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