Marti Guixé is a Spanish designer living in Barcelona

Barcelona

Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

 and Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

. He graduated in interior design

Interior design

Interior design describes a group of various yet related projects that involve turning an interior space into an effective setting for the range of human activities are to take place there. An interior designer is someone who conducts such projects...

 from Elisava in Barcelona in 1985 and enrolled in an industrial design

Industrial design

Industrial design is the use of a combination of applied art and applied science to improve the aesthetics, ergonomics, and usability of a product, but it may also be used to improve the product's marketability and production...

 study program in Scuola Polytecnica di Design di Milano in 1986. In 2001, as a statement against the limited scope of the traditional designer and to open new possibilities for the industry Guixé started an ex-designer movement, defining himself by the same name.

Concept

Guixé is very outspoken in his dislike of design as stylized object and form. Rather than reshaping existing products Guixé’s work claims to alter ways of seeing and thinking. Design to Guixé needs to evoke constant evaluation of the parameters of function and active engagement and reinvention on the part of the consumer. It should be firmly rooted in contemporary experience and not linger in past structures of functionality. Because of this critical and provocative attitude his work is sometimes associated with the critical design

Critical design

Critical Design, takes a critical theory based approach to design. Popularized by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby through their firm, Dunne & Raby. Critical design uses designed artifacts as an embodied critique or commentary on consumer culture...

 movement, popularized by Fiona Raby and Anthony Dunne, but in general is more playful and less moralistic.

His non-objective approach is reflected in the frequent use of disposable or cheap materials and the quick and ephemeral character of much of his work. The final design often seems only one outcome of innumerable possibilities.

There are several products in which the shape is not important and the function is more important. I think the way to do that is working basically with ideas, so that the shapes and materials become anecdotal.

Design as platform

An integrated part of Guixés conceptual approach is his interest in design as a platform for questioning, visualising and influencing contemporary human behaviour. With a focus on patterns of consumption, exchange of information and the process of choice.

We will see a growth in the number of consumer-curators, personal consumer assistants or, speaking of information, interactive consumption interfaces. What is actually happening at the moment is that some of the people doing this are becoming the brand. It is the interface that is supposed to give you confidence in what you consume and not so much the product.

As a consequence the designer's obligation is not just towards the design itself but to how it becomes part of systems of consumption.

Food Design

Guixés sensitivity towards materials that are quick, readily available and oriented towards mass consumption led him to become an important innovator in food design. He understood food design as a way to re-evaluate and redesign the structure around food, the industry and the consumer. Void from nostalgia, food for Guixé is primarily an edible designed product, an object that negates any reference to cooking, tradition and gastronomy.

I am only interested in food, as I consider it is a mass consumption product and I like the fact that it is a product that disappears – by ingestion – and is transformed into energy.

For many years food has no longer been a necessity but a consumer product.

Most of my food projects are not commercial, but are a way of defining a new perception of this kind of product.

Commercial work

In spite of his critical attitude Guixé designs products because, as he claims himself, he needs them. Among his clients are:Alessi, Authentics, B-sign, Camper

Camper (company)

Camper is an international shoe company based in Spain. Lorenzo Fluxa founded the company in 1975 after inheriting a shoe factory from his father, Antonio Fluxa, a Spanish shoemaker. Camper operates 52 company-owned stores around North America, Europe, Asia and Australia, as well as distributing...

, Cha-cha, Chupa Chups

Chupa Chups

Chupa Chups is a lollipop company founded by the Catalan Enric Bernat in 1958, and currently owned by the Dutch-Italian multinational corporation Perfetti Van Melle. The name of the brand comes from the Spanish verb chupar, meaning "to suck."- History :...

, Corraini, Danese, Dentsu

Dentsu

is one of the largest advertising agencies in the world. Its headquarters are located in the Dentsu Building in the Shiodome district of Minato, Tokyo....

, Desigual

Desigual

Desigual is a casual clothing brand based in Barcelona, Spain, which is noted for its patchwork designs, intense prints, innovative graffiti art and flamboyant splashes of colour. Founded in 1984 by Thomas Meyer, from Switzerland, the company has been led by Manel Adell since 2002. Desigual sells...

, Drill

Drill

A drill or drill motor is a tool fitted with a cutting tool attachment or driving tool attachment, usually a drill bit or driver bit, used for drilling holes in various materials or fastening various materials together with the use of fasteners. The attachment is gripped by a chuck at one end of...

, Droog Design

Droog design

Droog is a conceptual Dutch design company situated in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.Droog works with independent designers to design and realize products, projects, exhibitions and events...

, Esencial Mediterraneo, Galeria H2O Barcelona, Imaginarium, Isee2, Kesselskramer, Mediamatic, Magis, Nani Marquina, Rome Film Festival, Saporiti Italia, Trico

Trico

Trico is an American company that specializes in windshield wipers. Trico, then Tri-Continental Corporation, invented the windshield wiper blade in 1917. Its original Trico Plant No. 1 is listed on the National Register of Historic Places....

, Very Lustre, Vitra

Vitra (furniture)

Vitra is a Swiss manufacturer of designer furniture. Vitra is the European manufacturer and retailer of the works of many internationally renowned furniture designers...

, Watx

WATX

WATX Classic Country 1600 is a radio station licensed to Algood, Tennessee, USA, the station serves the Cookeville area. The station is currently owned by Jwc Broadcasting. The station has obtained a construction permit from the U.S...

.

Non-commercial work

Guixés work already early in his career aroused the interest of the art field. His designs, installations and performances have been shown in many international group shows as well as solo projects, Among them MOMA

Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...

, Centre Georges Pompidou

Centre Georges Pompidou

Centre Georges Pompidou is a complex in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, near Les Halles, rue Montorgueil and the Marais...

, Design Museum London, Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève, National Art Center Tokyo, Museum für angewandte Kunst

Museum für angewandte Kunst

The Museum of Applied Arts or just MAK, a short version of its German name Museum für angewandte Kunst is located in Frankfurt, Germany and exhibits more than 30,000 objects representing European and Asian decorative arts. The new building of the museum was designed by the American architect...

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Books

• Fish Futures (ISBN 84-921103-2-5) 1998
• Martí Guixé 1:1 (ISBN 90 6450 441 5) 2002
• Food Design (ISBN 84-932554-0-8) 2003
• Context free, including the Kitchen Buildings (ISBN 3-7643-2422-8) 2003
• Martí Guixé, Cook Book (ISBN 9077362045) 2004
• Toy Weapons, user manual (ISBN 88-7570-071-0) 2005
• Don't buy it if you don't need it. All Marti Guixe's Camper Commodityscapes. (ISBN 84 609 9135 0) 2007
• Blank Book (ISBN 978-88-7570-137-6) 2007

Awards

• INFAD medal of interior design (1985)
• Ciutat de Barcelona Design Price (1999)
• 1st price Expohogar with Plant-me pets. (2003)
• Design Plus award, for the Plant-me pets. Frankfurt Ambiente. (2004)
• Useful and Agreeable Design Award, Vancouver, Canada (2004)
• Honorable mention to FoodBALL, Travel and Leisure Design Award, USA (2006)
• National Design Price of the Generalitat de Catalunya (2007)

External links

• Marti Guixé's official website
• Marti Guixé's food design
• Ex-designer website
• Marti Guixé's gallery in Berlin
• Marti Guixé at Design Museum London
• /Marti Guixé at Useful and Agreeable
• Documentation of all Marti Guixé's work since 1997
• ex-designer, young urbanist and architist philosophising about lies, a podcast by ar2com - architecture to communications published 11/01/17

See also