Scenes from the near future

Alejandra Gandía-Blasco joins Rocío Gambín and OiKo Design in the creation of a set of nomadic, sustainable, and open-design furniture for the exhibition, promoted and produced by World Design Capital Valencia 2022 and the Centre del Carme.

The CCCC Centre del Carme Cultura Contemporània opened on the 23rd of November an exhibition curated by design journalist Tachy Mora that reflects on the changes that homes could undergo in the coming years. Among the design and architecture professionals who have participated is Alejandra Gandía-Blasco, who in turn has worked with Rocío Gambín and OiKo Design to create a set of furniture and basic household equipment for nomadic lifestyles: 8’ 33”.

8’ 33” pieces | © Mariela Apollonio

The exhibition brings together a series of pieces of furniture and lighting, as well as domestic scenes that zoom in on specific parts of the home. Different projects around five concepts: flexibility, multifunctionality, modularity, nomadism, and sustainability. Made in response to new lifestyle trends, taking into account contemporary social, technological, and sustainable realities.

In the words of Xavi Calvo, director of World Design Capital Valencia 2022, “in their role as anticipators of a better reality, design professionals have the power and commitment to create environments capable of contributing to the well-being of the people who inhabit domestic spaces: more sustainable with their environment, capable of adapting to new family structures that evolve over time and adopting technological advances that bring comfort to the home.”

Xavi Calvo, Tachy Mora and José Luis Pérez Pont at the opening of the exhibition “Scenes from the near future” | © Juan Peiró

Among the proposals in the show, which will be on view at the CCCC until the 19th of March 2023, is 8’ 33”. A set of nomadic and sustainable furniture designed and produced by A-R-O, the work team that has been formed to collaborate in this project, composed of Alejandra Gandía-Blasco, Rocío Gambín, engineer and designer of the technical office of Gandia Blasco Group, and OiKo Design, the Barcelona studio of José F. López-Aguilar and Salva Codinach.

8’ 33” renders | © Rocío Gambín

For Alejandra, our design director at Gandia Blasco Group, rethinking objects and the reality that surrounds us “with enough critical capacity” has been a challenge: “more than beautiful and well-made things, I’m interested in ideas and experiences”. This basic domestic equipment for nomadic lifestyles created for the occasion is not a new idea: it was hanging around his head since 2016. He began to shape it in a workshop at the Bauhaus Summer School Bernau given by Thomas Lommée, the driving force behind the open grid design system OpenStructures.

In collaboration with Rocío Gambín, from the group’s technical office, they finished co-designing 8′ 33″: “simple and honest” pieces, in which “you keep the essentials”. Easily assembled and disassembled using a snap-fit system through grooves, designed to provide consistency while complying with Thomas Lommée’s grid.

8’ 33” sketches | © Rocío Gambín

The fact that the 8’ 33” collection is based on this system further implies its availability as an open design to be produced anywhere in the world by anyone, since sharing knowledge and resources is the ultimate goal of the OpenStructures platform, and not just designing based on a grid.

8’ 33” took another turn of the screw when OiKo Design entered the development process, thanks to Alejandra. This studio, which specializes in the design, development, and manufacturing of recycled materials from waste, has created for 8’ 33” a novel surface with an aesthetic inspired by different types of marble and its grains. “As a studio, we work through the materials in a very material-based design process. Sometimes we make them speak and express an aesthetic and a story in a very obvious way, but also in other cases we try to silence the material and simply make it functional”, they explain.

8’ 33” surfaces | © OiKo Design

In this case, it is a material that comes from the recycling of detergent and soap bottles, which are crushed, washed, extruded, and pressed to generate the sheets from which the seats, the table, the storage, the wastepaper basket, and the lectern have been made by CNC cutting.

Alejandra Gandía-Blasco
Deputy director of communication at Gandia Blasco Group and creative director of Diabla. Graduated in Fine Arts and trained in Design and Communication at Central Saint Martins in London. Interdisciplinary creative and visual artist, she develops her work from the visual arts and collective memory, applied to the design of objects and communication.

Rocío Gambín
Industrial design engineer, product designer, and a Master in furniture design for the habitat, contract and urban, Rocío Gambín has nearly ten years of experience in the sector and is currently based in Valencia, Spain. After years of study at the CEU Cardenal Herrera University in Valencia, the Politecnico di Milano and the Elisava Faculty of Design and Engineering in Barcelona, Gambín developed a true passion for the world of furniture that has led her to work as a developer of new furniture designs in companies such as Gandia Blasco Group -a company of which she has been a part since 2019-, BD Barcelona Design, Paolo Zani Design Studio, and Warli.

OiKo Design
Founded by José F. López-Aguilar and Salva Codinach, OiKo is a Barcelona-based product design office focused on the transition to a circular economy and the common good. The studio, formed by engineers, designers, and scientists, designs from material research and user perception to solve new realities and offer more competitive products for companies, more sustainable for the planet, and more emotional for the user.

8’ 33”
Design by A-R-O (Alejandra + Rocío + OiKo), 2022
Manufacturer: OiKo Design Office
Promoter: Gandia Blasco Group
The exhibition “Scenes from the near future” is curated by Tachy Mora and promoted and produced by València World Design Capital 2022 and the Centre del Carme Cultura Contemporània (CCCC).
It will remain open from the 23rd of November to the 19th of March, 2023.