issue #59: Exploration: madrid design festival 2026
Perhaps the truly radical gesture today is not generating yet another novelty, but knowing how to transform what already exists — materials, spaces, production models — into shared and lasting possibilities. It is in this practice of conscious transformation that design rediscovers its most authentic vocation: being a cultural instrument capable of shaping reality with measure, depth, and vision.
The light the Madrid Design Festival casts on the contemporary landscape illuminates precisely this shift: the project moves away from the idea of a product as an end in itself and towards that of a system, a relational ecosystem. An approach that invites slowing down, observing carefully, making considered choices. Because designing today does not simply mean giving form — it means taking responsibility for the connections that form generates over time.
[1/9] EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE: : LUCAS MUÑOZ
For @lucasmunozm creativity is not an instinctive act — it is a stance. “Nothing is created, nothing is destroyed, everything is transformed” could be his manifesto: an almost scientific principle guiding a radically concrete practice. His projects are declarations of a method: everything built on site, along the way, together with the craftsmen, without renders. For Muñoz, the render is a shortcut, an image that anticipates and therefore impoverishes the design process. He prefers the prototype, the mistake, the resistant material. Upcycling — long before it became a buzzword — was his entry point into architecture: “I came through the rubbish,” he says with a hint of irony. Recovering, dismantling, reassembling: a gesture that is at once ethical and poetic. Scale models — almost an analogue version of 3D — are his way of thinking with his hands, shifting blocks as if they were Lego bricks. In a world racing towards the final image, Muñoz chooses process as a creative and political act.
[2/9] MUST-VISIT PLACE: ESPACIO GAVIOTA BY BURR STUDIO
@espaciogaviota is an independent space founded by Burr Studio: a platform conceived to host contemporary design thinking in its most experimental forms. Not a neutral container, but a critical device capable of bringing to the centre of debate what moves at the margins — practices, languages, approaches that elude established categories. From this vision takes shape “ON THE JOB. On Objects, Furniture and Fittings Made by Construction Workers”, an exhibition conceived by Curro Claret and BURR. The starting point is disarming in its simplicity: look at building sites. Those familiar with them know those spontaneous micro-architectures — makeshift coat hangers, improvised benches, tables assembled in minutes, lamp supports, temporary shelters — built with waste materials, packaging, residual elements. Structures that appear and disappear following the rhythm of the work, invisible to most yet charged with practical intelligence. The exhibition gathers a selection of these artefacts — chosen from sixty items identified by twenty-five Spanish architecture studios — to acknowledge their tacit ingenuity and restore dignity to those who conceived them.
[3/9] EXCITING SCOUTING BRAND: LOEWE
At the heart of Plaza Colón, a temporary garden takes shape, made entirely of recyclable paper: a gesture as poetic as it is programmatic. Inspired by Renaissance botanical manuscripts, @loewe‘s installation unfolds as a labyrinth conceived as a device for discovery. Its architecture is designed by Molo Design, with a modular structure composed of extremely thin honeycomb paper panels that visitors can walk through. The surfaces, light and cellular, transform the space into a kind of living book — to be traversed with the body before the eyes. The garden thus becomes a narrative landscape: a fluid environment in which Loewe fragrances diffuse like invisible traces, while mouth-blown glass and meticulous attention to detail speak to the centrality of craftsmanship.
[4/9] CURATED RESEARCH: MAYICE STUDIO
For @mayicestudio designing means listening. Listening to the material, its history, its function. From the initial idea to the final result, every gesture is born from a deep respect for the soul of materials, considered not as mere means but as active interlocutors in the creative process. Product and architecture thus become coherent fields of research, where each project is conceived as an organism with its own identity. The exhibition presented by the studio focuses on the most fragile and yet most powerful moment in design: the prototype. Not as a preliminary phase to be overcome, but as the conceptual and material origin of industrial production. For years, collectible design galleries have exhibited prototypes as autonomous works, recognising their value as a first gesture, an embodied intuition.
[5/9] COOL EATING: MO DE MOVIMIENTO
In the spaces of the former Teatro Espronceda, @modemovimiento presents itself as a declaration of intent. Not just a restaurant, but a concrete manifesto of environmental sustainability and social responsibility — proof that another model is possible: ethical, conscious, and economically viable. The project spans 1,000 m² and offers a kitchen based on high-quality local, organic, and artisanal ingredients. Traces of the past coexist with repurposed furniture and materials, while the entire space is designed to minimise energy consumption. The social dimension is equally central: the team comes from three NGOs, in an idea of inclusion that translates into real opportunities. Professionals from various disciplines gravitate around the project — from designer Lucas Muñoz to sustainability consultants — in a collaborative approach that integrates research, experimentation, and innovation.
Ph. Gonzalo Mochado
[6/9] KALEIDOSCOPIC IDEAS: ANDRÉ RICARD
Madrid Design Festival and La Fábrica pay tribute to @andrericarddesign with a wide-ranging retrospective: over sixty years of work rendered through iconic objects, theoretical reflections, and traces of a thinking that helped define the role of industrial design in Spain — and beyond. Ricard is the author of pieces that have entered the collective imagination: objects capable of holding together function and identity, formal rigour and readiness for use, marking a turning point in how the profession understood and narrated itself. The exhibition journey articulates his body of work around the spaces of ordinary life — the table, the bathroom, the kitchen, the study, celebration, memory — to restore to the visitor the most precise measure of his legacy: objects that do not seek visibility, but find meaning in everyday use, in time, and in their silent relationship with people.
[7/9] MEMORABLE VIEW:_2B SPACE BY MONEO BROCK
@_2B space @spacetobe.art is an independent exhibition project dedicated to art and contemporary creation: a space for shows, gatherings, and multidisciplinary events that critically examine practices at the boundaries of architecture and its relationship with space. Not merely a cultural container, but a laboratory in which space itself becomes living matter, to be questioned and redefined. Behind this initiative is @moneobrock, an international studio of architecture, planning, and design whose work is grounded in a clear conviction: good design is a promise of transformation. Each intervention is born from an attentive reading of the urban and natural context, developing with a strong sense of place and purpose. _2B space embodies this tension: a space that reflects on architecture not as static form, but as cultural process, experience, and duration.
[8/9] UNFORGETTABLE EXHIBITION: MEDITERRANEAN MANIFESTO
Mediterranean Manifesto is a collective collectible design exhibition curated by @mariona__rubio that constructs an alternative — and necessary — imagination. An affirmation of the value of the one-off piece, of imperfection as quality, of memory as design material. Against standardisation and productive acceleration, the exhibition proposes an intentional, non-nostalgic return to matter and time, restoring to design its cultural and transformative charge. A journey that interrogates the present through the lens of a precise geographical and historical identity: the Mediterranean. The works — by, among others, Canoa Lab, Lucas Muñoz, Justine Menard, Francesca Piñol, Malva Office, Valeria Vasi, Otra Objects, Panorammma, Xavier Mañosa, Worn Studio, and Yoyo Balagüé — address themes such as environmental impact, consumer culture, and waste management. They do so by drawing on Mediterranean craft knowledge — ceramics, glass, weaving, textiles, woodwork — and placing it in creative tension with contemporary languages, recycled materials, and new material experimentations.
[9/9] FINE DINING: TRAMO
In the spaces once occupied by the Garaje Hermético — legendary concert venue of the Madrid Movida — @espaciotramo is reborn as a project weaving memory and future together. Today the restaurant stands out for a radical commitment to sustainability, both environmental and social, demonstrating how gastronomy and responsibility can coexist in a coherent and measurable way. The culinary offer is founded on essential dishes, where the ingredient is the protagonist: Spanish produce selected from small local producers, farmers, and breeders. An approach that has earned TRAMO a Michelin Green Star — recognition certifying a virtuous and replicable model. The interior design, by studio Selgascano and designer Andreu Carulla, is the result of a collaborative and co-creative process. Interventions have been reduced to a minimum so as not to overwhelm the original structure, preserving its identity. Particularly significant is the restoration of the roof with slender concrete trusses and steel cables, typical of Madrid’s 1950s architecture and now almost extinct. TRAMO is also nearly energy self-sufficient: it generates clean energy and feeds unused portions back to the grid. Added to this is a concrete commitment to the employment inclusion of people with difficulties accessing the labour market.
