They are the fathers of design in Spain, they share decades of friendship, a sense of humour, vitality and an unwavering commitment to a discipline that, as they conceive it, makes our lives happy with useful and beautiful things. Miguel Milá, 91 years old, and André Ricard, 93, sat yesterday before the students of the La Salle Higher Technical School of Architecture (Etsals) to exchange ideas and experiences, propitiating, among many laughs, a true whirlwind of wise lessons .
“Classic is what cannot be done better”. The phrase of the bullfighter El Gallo that Milá likes to quote so much gives rise to talk about the essence of design. “My goal is for an object to serve and at the same time be beautiful. Why? A chair is much longer unused than used. It is very important that it is comfortable, but also that its presence is not unpleasant”, he argues, and Ricard adds that “beauty is the basic expression of perfect utility”. Think for example of a button, he says, and argues that “the best way to find out the level of design in a country and its penetration into the social fabric is to go to a supermarket and see how a packet of sugar is opened and if doing so the content spills. Come on, we are light years away from Finland.
The talk takes place on a stage where, as if it were an altar, some of his eternal designs have been arranged. The TMC lamps and the Cesta de Milà; of the author of the torch of the Olympic Games, we see the Lavender bottle for Puig or the Tatu lamp that Ricard,–“we are above all users”– devised so as not to grow up with his wife and to be able to read at night without disturbing to the bed partner. Milá considers himself a craftsman – “arte-sano”, he emphasizes –, who commissions the projects himself. “That is the big difference between us: I am commissioned – but even so, he advises – you have to try to be faithful to what you believe in and fight for it, a difficult balance because either you bow down or you run the risk of losing the client . But if you want design to advance, you have to defend your ideas; otherwise you run the risk of becoming an armed arm of marketing”.
The wise men of design also defended the role of Ikea, which Milá thanked “for its work in putting an end to this thing of copying old designs in an absolutely ridiculous way”, and which Ricard extends to the conception of the store itself, with its playground, its restaurant… “The Disneyland of the elderly”.
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