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    Natural Connections exhibition aims to “help people rediscover nature”

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    Designers Inma Bermúdez, Moritz Krefter, Jorge Penadés and Alvaro Catalán de Ocón have created three playful wooden furniture pieces on show at Madrid Design Festival.

    Devised by the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC), Natural Connections was on show in the entrance hall of the cultural building Matadero Madrid.
    Top: Natural Connections features playful furniture pieces. Above: the exhibition took place in the Matadero MadridEach of the three furniture pieces was designed to encourage interaction with wood – with one acting as a bench, the other a climbing frame and the third a hanging light installation.
    The designs were created in response to a brief provided by AHEC, which sought pieces made by Spanish designers out of maple, cherry, and red oak hardwoods sourced from American forests in an effort to encourage the use of the material.
    Catalán de Ocón designed Nube, a hanging light installation”We challenged the design studios to present these chambers in a public space – in a public context – so that visitors get to experience a connection,” AHEC European director David Venables told Dezeen.

    “The design teams worked with maple, cherry, and red oak to create playful, original, and highly innovative installations that we hope will provide engagement, excitement and a connection for visitors to these wonderful natural materials,” said Venables.
    Inma Bermúdez and Moritz Krefter created several “bovine-shaped” seatsDesigner Catalán de Ocón created a six-metre-long hanging light called Nube  – which translates to cloud in English – made of 4,000 interconnected spherical and cylindrical individual pieces of wood.
    Nube is lit by several LED lights that were placed in the middle of the hollow structure. A brass cable runs from the bass into the mesh structure, branching into positive and negative electric currents.
    Positive poles run through the cherry wood while negative poles run through the maple pieces, which form a complete circuit when they touch and illuminate the bulbs.
    Visitors can perch on the benches and touch the woodsIts design was informed by Catalán de Ocón’s fascination with the manufacturing process for small utilitarian wooden objects such as pegs, matches and blinds.
    “I was inspired by the little match or the pencil, or the wooden pin for hanging the clothes – those kinds of manufacturing techniques, where you get an object which is repeated over and over and over again,” Catalán de Ocón told Dezeen.
    Jorge Penadés produced a bleacher-style structureMeanwhile, La Manada Perdida, or The Lost Herd, by Inma Bermúdez and Moritz Krefter was influenced by the Matadero’s former function as a slaughterhouse and cattle market.
    The Spanish design duo produced a series of red oak, maple and cherry benches for Natural Connections that reference equine and bovine animals such as horses and cows. The pieces were given minimal finishing to mimic the texture of the tree they came from.
    “They appear as benches or seats, but their design goes beyond furniture to incorporate aspects of imagination and play to help people encounter and rediscover nature,” said AHEC.

    Students create sustainable furniture from hardwoods at Madrid Design Festival

    Madrid-based designer Penadés responded to the natural connections theme by producing a tiered seating piece called Wrap that is connected by ball joints.
    The designer, who is known for his interior projects with Spanish footwear brand Camper, glued and rolled 0.7-millimetres-thick pieces of cherry veneer into tubes to create tubular hollow components, which form a bleacher-style seat when joined together.
    Wrap is made from thin rolls of cherry veneerNatural Connections is one of several exhibitions at Madrid Design Festival, a month-long event that sees a design programme take over the Spanish city. After the exhibition ends, the furniture will remain in the cultural centre for a year.
    Also at this year’s edition is Slow Spain, an exhibition by university students that aims to explore American hardwoods and mindful furniture consumption.
    Last year saw lighting designer Antoni Arola and Spanish light manufacturer Simon use a smoke machine, lasers and a small tree to create Fiat Lux 3 Architectures of Light.
    Natural Connections is on show at Matadero Madrid as part of Madrid Design Festival 2023, which takes place from 14 February to 12 March. See Dezeen Events Guide for information about the many other exhibitions, installations and talks taking place throughout the month.
    The photography is courtesy of AHEC.
    Project credits:
    Designers: Inma Bermúdez and Moritz Krefter, Alvaro Catalán de Ocón, Jorge PenadésPartners: American Hardwood Export Council, Matadero Madrid, Madrid Design Festival, Tamalsa

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      Inferences/Inferencias exhibition aims to “arouse curiosity towards contemporary design”

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      Barcelona-based gallery Il-lacions has opened an exhibition at Madrid Design Festival that features over 70 furnishings, sculptures and design pieces in an effort to explore contemporary design.

      The theme of the exhibition is centred around its name, Inferences/Inferencias, which Il-lacions described as “the action and effect of inferring one thing from another, a link between ideas, the consequence of something.”
      Inferences/Inferencias is a group exhibition that was exhibited as part of Madrid Design FestivalThe gallery selected one piece of work by each of the artists it represents, who were then asked to become co-curators of the exhibition and invite a designer, maker or artist whom they admired to also exhibit a piece of work.
      The resulting 74 sculptures and furniture pieces displayed in the exhibition were arranged on and around a large angular display table that was finished to mimic concrete.
      A wooden stool by Sanna Völker is a tribute to architect Louis KahnAll of the works in the show focus on one or more topics specified by the gallery, such as research and development in new materials, object functionality, sustainability and production processes.

      “We would like to arouse curiosity towards contemporary design, visitors can read about the pieces and even touch them with care,” Il-lacions founder Xavier Franquesa told Dezeen. “We would like them to learn about materials, functionality and ingenuity in design.”
      A light installation titled Ignoring Helena by Michael Roschach is placed nearby Burned Ode Chair by Sizar Alexis”We hope people understand the amount of work behind each piece, there’s a lot of research and experimentation,” said Franquesa.
      “These are inspirational objects that contribute to giving interiors something more than just a function, they are emotional and unique,” it added.

      Antoni Arola creates architecture “from light” for Madrid Design Festival

      “We would like to stimulate new views on design and thinking to shape contemporary values, and together with the creators to generate a cultural heritage that reflects this time and this place,” he said.
      Among the pieces on display is Joel Blanco’s Shiba-Inu dog sculpture with a built-in ASIC cryptocurrency miner. This uses the exhibition space’s electricity to mine Dogecoin and is a commentary on financial freedom and an anarcho-capitalist future, according to the designer.
      Also exhibited is a Jesmonite and fibreglass chair by Six N. Five, embedded with an authentication chip built on Blockchain technology that allows the piece to be minted as an NFT.
      Objects, fixtures and furnishings were hung from walls and placed throughout the gallery spaceA number of the works on show also feature reused and recycled materials.
      “Josep Vila Capdevila is reusing pieces from old factories (fluorescents, cables, a pulley) and he mixes it with noble materials such as marble to create the Suspended Lamp exhibited – he classifies this piece as ‘Random Luxury’,” said Franquesa.
      “The ‘Aluminium Block’ side table by Toni Pallejà is reinterpreting industrial materials, transforming them into elements that convey luxury and fashion.”
      The exhibition features 74 objects, furnishings and sculptures that discuss contemporary designIl-lacions was founded in 2011 by Xavier Franquesa. Inferences/Inferencias forms part of the fifth edition of Madrid Design Festival, a month-long event that transforms the city into a design hub.
      Also exhibited at this year’s edition is a light installation by Antoni Arola that forms architecture from light. Previous editions saw Jorge Penadés invite 14 designers to showcase “bold ideas in small boxes”.
      The photography is by Asier Rua.
      Inferences/Inferencias is on display at the Cultural Centre of Villa Fernán-Gómez as part of Madrid Design Festival, which takes place from 15 February to 13 March 2022. See Dezeen Events Guide for all the latest architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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