18|REPORTAJE Lámpara Infiore, ESTILUZ; Foto: Lagranja the environment. Design can be very conceptual but in the end it is a business of buying and selling. Companies want to sell so they get help from designers. The company might have spcific criteria but sometimes small changes can be proposed, like a change of color in a lamp. For exampe, we designed a lamp for LAMP in yellow. The company only wanted white, black and gray. Now, the yellow lamp is the bestseller. It could come out right or wrong However,another lamp, in a flower shape, that we did for ESTILUZ was proposed in green and gray. We thought the gray would be the best seller but it was the other way around. You never know what people will like. OAA: Recycling: Fashion, trend... MRU: We have to be honest and try to make things that will not have a big impact in the environment but sometimes recyling can be more expensive. We should consider how far we want to go with recycling and if it would look in our interior designs. You might have noticed that the studio is not named after one person. The fact that the studio is an open office, where everybody voices their opinions and every project is worked jointly gives it a certain freshness. Being part of an interior design office and not making a living solely on product takes a lot of the pressure off. OAA: Are all of you involved in each product from the start? MRU: At the beginning there is a “melting pot” to see what comes up; we work through every idea. Even though an idea always comes out of one person, everybody works on it: reunions, drawings, rejects. It evolves so much. We are very critical; many ideas never make it. OAA: So team work is better... MRU: It is in our case. You have to know how to work in a team. Know what you like and what you are good at. See where you fit. OAA: How have your designs evolved in the past 10 years? and the way you face design? MRU: We have learned that we know nothing. What you believe in, might not be the right thing. Sometimes you present aproject that you are not sure about and it becomes a success, or the other way around. You have to be open to anything. I want to believe we have evolved, not at the conceptual level but at the level of finishings, the level of know how, of going straight to your goal without beating around the bush, sure of what works and what does not, We try to weather the things we know we are not going to like. OAA: Does a new product means to start again? MRU: Always. There is nothing similar in our lamps; not even materials. What we learn today is not good for the next “The relationship between designers and engineers should be a dialogue back and forth , seeking so- lutions to reach an agreement , so that you do not chan- ge the design to unacceptable levels”. necessary to be different from everybody else? MRU:You should design for your final customer but your client is a company. It is good to make products that are different to the ones on the market and contribute something at some level (user friendly, production, materials, innovation), but a struggle to be original, extravagant and extreme does not make sense. For some companies, being different is not important. They prefer to innovate in areas that are not visible or not valued by the customer but are appreciated by the industry; in production, for example. Manufacturing a product is expensive; it implies the use of molds and other things...and it has to last over time. Design should be based on logic and moral criteria. You try not to design products that are costly or bad for is convenient for a project. It would be absurd to use recycled materials on an object if your uncertain of the impactit will have on the cost and the willingness of the customers to buy it.The use of local raw materials or LED lightbulbs in lamps, for example, makes sense because of the energy savings. You have to be coherent. Non-ecological things will become extinct. Manufactuing something made out of recycled material that breaks down easily does not make sense. Build something that will last 50 years. It compensates. Recycling is a trend where you can reach absurdity. OAA: Lagranja: different concept? Does coming from an interior design studio make you defferent? MRU: It does. Everybody in the studio, except me, are interior designers or architects and that shows. When we make a product we think of how it