources are limited and where the growth model must be questioned and therefore revised and reformulated.

And we are saying they must because those are materials that because of their own nature are connected to the material culture of the human being, and therefore they can introduce a factor of proximity on the contemporary object that makes its useful time prolonged look time and thus promote sustainability, an example, there are more chances of a wooden chair will pass from generation to generation, provided it is not IKEA, to do a plastic one, and this is because the culture and the perception of most products "industry" has no more than a century, while in materials such as wood, stone or glass, the public identifies ancient instincts.

What value can provide a good material for a project?

The value of time, the noble material has the quality for the endorsement over the centuries and its use by many different cultures and societies has made him the noble material is so to speak, and sorry for the redundancy, an embodiment, a condensation biological or geological time, from memory.

This makes the use of materials, and by natural extension, contemporary design projects they manage to combine the past tense contributed by the material itself with the projection in the future that does, or should the discipline of design.

"We could speak of your latest projects?

We like to talk about the projects we are involved than in those who have already materialized, and now we're developing works very different in scale and materials and in its approach and complexity of design, ranging from a clip for hanging clothes raised from the perspective of people with dysfunction of the hands, bus shelters with a completely new constructive approach, to a desk, or rather a work space, to be placed in professional studios, offices or even in areas related to domestic telework a radically new way.

Lastly, a reference design for you?

This question has done many times and eventually we realized that until now always responded by giving a name, sincere in his utterance, but which you have nothing left to reflect a profound paradox in front of our relationship between design and designer; our philosophy in this regard is reflected in our "out of focus picture" whose underlying message is that we recognize and that society acknowledges the existence and importance of a design professional behind any product, but we resist the excessive prominence, and often parodic, which sometimes gives.

So today, without avoiding the question, respond by citing Naoto Fukasawa, but trying to blur or obscure the name by locating their work, or much of their work (not all), and his thought, ahead of his figure in the media

...

You are brothers and, although Javier is industrial designer and Jose Luis interior designer, both you demonstrate to have a creative talent. Is design a innate, genetic, innate capacity?

Let us think that no; in fact in our family we did not find antecedents related to the creation. In our case everything has been very circumstantial; in a beginning, I Javier, began to study architecture but luckily immediately I understood the amount of bureaucratic, normative, economic conditioners, etc., that accompany and condition the purely creative process and to both months of course I renounced; I was more concretely decided then by the product design, or the one of furniture when discovering as a series of great architects were boarded this discipline. This way, when beginning my studies in the Schools of Arts and Offices, little by little I was introducing in my house books, magazines, etc. on a profession that at that time was difficult to explain; thus, once smoothed the way my brother Jose Luis was decided to study interior design, perhaps thinking about even complementing a future collaboration and the creation of a common studio, since thus he has been.

When you decided to begin to work together, how did you make one's way?  How many years you take working in the field of the design?

We really began to work together from the years of studies, participating in any aid who crossed to us in the way, forcing to us to make scale models, prototypes, allowing us to know the design from its part more practical, stepping on carpenter shops, factories, that they forced to us to understand like being constructed the things, not only as they were drawn. We always joke saying that like I, Javier, am 40 years old, and Jose Luis, is 38, we had been those 38 years working together.

How is a day of work in your study?  How many people you form it?

The study is formed only by us two, which happens is that Jose Luis works as well in an architect studio, with which I take the daily tasks of the studio; We consider the work like designers of a quite peculiar way; we are not particularly methodical, enchants to us to create anywhere (in fact we consider any Starbucks as a branch of our studio), we don´t like to work with haste, we prefer to have many open projects that allow us to jump from one to another one when we are saturated of someone, together with the orders that we receive from different manufacturers we like to develop self-orders, that sometimes they get to find producer; somehow the creative exposition, that together with most pragmatic, guides anyone of our projects, we project it on the own working of the studio.

The power of invention is something personal and, perhaps it is associated to the individuality.  Is difficult the creation process when it becomes between two people?

No, at least in our case in which the roles are enough defined; whereas Javier takes care of the processes more clearly creative, Jose Luis contributes, perhaps by his work in the field of the architecture, the most pragmatic and operative glance of the studio; something that works to us wonderfully is to verify like the precise critic, fresher and less saturated, of Jose Luis it approaches the expositions of the processes raised by Javier in the daily work; to say it of another way, an external critic is needed that often the designer is not able to perceive, locked up in its own process.

In your designs predominates the lines but above all the curves. Some of them transmit a sensation of maelstrom (the stairs of Vertigo carpet)and others cause calm and harmony (the Zen bench or the Pleamar).  Must the design reflect the emotions or take priority its functionality?

Sincerely we do not know what to answer; it amuses much to us when through our designs it is tried to analyze us, although what we expect is that our designs are not a reflection of our emotions, because easily could be catalogued to us like schizophrenics. In fact what we have very sure and what we always try, is that the development of each project is justified in itself; the fact that in certain designs, for example, predominates the straight lines on the curves, or vice versa, it is explained in the own process, understanding in he himself come together multitude of technical, material, economic conditioners, etc., etc.

You have made industrial works, and also design of public furniture, whereupon you would remain?

With whatever it allows us to vary, to experience, to investigate, to approach new challenges; to be able to jump from the intimate scale of a cup to the urban distance of bollard, from the gentleness of the porcelain to the forcefulness of the concrete.

In your letter of presentation you aim that “it desires to give the jump to you of the story to the novel”.  How do you breathe life into a space or an object?

When designing any object which we try is to contribute a new glance on he himself, to say somehow we try it to discover the meaning first and deep one of “the table” that allows to contribute our vision of a new table.

When we speak of giving the jump of the story to the novel, which we want to express is the desire to pass to define the object in itself, with a few concrete limits and whose relations with the rest of the system of the objects it escapes from us since we do not know the area in which the buyer or the user is going to insert it, to define places where to orchestrate the above mentioned relation, where to harmonize simultaneously the whole range of conditioners as they are the light, the scale, the circulations, the privacy, the color, etc., etc.

Pragmatism, reflection, concept, illusion, word, search, thought, chance, poetry, critic… these are some of the words that present your page in Internet.  Do you define with them your work or you prefer not to put labels?

We define not the result of our work, that since already we have explained is the result in each case of the own development and internal justification, but an exposition by which the reflection is previous and is over the formalization; we follow a process of relatively slow work beginning by a phase of conceptualization, of reflection around the object to design; this process, relatively extensive, allows us, once obtained the reflective keys of the project, to sketch very quickly a solution formalized; we never justify an object in its own form and much less in its image, that is really háptic an excluding simplification of meaning, mainly considering that we are product designers, and that at the moment seem to be a tendency extended enough.

We´ll not speak of minimalism. You prefer the essentialism term, that essentialism that the society of the consumption has lost to pass to the overproduction, to the excess of necessities, the new necessities pre-created by the system. What does differentiate the minimalist of the essential thing?

We rejected the minimalism like recipe book, understood like mere formal repertoire, as simple catalogue of applied formal solutions of a mechanical way; we prefer the term essentialism understood like exposition by which each design, each product is born and it is developed showing its basic and sufficient character, without added that they disturb it; this approach, although is paradoxical, could give as result a baroque design, whenever it is justified in itself. To say it somehow, in díez+díez design we are not shut off from use any formal label a priori, we try that our designs have style, not a style.

You consider yourselves buyers and users before designers.  Is it a strategy looked for approaching to your public at the time of designing a product or simply it come up unconsciously as a way of work?

Well, we think that both things happen simultaneously; we never design something that we would not like to buy, to have or to enjoy in our houses, in the cities that we cross, in the restaurants that we visit. When we design we try to visualize the life of that object in real environment, accompanying to somebody in its daily life; that motivates much more than imagining it in the covers of the magazines or the display cabinets of a museum.

Art and poetry. You describe your work from appointments of illustrious personages in the world of the letters.  Are reflected these interests in your creations?

If we left from the base of which we consider the occupation of designers like an existential activity that is nourished mainly of the experience, it is natural to think that our readings, the cinema that we see, the cities that we walk about, the conversations with the friends, etc., are seen somehow reflected in our work.

You say that you are not interested in museums, neither the prizes, nor to see your pieces in the covers of the magazines. How do you understand the success?

The greater success than we understand for our work is to think that somebody in any store, in any catalogue, chooses among other one of our designs, not by our name, nor by it to have seen thousand times advertised, but because it thinks that it can contribute something to him in its life.

You like “to design for people”.  How could become the world of the design a social means within reach of everybody?

Rejecting for the profession of the design the stupid and absurd exposition of star system, the flashes and spangles; assuming that we create the daily environment of people and that while people continue perceiving our work like a distant materialization, expensive and inaccessible, the design will not let inhabit a ghetto for privileged and expert; we would not have either to forget to us the manufacturer, of the industrialist, without who the work of the designer would not happen to be simple entelechy theoretical and onanist; I believe that certain self-satisfied tendencies in the artistic and supposedly experimental aspect of the design are making distrust the producer, whose last mission, we do not forget it is the one to sell, and that like industrial designers, we would have to share. Let us think that as designers we must become the intermediate link between manufacturer and consumer, proposing to that the degree of experimentation, imagination and innovation that this one demands and is able to assimilate.

How is actually the exact degree between the contemporary and the timeless?

In our case the objective of the contemporanity we try to fulfill it from the resolution of the real necessities, not induced artificially, of people, we did not try to design today for the world the morning; the atemporality is come off the null interest that we have by the tendencies or the fashions, thinking and wishing that a design that we developed today could be valid within 20 years.

How much of functionality and how much of beauty in the design?

The maximum that the product that we are developing is able to assume without overflowing anyone of their other qualities.

The design, would have to be an element more of social critic? Something that you have wanted to denounce with some of your designs.

We understand that in the case of the product design, unlike the communicational or graphic design or that counts with more explicit and effective tools, it does not have to be understood like a critical activity; in fact we thought that if we took the critical reflection until its last consequences within the product design, the last conclusion would be the same questioning  of our profession; at the present time the design is understood in its immense majority like mere tool of generation of new features and not like which it would have to be, this is, the instrument that allowed a qualitative evolution us, and not only quantitative, of our material surroundings. We thought that more effective tools exist to try to make critic social, for example maintaining an activism civic and political militant, belonging to parties, unions, NGOs, etc., etc.; with our work, the only thing that we try is that this material scene that surrounds to us every day to not complicates the life us, but that us facilitates it, who allow us to center to us in the really important things that they are the ideas, the feelings, the people.

Some of your future projects, if you can tell it…

Right now we are planning  a project born of which we name self-order and that is the result of the evolution of many years of some of our conceptual expositions as much formal; one is a program of office tables, that also will be able to work in the domestic space, revolutionized; at level of sketches or first draft we have presented it to a reduced number of friends (architects, colleagues, directors of magazines) who have animated to us to continue, mainly before the fact of not knowing anything similar.

What would you like to design and you still haven´t had a chance to do it?

We have it very clear: a hotel; that would be the great jump of the story to the novel that before we spoke.

An ideal material to work.

The ideas.

A designer or a design that you admire deeply.

Miquel Milá; in fact in our studio we have a poster that, paraphrasing to Billy Wilder in relation to Lubisch, says “ How Milá would do it?”.

How must be the ideal house?

Really lived, not simply decorated.

A music to work.

You’ve just touching on a delicate matter and origin of the greater and deeper discrepancy within díez+díez diseño (Laughs). Whereas Javier prefers without no doubt the jazz and mainly to Miles Davis and if you request a disc to me would be the Kind of Blues, Jose Luis remains with Tom Waits and his Bone Machine.

One hour of the day to create.

Anyone in which we are outside the studio.

A city in which to lose yourself.

Anyone, with the condition of not bearing by a street plane.

A book to be surprised

We cannot opt just for one; if you allow us we will choose four; “Portrait of Giacometti” of James Lord, “Wabi Sabi for artists, designers, poets and philosophers” of Leonard Koren, “Breviary of the aurora” of Rafael Argullol and “the eyes of the skin” of Juhani Pallasmaa.

A peculiar anecdote of your years like designers

Well, in certain occasion in an article for a magazine they introduced us like Javier Díez and Jose Luis Díez, friends (they didn’t say that we were brothers); perhaps the key of the good operation of our studio resides there, in working simply like friends.

...

You are brothers, truth? From where comes the interest to you by the design?

Yes, we are brothers, the interest by the design comes us by the interest who from always we have had by the art and in general by any creative manifestation; this took me, Javier, to begin architecture, degree that I drop out in two months, when I came to realize that this creative impulse that motivated to me would be obstructed sooner or later by norms and too much expanded implementation times; I looked for immediate accomplishments, looked for that the interval between the idea and its carrying out was minimum; this way I discovered the incursions of the great architects in the world of the design as for example Aalto or Mies van der Rohe; my brother Jose Luis opted for the interior design thinking about the possibility of specified a future collaboration in an own studio.

When and how aroused the idea to establish your own studio? Your intentions, objectives…

It arose from a natural way, participating in very many contests, doing to us contributor of the projects that in the school each one had in hands; we realized that, since a formal or aesthetic vision vey similar, we considered the design basically like a creative activity in charge to improve our environment, mainly remote of fashions and shrillness, we wanted to make a calm, simple, near design.

How is the relation with the production companies?

In general it is good, although we realized that, in general,  fluidity in that relation does not exist; the companies do not have assimilated the design like daily tool and basic of the organizational chart of a company, and it is observed almost like a marginal activity nearer the artistic thing that the economic thing; part of this problem must to the approach that the press usually does of the subjects related to this activity, the design would be due to treat more habitually in the economy pages where speech of investigation and productivity; we think that there are many businessmen who avoid instinctively the design when seeing it surrounded by a speech almost philosophical and the glamour of tinsel; in many cases it is used to the design as it excuses to sell any event to us. Our experience with the companies with which we collaborated we try that it even reaches a friendship and complicity relation; when designing we try to enjoy well and passing us creating it, and want to make contributor to the people of those companies in that benefit.

How you undertake a project? First which you do before beginning to think, to work in it.

The approach to a project we made it of a way we create quite heterodox, we forgot, and we know that there will be much people who are scandalized, of the famous synchronous and diachronic analyses that explain the manuals; we tried to see the order from a cross-sectional perspective crossing it originating visions of any scope like the poetry, the theatre, Literature, the cinema, the philosophy, etc, etc, before of the own field of the design; we are bored of seeing a lot of banks if which is it is to design a bank; we prefer, like or has happened, that a bank is born visiting Chillida - Leku or reading Waiting for Godot, before to analyze fleeting tendencies and fashions; we try to create Timeless pieces; for that reason we took long time to sketch, we begin writing, words, concepts, small aphorisms around the project; once we have articulated that speech begins the phase of formalization, quite brief, since the formal decisions are guaranteed quickly or not by that previous conceptual frame; we try that all project is sustained by “an intellectual” speech that by all means we see like tool of justification of decisions and that at no moment we try to by all means make neither to the manufacturer nor to the buyer or end user visible; when creating a bank from a text as the Walk of Walser or when analyzing the figure of flaneur our interest is not to design a philosophical bank, but contributing a new look towards a so daily element.

What designers seem to you interesting?  Which bluff?

For us Jasper Morrison is a referring one of the design that we like to do, an honest design even if you will simple where the track of the designer disappears and leaves is the own object the one that speaks; the work of Carles Riart has always interested us in the intimate exposition that establishes with its creations recovering the furniture-maker concept doing near the relation of the furniture with its user, disregarding advice of the whirl of fashions and the futility.

We think are bluff those who try to impose their seal to anything which they do, marking a style, thing that for example we never are going to try to have, at least of a premeditated way; or those that sacrifice as basic questions as the functionality after a photogenic design of shiny paper that only look nice in the covers of the magazines or in the museums.

We want to make a design that is bought, that is lived, that people enjoys and he does not create more problems to him than those than already have; we can say that we like the design of the working days not the one of Sundays and the great celebrations.

You have made works in very diverse fields.  In as you feel more comfortable?

Lately we are making very many work in the field of the urban furniture, field that on the other hand gets passionate us by the fact that it is a sector in which the end user, the old one, the boy, the pair of lovers, meet it stablished, cannot choose it, at least in the same way that can choose a sofa for its house; this forces to us to deal with it a nearer way, still more human; also it has the incentive to participate and to propose within the urban weave, generating the city and, the most attractive, spaces of relation between people. We have many projects of domestic furniture, specially in wood, fruit of our participation in contests and a task of own investigation, without order; it gives fear us that the market classifies to us as specialist in urban furniture and does not call to develop that other type of design that during years we have been making.

Of what project you feel more satisfied?  Why?

Our favourite design continues being the Virtual bookcase, produced by Complements Dynamics; its about a design that resolves problems, like where and how to place all those books that are piled up in unstable columns in the most unsuspected spaces of our houses and studios; but simultaneously it has a very great poetic and visual meaning; this is a contradictory bookcase because it disappears when it is full, and he is greater the content than the continent. It is a project that reflects enough good our approaching, is a design that we like to call essentialist, term that goes more far than the rotten one of minimalism; we do not like to arrive at the minimum, but at the essential.

As is the last project in which you are involved?

We are developing with Tecnología&Diseño Cabanes a program of urban furniture to develop in a term of three years from which we hope for great projects, in the creation of new forms to perceive the urban furniture, running away from classic typologies; good example is parasol Oasis that although is an element that traditionally architects have developed occasionally in their works, has never been tried to incorporate like a catalogue element.

Also we are developing what we try that becomes a collection of lamps created from the analysis of the illumination in the film noir at its classic time; we want to create lights, but that lamps, we want to define forms to illuminate, but that containers or supports for light bulbs, but for it we needed a dangerous manufacturer, that we have so far not found.

...

The work of díez+díez diseño arises from the consideration of the project task like an activity that never can be loose of the previous experience; we consider an activity first of all existential.

Although without rejecting the theoretical component that can surround or precede to any work of design, our work tries to be based fundamentally on the personal establishment of the problem, requirement or circumstances that surround to the project; this exposition takes us to a constant process of observation, analysis and accumulation of data and the environment  that surrounds to us and we live in; for example, we continue considering the bookcase Virtual, produced by Miscel·lània, our better design, on having had born directly of the need experienced on having had to solve the problem of accumulating more than 5,000 books.

Another aspect of our work, getting in the field of the urban equipment, is the type of relation that we maintain with the cities that we visit in our trips, either be for professional reasons or for leisure; we like to live the spaces public in the cities that we visit sitting in its benches, using its litter baskets or their system of signaling, of a form more active than a simple tourist would do.

Of this type of observation we have got to perceive the public space as a tremendously changeable and dynamic area where factors as the immigration, the new forms of urban culture, the aging of the population, etc., etc., it demand of the designer a flexible response that gives place to the creation of polyvalent elements of urban furniture and in many occasions of new typology, What unfortunately hits with the commercial approaches of the businessman who tends not to assume the risks of the innovation until the competition do it, turning that way to the design in a mere instrument of formalization.

To this it is necessary to add a differential fact of the design of urban furniture with relation to another type of design of product; it is a question of his tax character; We refer to the fact of which whereas on having chosen as consumers a table or a lamp for our home we assume part of his suitability for the above mentioned area, since we presuppose certain critic spirit in the consumer fact, beyond the mere factors of price and taste, the urban furniture dominates; we want to say definitively that the user of a bench placed in a park cannot choose directly the model of seat that she would like to enjoy, which it supposes for us  a bonus of raising of awareness at the moment of developing our labor in this field; our last objective definitively is to satisfy the client/user of the secondary client/city council-construction company of our direct client/manufacturer.

As for our way of approaching our methodology of work we might say that we use the experiences and previous works to come to a certain extent from the tour that we cross with every new project; from a certain moment the above mentioned way multiplies in many possibilities of round which choice will answer and come determined by the project that in this moment we have in hands.

This get to us as well not to try to maintain an own style recognizable; we try that each project arises from its own necessity, as much from use, as formal or technical; thus, we can create pieces of essence so intimately minimalist as much, in its exposition as in its formal result as it is the Godot bench, as a design so absolutely baroque and maximalist in its conception high-tech like the Miriápodo bench.

We are interested neither in the modes nor the trends and we claim for our work the exact degree between contemporaneousness, which makes it understandable in the frame of the society in the one that has been created, and the atemporality that leads it to being estimated a lot of time after his creation.

Another fundamental component of our work is the use of which we denominated transversality, directly related concept with the lateral thinking; for transversality understand the type of conceptual approach that we use in the first stage of our work; As they use metallic rods or wires to define the soul or framework at the moment of shaping a figure in mud, we use materials by all appearances foreign to the field of the design like could be the poetry, the philosophy or the theatre, or more directly as the sculpture or the painting, but almost never the own area of the design; this approach leads us in the first stadium to elaborating a list of concepts, ideas or phrases that later are materialized in form of sketches and models nearer the classic concept of the design process.

Two significant examples of this method of work would be the Zen and Godot bench; whereas the first ones were born from a visit to a space so loaded with meanings as it is Chillida-Leku, the second ones they did it from our intention to define a furniture element that could be integrated in the stage scene of the existentialist work Waiting for Godot of Samuel Beckett.