Rising Talents 2023: focus on the young Spanish guard

During Maison & Objet from January 19 to 23, the Rising Talents showcase will put the spotlight on Spanish design, with seven young talents to discover.

To choose these seven new talents exhibited at the fair, a jury of six design professionals met: the designer Jaime Hayon, the director of the Madrid Design Festival Álvaro Matías, the designer Imma Bermúdez, the gallery owner Xavier Franquesa, the architect Belén Moneo and the textile designer Aude Tahon for the Craft category.

After studying industrial design at the Technical School of Madrid and then applied arts at HDK Steneby, Alvaro Aramburu left Madrid for a village nestled in the Swedish forest, where he currently resides. Passionate about wood, on which he mainly works, Alvaro Aramburu focuses on furniture and unique handmade objects. “In search of contrast, I embrace wood as a medium and distance myself from industrial products to reinvent my creative process. The products I design are both functional and artistic objects, with furniture being the cornerstone of my craft and wood the raw material.” He is also part of a collective highlighting design in Sweden and is a member of studio Växt, a coworking space working for interdisciplinary design development.

Marta Armangol is from Mallorca and studied architecture at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Barcelona (ETSAB). Multidisciplinary, his practice touches on design, architecture, sculpture, installations and scenography. The spaces she imagines convey a message of radical craftsmanship, mixing glass with many different materials. She has been exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo, Barcelona Design Week, the Dutch Design Festival and the Mayrit Biennale. More widely, the Spanish singer Rosalía called upon his creations for her scenography.

Marta Ayala Herrera specializes in industrial design, which she studied at the University Nebrija in Madrid. She made her first professional steps in the Ciszak Dalmas studio, in Doiy Barcelona, in the Madrid Design Festival and in La Casa Encendida. In 2013, she received the Injuve Award. In her work, she focuses on the relationship of the individual with his or her environment through objects and enjoys experimenting with industrial materials and craft processes to create her pieces.

Max Mila Serra studied industrial design at the Elisava School of Design in Barcelona, before working for a few years at Antoni Arola’s studio. He has participated in various festivals such as LLum, Fad Fest, Madrid Design Festival and London Design Week. As a designer, he focused on experimental and creative lighting. He draws his practice from daily life and his own experiences, which he then transforms through light and movement in order to understand them in depth.

Tornasol Studio was founded in 2017 by industrial designer Inés Llasera and architect and cartographer Guillermo Trapiello. Based in Madrid, their work combines architecture and visual arts to analyze spaces and the elements that compose them from very different approaches. Eager to discover new ways of representing reality and multifunctionality in their work, they seek sustainability in every process and in every design detail of the objects they create.

He studied at the Pratt Institute in New York before multiplying collaborations with various studios such as Moneo-Brock, Juan Uslé, Victoria Civera or Jaime Hayon. Miguel Leiro creates pieces that combine functionality and creativity, with flexibility in the materials used and the way they are handled. He has participated in numerous exhibitions, including the Madrid Design Festival, Experimento Design, the Ibero-American Design Biennial BID, the Official College of Architects of Madrid COAM and the Zona MACO fair in Mexico City. He is also the founder, curator and director of the MAYRIT biennial, a festival that brings together alternative creators who focus on experimentation.

This year, for the category Craft, it is the textile artist Josep Safont who was awarded, nominated by the Ateliers d’Art de France and La Generalitat de Catalunya, which has a policy of support for the craft art. Turned to the craft of art and text, he studied at the Massana School in Barcelona where he currently works in the studio he founded in 2020. Using looms, he creates pieces with materials that he wants to be as responsible as possible and that act to sculpt his vision through volumes, designs and experimental finishes.