Lagranja Design

Gerard Sanmartí and Gabriele Schiavon met at Fabrica, the communication research centre of the Benetton Group. After entering a competition to design a cabin in Hawaii, being selected and spending a month in the Pacific Ocean island chain, they decided to set up a serious studio and try to make a living from this design thing . Thus, Lagranja Design was born. Today, with ventures ranging from Spain to Italy, they combine teaching with industrial design, exhibition design, commercial interior design and even the design of homes and hotels. Based on their commitment to craftsmanship, care and comprehensive development, they manage to convey their own style through very different registers: "(Being) a very multifaceted studio, we have to know how to differentiate projects."

One of Lagranja Design s most renowned works is Key bicycle parking (2007), a circular structural element that allows a bicycle to be parked securing its frame or wheels without causing damage. The structure is finished with integral high-density polyurethane foam. Key is edited by Urbidermis Santa & Cole and won the bronze IDEA Award (2007) and the RED DOT in the Best of the Best category (2008). Key bicycle parking also won the Premi Ciutat de Barcelona (2008), awarded for the first time in the long history of the prize to an industrial product rather than to a person. Other landmark achievements are the Uto lamp (2005), produced by Foscarini; the assembly of the Espai Gaudí at La Pedrera (2006), which enhanced the most characteristic elements of Gaudí s work by organising the traffic of visitors through the building; and the Belloch chair (2008), a lightweight, stackable chair suitable for both indoors and outdoors, commissioned by Santa & Cole for its headquarters in Parc de Belloch and now available in its catalogue.

Gerard Sanmartí 

Born in Barcelona in 1974. In 1996 he graduated in design from ELISAVA and obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree with Honours in Southampton after completing a year’s studies at the University of Industrial Arts in Helsinki. In 1997 he founded the creative collective Dforma espaciobjetoimagen, which he left to move to Treviso (Italy), where he worked for a year at Fabrica, the Benetton group s communication research centre. After this period, he returned to Barcelona to found the new studio Lagranja, Design for Companies and Friends. Since 2000 he has been a teacher at ELISAVA, he has led workshops at various European design schools (IUAV Venice, Utrecht School of Arts) and, since 2002, he has been the coordinator and instructor for the Master in Corporate Design at the Istituto Europeo di Design (IED) in Barcelona.

Gabriele Schiavon 

Gabriele Schiavon was born in Padua in 1973. As a child he wanted to be a painter and musician, but life took a different turn and he ended up studying architecture in Venice (1992-1997). He first heard the word design at Fabrica, where he joined in 1998 on a scholarship and where he later worked as tutor and project manager. It was there that he met Gerard Sanmartí. In the summer of 2001, on an island in the Pacific, wearing swimming trunks and flip-flops, they decided to start Lagranja Design.