It’s funny how the creation of some objects meant to make life easier may have been an ordeal for their creators. For designer Miguel Giner, winner of the Rado Start Prize Spain at the 2019 Madrid Design Festival, the thought is almost a credo: “I have a long way to go, so I plan to make it as hard on myself as possible.”
Organicity, practicality and emotion are the three characteristics that define his winning work: a ten-piece tableware called Petra. “When it comes to setting up a project of my own I intend to have fun with and learn from, I want to create the perfect design and make it as user-friendly and accessible as possible.”
The collection is made up of dishes, bowls, glasses and a jar, all shaped from moulds created by Miguel Giner (Barcelona, 1993) himself using 3,906 beech rods, each with a 4-mm diameter. As in architecture, practicality is pivotal in the creation of everyday objects: “The design should be useful. The key to success lies in the way it interacts with people and vice versa,” he says, an engineer specialised in Industrial Design and Product Development, before adding: “You can’t consider any design that lacks usability a good one.”
Now that the fibre-, resin- and polymers fever is over, a new golden age has started in decoration, tools and furniture with the return to classic materials such as ceramics, wood, or iron. As the Madrid Design Festival winner puts it: “Porcelain, compared to other ceramics created at low temperature, is much stronger and lighter. I like to enamel the inside of my pieces so that they remain waterproof without losing the external dry touch. Varnishing is not my thing.”
Petra is made up of plates, bowls, and a jar. © Miguel Giner
Petra is made up of plates, bowls, and a jar. © Miguel Giner
Petra is made up of plates, bowls, and a jar. © Miguel Giner
Petra is made up of plates, bowls, and a jar. © Miguel Giner
Miguel Giner: “The design should be useful. The key to success lies in the way it interacts with people and vice versa” © Miguel Giner
“I have a lot of things in the pipeline and I can’t wait for them to come out”
But what Miguel Giner really likes about his work, perhaps because of the ritual that is sitting around a table, is that his objects acquire character. “The relationship between an object and its owner is a giveaway of the owner’s personality.” It was something he very much had in mind when conceiving the pieces of the Petra crockery; as well as several studies of materials, functionality, storage and impact of use over time.
About his future projects, the 26-year-old from Barcelona will only say that there will be many, but, for now, he prefers not to reveal any: “There are too many for the little time I have!” In the short term, “I want to create moulds for confectionery, and a series of ceramics pieces from casts I find in nature and of which I then adapt the ergonomics of their forms.” We wish this young creator a long and prosperous career as he says goodbye on a highly positive note: “I have a lot of things in the pipeline and I can’t wait for them to come out.”
