Álvaro Matías, jury of the 15th GANDIABLASCO Contest

The jury of the GANDIABLASCO International Outdoor Furniture Design Contest is made up of leading professionals from the fields of culture, design and the industrial furniture sector. In its fifteenth edition we spoke with Álvaro Matías, The CEO of ALMADÁS and Director of Madrid Design Festival, and one of the members of the Jury:

How did your passion for design begin?
I have had a passion for design since the moment I didn’t know I had it. I have always had a hobby and I have been very close to the creative and artistic field, due to personal tastes, because of what I have studied and because of the professional career that I have developed in the La Fábrica publishing house.
I really like graphic design and, as you work on content, you build a sensitivity towards projects and creators.
I also understand that design is in all areas of life. For instance, I love architecture, and it is very difficult for design not to be linked within architecture.

Despite its youth, Madrid Design Festival has already established itself as one of the reference meetings of national design. What balance do you make after this year’s edition? What is the main challenge for 2023 having already completed 5 editions?
The balance we make of this edition of the MDF is tremendously positive.
I think that the celebration of the 5th edition has made us gain perspective from that moment we started from scratch.
And seeing more than 200 activities and 200 designers, both the ones you have contacted and those who have contacted you personally, makes participating in the festival great.

The network of design in this country is incredible, and the Madrid Design Festival is a showcase to publicize the projects and ideas that are part of today’s activity.
It has become a mandatory appointment where each year the design season of our country starts. For us it is a maximum satisfaction to have created a network made up of designers, brands and institutions that have faithfully created this net. In addition to the partners who have believed in the festival. And of course, the public, which has responded brilliantly, with more than 300,000 visitors.
The challenge we have for next year is to maintain the level that we have set in these five years. The level that we have marked is directly proportional to the self-demand that we have to continue offering a relevant and interesting proposal.
The MDF offers three concepts: transformation – economy – prosperity, and we want to continue giving voice to the entire network of creators and companies that are helping to change society through design and develop projects that take us to unexplored territories.
In this new stage we are going to enrich the pillars of the festival because design is a very important axis of the world in which we live. We want to be a showcase for projects and solutions that allow us to move forward.

What does Madrid’s design scene have that sets it apart from other European capitals?
Mainly, Madrid has the character of an open, contemporary city that is in the midst of a transformation process that will make it one of the most interesting European capitals of this century.
An open city that serves as inspiration and home to international creators.
It is transforming itself to be the most sustainable and greenest city and has the challenge of drawing the city of the future, as it will be in 25 years, starting with “Madrid Norte”. This permanent condition of transformation and modernization means that there is a constant creative effervescence.
Madrid is probably not the capital of design but I think we are in one of those margins that allows us to discover changes to go through or reflections on which design will pivot.

Gandia Blasco Group, with its three brands —GANDIABLASCO, GAN and DIABLA— and four different exhibitions, has participated this year as an associated showroom of the MDF. What impressions did you get from the space and its different initiatives and designs?
The new space is fabulous. It is located in the heart of the city’s golden mile and is a space that allows showing the wide variety of styles that exist in each of the brands. It is a joy and a fantastic opportunity to show the avant-garde line of each of the brands.
On the one hand, Diabla‘s unique identity, a firm committed to offer a more accessible design, but with quite popular and attractive codes for the general public, and I believe that the casual vision of design is a contrast that works wonderfully and which is marked by the group.

GANDIABLASCO has an extensive experience collaborating with great designers and some of them are also local. The showroom allows you to see outdoor pieces that could not be seen in another context.
Finally, the work of GAN, which is all craftsmanship. We can see the exclusive project of creators such as Álvaro Catalán de Ocón or Inma Bermúdez.
I think it is a fantastic space to get closer to the author’s work and the designers who are setting the pulse in the country and who have an international projection.
The project that struck me the most was the Balconi chair by OiKo Design Office for Diabla. They are doing unique experimental work. They are an example of the quality of today’s designers, with a commitment to the environment and special awareness of the impact of product creation. That the elaborate production process of such a design can be shown in such a didactic and visual way is a joy.

Redesigning the world has been the leitmotif of MDF since its first year. How can the new batch of designers contribute to this?
They are already contributing in a fundamental way. They are the tip of the spear.
Designers such as OiKo Design Office, Álvaro Catalán de Ocón or Romero Vallejo. They are people who are telling us that things have to be done differently with projects in the form of chairs, lamps or co-housing.
They are putting us on the track of our reality, which really needs to be changed, and directing the focus towards production systems and the responsible approach to developing a product, from the design process to the moment of sale.
They are demonstrating it in practice and with the initiative they have. In addition, they promote projects that are economically sustainable and lead the trend that projects as such can and should go that way.

Sustainability as a lever for innovation and competitiveness is one of the focuses of the Wander school of strategic thought, which you lead hand in hand with the consulting firm Soulsight and which represents another of your many projects. Do you think we are really aware that the union of sustainability and quality design almost always translates into tangible and positive solutions for our daily lives?
At Wander we work with a generation of leaders of organizations and companies that are truly changing and having an essential impact on society.
Their decisions impact hundreds of thousands or millions of people.
These are leaders of companies in the automotive, banking, textile, and other macro-sectors.
Our work at Wander is based on enhancing the skills and knowledge of these managers so that they are the generation of benchmark leaders for the whole of society.
Companies have more work agility, and this generation of organizational leaders have a common component, human leadership. Internal decisions, made by a team of people which then are outsourced.
For these leaders to achieve these goals, it is important that they have a firm humanistic base, values and principles that are consistent with general humanism.
We are going very fast, we believe that we must think and reflect on the common good.
Nowadays, terms like sustainability are in the ABC of any organization. If you are not sustainable you are not in this world.
We believe that there is a reason to be positive, because we are training a generation of leaders who will have the ability to decide.

What do you expect from the experience of being part of the Jury of the XV Gandiablasco International Outdoor Furniture Design Contest?
I mainly hope to learn. The best thing about participating as a jury is the appetite for learning. I love being confronted with new ideas from designers, which probably touch on a lot of topics that we’ve talked about and others that we can’t even imagine. Ideas that will always surprise you. And, furthermore, I will be surrounded by professionals whom I admire and with whom I have had the opportunity to work for many years.

8. The theme of the contest this year is “design an office for your terrace”, a particularly significant concept in the current context. The change in perception around the idea of the office has changed radically in recent times. How do you experience these new trends and what does the “garden office” model suggest to you?
I think it has to do with the idea of redesigning the world. Three years ago, this theme would not have been proposed, but now things have changed.
Nowadays, we spend a lot of time at home. We have lived through the most complicated situation that we have had to live through and we value being at home surrounded by our comfort more.
The fact that there is a contest for designers with this idea is telling us that things have changed and that they are going to stay this way. And that there are designers who are now capable of creating following this premise and who have this idea highlights that the world is changing
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