Design, a round trip between Italy and Spain

A competition for emerging talents

The award ceremony of the fourth edition of the ITmakES competition - with the theme "adapt to change: a project in constant evolution", which required the creation of nomadic, multifunctional and symbolic objects - took place on 23 February at Fiesta< /strong> Design: two weeks of exhibitions and meetings promoted by the Madrid Design Festival in the spaces of the Istituto de Libre Enseñanza, Giner de los Rios Foundation.

Five winning projects, selected by a jury made up of Gilda Bojardi, director of Interni, officials of the Italian Embassy and representatives of the Coam (college of architects of Madrid), of DI_mad, association of Madrid designers, ADI-FAD, homonymous collective of Barcelona, with the participation finally, for the first time, of ADCV, association of designers of the Valencian Community.

Is Michael Egoña the author of a chair or a vase of flowers? that is, two objects with a common and easily recognizable function made with the scraps of other similar objects.

Martina Sbragia has instead created El nomada metropolitano, an inflatable module, in recycled plastic, foldable and transportable, designed as a workstation to be assembled wherever you are.

Ama-Na by Aritz Antolin is the Basque name of a series of baskets, in recycled biomaterial, which are a tribute to the rederas, the women who repair the fishermen's nets in the ports to be able to reuse them.

Nomad, a project by Roger Cos Mira, is a stool with simple and functional geometries, designed for the outdoor life of young people and inspired by customs of the Maghreb peoples.

Lastly, Onno is the name of the multifunctional oak wood chair that Carlos Gallego Costa designed to make everyday life more agile, solve common problems (such as resting and at the same time park your bicycle).

The five winning students of the 2023 edition of the competition received a special edition, in red, of the Artemide lamp Come Togheter, designed in 2018 by Carlotta De Bevilacqua as a gift , CEO of the famous Italian brand.

Furthermore, the prototypes of their projects will be exhibited in a specially created space in the cloisters of the State University of Milan, the main venue of the Design Re-Evolution exhibition, curated by of Interni and scheduled from 18 to 26 April next.

INTERNI, ambassador of Made in Italy Design

To celebrate the constant presence of Interni magazine in Madrid, as ambassador of Italian design in Spain, a round table dedicated to Italian design was held in the same ILE headquarters before the award ceremony.

The public meeting was attended by Patrizia Catalano, journalist from Interni, Roberto Nocella, first councilor and head of the commercial office of the Italian Embassy, the Spanish architect, designer and artist Mariano Martín (former secretary of Di_Mad and former member of the competition jury) and the young Spanish designers Blanca Galán Merino and Pablo Sinan Akgul Garcimartín (winners of the ITmakES competition in 2020).

Finally, from Los Angeles Daniele Belleri, head of communicatios & curatorial projects by CRA – Carlo Ratti Associati. Belleri told the Madrid public about the genesis of Feeling The Energy, a multisensory and interactive project around renewable energy signed by Studio Ratti, with Italo Rota, and mounted at the Botanical Garden in Milan for the Interni exhibition , in July 2022.

Thanks to the mediation of Interni, the event, sponsored by Plenitude, was repeated last autumn in Madrid, with the necessary adaptations, in the spaces of the Real Jardín Botánico, enjoying an impressive success with the public.