The wake of Disueño

Dreaming has always been a place for the imagination, a practice through which to make the impossible possible. Art has made use of the dream many times in its history, but design, so influenced by the formalist and functionalist paradigm of modernity has not flirted with it so much. Therefore, the appearance of books such as «Disueño: When art and design played to be the same (1977-1979)», a review of three exhibitions on “dreamy design” organized by the ADI-FAD board in parallel to The Delta Awards of those years, offers an interesting perspective against the dominion of modern design.

Pepa Bueno, an art historian specializing in the history of design and author of the book, makes an in-depth study of the archives and interviews with those who devised and participated in these exhibitions under the title of “Disueño” and brings together and puts into context the works that were part of them, thus rescuing a crucial episode of Barcelona’s design that had been relegated to oblivion.

At the end of the 1970s, Spanish industrial design saw a series of experimental, artistic, poetic and subversive proposals emerge, halfway between the anti-consumerist rebellion of the Italian radical design of the 1960s and symbolist formalism and postmodernism of the 1980’s. These pieces, sometimes still prototypes or limited art editions, were presented in parallel exhibitions that were called “Disueño”, and even if they did not compete for the Delta Awards, they generated more interest than them, such and as the jury records of 1977 and 1978 show.

Jury’s resolution of the Delta Awards 1977: “The examination of the submitted pieces that has been carried out by this jury has found a certain lack of inventiveness and fantasy, reiterating the expressive form of a very formal and cliche industrial design. The jury wants to state that the simultaneous presence of the exhibition “Disueño” alongside the competing pieces shows a certain nostalgia for a more fantastic and a less schematic examination of form and function.” (Jean Baudrillard, Vico Magistretti, Alfonso Milá)

Jury’s resolution of the Delta Awards 1978: “We would have loved to have access to the “Disueño” selection to be able to mention the arcade designed by Carles Riart and how we would like to find objects with such high poetic content in our daily surroundings. As the competition rules exclude these products from the Delta Awards, we propose that, as compensation, this object receives something like a «Gold Dream Award» instead”. (Fernando Amat, Charles Dillon).

In an article by Daniel Giralt Miracle entitled “From Design to Disueño” and published on November 24th, 1977 in La Vanguardia, the critic stated in relation to the exhibition: “When design has fallen into a tedious, repetitive and formalistic boredom, Disueño offers an alternative to the imagination and a boost to creativity. Having lost the fantasy, designers go in search of the “dream” (…) The objects and prototypes gathered in Disueño, despite being much more utopian, responded to our reality, to our ways of producing, thinking, feeling and living.”

Among these dreamy designs were oblique standing glasses, hermaphrodite cushions, marble building sets, button ashtrays, futuristic tables, large modernist floral vases cast with new materials, and so on. According to Giralt-Miracle, they were much more ingenious responses, and despite their playful component, they were sometimes much more viable than the Delta Selection designs.

Lluís Pau, industrial and interior designer, FAD member and member of the Board of ADI-FAD when the project arose, contextualizes its birth in response to three aspects.

First, he mentions the effort that the board had to make to organize income-generating activities and thus settle the debts generated by the organization in 1971 of the ICSID Congress in Ibiza. This is how the «Gaudí Designer» exhibition was born, organised in collaboration with the College of Architects, the creation of the ADI Medal for students – which were subsequently followed by other FAD associations -, and the organization of the exhibition «Disueño» in parallel to the Delta Awards.

Secondly, Pau recalls that the design sector was still suffering the effects of the oil crisis at that time, and not too many new designs were produced, which translated into very low participation on the official Delta Awards.

Finally, Pau affirms that despite the economic difficulties faced by the sector, Barcelona was experiencing a period of high creativity and Disueño served to manifest it with pieces halfway between the product and the work of art that had no economic means to be submitted to the Delta: “They were pieces with a strong craft component and sometimes with numbered and signed limited series. Snark Design by Santi Roqueta and others, were good examples. (…) For me, the most emblematic design was the transparent glass lamp (production of 10 numbered and signed units) “Smoke of light” by Carles Riart, which was later self-produced as the translucent plastic lamp “Colilla”.

As a final anecdote, Pau recalls that all these efforts managed to settle the debt, a milestone that was celebrated with a big party called ZERO, in which FAD’s President at that time, Federico Correa, ended up at the police station for a neighbours’ noise complaint as a result of the loud musical equipment that was hired”.

In the current context of saturation of products and services, it is not uncommon for projects like Disueño to emerge again and make us think that perhaps it is a good time to dream again, to imagine proposals that, beyond their beauty, functionality and economic viability are also sustainable and therefore, help us to live better.

If you want to know more about the designs that were part of this project, do not miss the presentation of the book, which will take place next Friday, February 7th 2020 at 7:00 p.m. at the Barcelona Design Museum and will be attended by Pepa Bueno, Beth Galí, Carles Riart and Lluís Pau.