LAB #5(44) 2008

mentality and mood close to you? When I arrive at the Design Academy I had this eagerness of looking for something else… I didn’t know what, but I wanted to try something out of my borders, something that will not only make me richer as designer if not as a person as well. My previous experience in the states (1999, even before I started in Cardenal Her- rera), where I spent a year doing many craftman things at the high school in Goushen-Indiana, and then in Mexico awake me a lot more this idea of traveling and knowing and learning from other cultures. Its fascinating to compare and learn all this different ways of seeing, doing and understanding things. My first visit to this school surprised me for

a completely different way, of how you can transmit your personal world into your objects. This started to be extremely interesting, I real- ized this was the experience I was looking for, students support and challenge each other to be able to go over their limits. Each of my friends become inspiration sources; you just need it to contemplate, to have all your senses open and to not let escape any of the things that before they pass unknown in front of you. From all this friend-teachers I could emphasize my good friend Tats (Tatsuya Maemura) who was a big inspiration, and my girlfriend Paloma Castano who had been always a big support. Time pass and I felt howmy mind was progress- ing, growing and remolding all this new experi-

Nacho Carbonell _ Design like a dia- logue | Interview by Tatyana Zhemukhova | Photo courtesy of Fernando H. Arias van Oordt, Studio Nacho Carbonell | Nacho Carbonell is one of the youngest and most promising designers of the present day. He enchants the public with his deep and extraordinary way of thinking, freedom from stereotypes and requirements as well as just the position as a person. Following his inspiration and emotionality, Nacho sets a goal before himself that goes far beyond just shaping a harmonic object environment: he also cares about the rela- tions between people and objects and the ability to wake sensitivity and imagination in each of us with their help. Having finished his studies in Endhoven Design Academy just a year ago, he managed to create such objects as Balonas (2005), Por las ramas (2006), Dream of sand (2007), Pump it up (2007), Soft concrete (2007), Evolution (2008) and Hot Kettle (2008), many of which were already shown at leading international exhibitions in Madrid, Milan and Amsterdam. This September the designer will go to architectural biennale in Venice. Nacho, how do you define design? What is its role in modern culture in your opinion? For you personally, is it and art, a lifestyle, or an occupation? I think design right know can’t be defined as a unique discipline, as was consider before when it was more interpreted as a discipline focused towards industry and factories. Many branches exist now. Personally I like to see my design as dialoguing or storytelling. How much did your vision of design change after graduation from Spain’s Cardenal Herrera C.E.U.? How did you come to the sphere of design and what appealed to you in it? Before graduating fromCardenal Herrera I didn’t have a clear vision of what design was. Actually I didn’t hear never before about a profession called design. I started with this degree attract- ed by the idea of being able of using my hands, and working as a craftman, I was immediately attracted by the fact that in a university they had workshops!!! Then I learned a profession focused in doing things for the industry, I was quite fascinated by it, and for the first time in my life, after being a terrible student during all my childhood and high school, I started doing my best and getting more and more enthusiastic in this feel. I learned in a quite technical way; draw- ing and computer skills, how industry works…, things that in that moment really fascinated me, but always I was waiting the moment to get my hands dirty and be back to do the stuff by my own. After graduation I felt as if I just had seen the top from the iceberg, I started wondering and I felt like it was much more that I didn’t still discover, feeling this motivation made me very eager,… I need it to see the whole picture I need it to finish what I start… I keep looking forward. When choosing a school of design, you preferred Design Academy in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. What was your motivation and is this world, this

Серия скамеек для уличного пространства Soft concrete | Benches for outdoor purposes «Soft concrete», 2007

ence and knowledge, to combine them and build a new way of seeing things, my own way of seeing things!, and this combined with my skills allowed me to translate them into projects, now they were not any more something far from me, they started being part of me, of my personality of my believes. You can question if this is design, for me it was just a new way of design, not because you don’t know it doesn’t mean doesn’t exist, that’s what I learn hear. If you make an effort and want to see it …. you will. I invite to every one to exercise their sense in an open way to be able to reach a better understanding of things. For you, as a young but already high-flying designer, is it more important to be an independent thinker and define the borders and frames of your creativity on your own or you need to have a strong basis on the form of strong design tradition? As I was telling you before, my projects are part of me, are visceral, are selfish but at the same time are talking about universal things. Sometimes I use them as psychoanalysis of my

the diversity of interracial people, and strange atmosphere. I felt immediately that I wanted to live and experience there. What was it ….. it was not clear yet. I started with a very naпf and energetic attitude that make me able to go thru my first failures on this new way of doing things, I never had being so lost; how something I thought I knew all of the sudden was so new and so confusing, Why I couldn’t understand what we were doing, this make me wonder more and challenge me to go thru putting even more energy. One of the figures that made me real- ize from where I came (technical background) and where I was ( wonderland), was the bril- liant mind of Jurgen Bey, he helped me open my eyes, challenge and teach me in a way no one did before. Since then I started exercising my senses in a more intuitive way, I try to read between the lines, and undertand the things I couldn’t understand. Big help were some of my classmate’s, coming from all over the world who taught and gave me a bigger perspective of the world, of how everyone does things in

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