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André Ricard (Barcelona, 1929), industrial design teacher and one of the people in charge of the design prestige of Barcelona, he has written a coherent book of memoirs with his style, direct and functional. In it he tells of his life and since he came to his first and last designs. From a washing machine, switches or bottles of perfumes for Puig, Paco Rabanne or Carolina Herrera up to the Olympian torch of the Olympic Games of 1992.
In whole, he is an author of more than 300 objects - many of them present in all homes -, of several books and one of the drivers of organisations like the FAD or the ONG Design for the World. His target has always been the same: to fuse the aesthetic with the useful. This way André Ricard understands that in ’99 Fundació Miró was carried out a retrospective exhibition of his work under the title " André Ricard: design of daily lives".Daniel Giralt-Miracle says of you in the prologue: "he is the most practical person and the person that rambles less that I know ". Do you agree?It is difficult to judge yourself but it is true, I am very pragmatic. It is not that I do not like the ideas but I like putting in to practice. Therefore, what I understand that if it is a good idea but is not possible, I put it aside. One of the phrases that I repeat often is that it is necessary to be able to limit your ambitions to your possibilities, this way one later does not remain disappointed.
That is noticed in the style with which there is written the book, very direct and with fooling around...I don´t know how to write any other way, one writes how they feel and know.
How did the idea come about to write some memoirs?When I arrived to an age, five or six years ago, I started writing details of my life in the computer not to lose too much out of sight, and little by little I was structuring a file. From the day that I was born - that of course I do not remember - up to more or less today, I was writing dates and facts so that at least they should be stored in an electronic memory. Occasionally I was rereading these details and was adding things to them that I remembered or that I had commented with my family and little by little, in time I was converting it in to a text. I thought that my family or friends would be interested, to remind them in the following years, and I was giving the text a body. But someone who I made to read it said: "This may have an interest; after all, it is the life of a person, and there are not so many people who has lived through these years, complicated and with wars”. I wrote to some publishing houses, one of them answered before the others and they are the ones that finally edited. I assembled texts from other experiences, such as the Olympic Games, or noted that I had compiled for conferences, and with all that came a book.
You define your father as a self-made man. In your persona did this also serve as an expression?Yes. Now there are schools for everything but in that epoch there were no design schools. As the book explains, I have taken part in the formation of schools but have not had schooling. Therefore, I have had to go from experience. Now it is not impossible either, I believe that in spite of the schools, if one has vocation one can construct his own profession... We must not forget that not so much time ago there still existed the main craftsman and the disciples who were working with them; they entered as apprentices and ending up being professionals.
In other of your books ["Design and Quality of Life"] there is a phrase that defines your conception of design: "A good design is reached when it is impossible to separate the aesthetic of the functional, when the useful turns out to be beautiful and the beautiful useful".That is completely clear; often I quote the button as example. The button is an aesthetic marvel and the most comfortable. Other things have appeared like velcro, the zipper and fifty thousand other systems of closure, but we all take buttons in some part. And why? Well because it works very well and also it is a beautiful object. Since there are many buttons at home, one does not notice, but if we were doing a marble button of two meters and were putting it in the
MNAC, the people would fall down on their backs. "What is this? ", they would say: " is it an Aztec symbol? " On says the button, but who´s to say the pencil, also [he takes one from the table]. The fact that the good pencils have these grooves or faces it facilitates so that we could pick it up better, preventing from rolling and falling down... Where is the point of beauty and where the point of function? It is difficult to find out it. There are many other examples: the spoon, the holder, the comb... The nail is beautiful! And it is because it works, it is not beautiful to be beautiful.
In industrial design something useful is something objective, but how is it valued in the graphic?The graphic design is not my thing, but I suppose that also it is possible to apply the phrase. For example, I have been told that this book is enjoyable to read, apart from the text, I refer to the form in which it is published. Someone said to me: "I liked the quality of the paper ". It has a nice touch. It is not coated paper – which shines and is unfriendly - and the font has a dimension and a clarity that the helps with the reading. Therefore, independently of the content, the pages are beautiful and comfortable.
The book as an object would be between this type of objects difficult to improve? That is to say, any day will they be replaced with a plasma screen?The book is not the only form of communication of the thought, clearly. There is the television, the radio, the DVD... But it is necessary to see what it bears, the book continues here. Also, I believe that it influences much more in the society a book that a movie. There is no doubt about that.
Now, one speaks a lot of the "Da Vinci Code ", and perhaps if there was a movie of the book it would happen without sorrow or glory. Such an extraordinary and passionate movie has been done like "Dancer in the Dark" - a hard movie where capital punishment is criticised - and nothing has happened, and on the other hand in the book one speaks about all parts, some in favor, others against... The book influences very much, I believe.
The same happens with the photo. Nowadays, with the digital photography, the photos come out in the computer and you can print them at home or what you want; but a good album, you are able to view your life page to page... I believe that it will take a lot for that to disappear.
During the creative process of a design, what aspect goes first, the aesthetics or the function?They come out simultaneously, there is no priority. In another book I say it more clearly: beauty is the expression of perfection. In the achievement of a design one looks for that. The more one approaches to perfection, the more beautiful the object will be. It is demonstrated by the elementary examples of the button or the nail that I have quoted. In this sense, one is looking for solutions that, if they are good, are more beautiful than the bad ones. When one gets closer to a solution that is better than another, it is sure to give a result to an object more beautiful.
In the book you speak of creativity, but the word ´art´ is not used frequently, to refer to the design…For example, till what point do signs or posters don´t replace the painting? This chair [indicates a chair like the one in which he is seated on] is from the year ’27 and it keeps on being a marvel of a function and of aesthetics. It is easier to have this in house than a sculpture. The works, although they are not called of "art", also transmits a message of sensibility, of pleasure, of emotion... I do not think that the art has disappeared, but partly the design has been replaced. This way, just as the photography in certain the figurative painting is replaced - Brueghel or Bosch explained how their villages and their era by means of their paintings -, nowadays we have other means. The photography has alienated the painting in the documentary sense. In the same way we might wonder also if industrial design and graphic design are not replacing the sculpture and the painting. The people can get excited with objects instead of doing it as a sculpture.
In what state is design in Barcelona currently?It is in a quite an exceptional position. There has been a boom, a few moments of madness but now things have calmed down and what was too superficial and ephemeral it has been eliminated, so that only the solid thing has remained. There is great solid matter in Barcelona in regards to creativity, both in the persons and in the institutions. The institutions are much more aware regarding the design. In this moment one speaks about a center or a museum of the design in which somehow I am in which somehow I am involved. In any case, Barcelona is a city of reference in the world. I live out of Spain through part of the year and when one speaks about Barcelona the idea is transmitted of being a welldesigned city. There are good designers here, but the city as such - the new enlargement and what has been done from ’87 - is an example. The people come to see what we do. This has influenced so there would be good roots of design for many years.
One of the booms of design happened during the Olympic Games. What is the role of the design now when the Fórum approaches 2004?I would say that it has been less evident. First because there are no two booms: there is one that is the explosion and then the establishment, and now we are in this stage of normality. During the Olympic Games the design intervened very much; for example the magnificent logotype that Trias did with those three lines from Miró that defined an athlete. That was an innovation that went out in all the magazines all over the world. There was the mascot from
Javier Mariscal, which was also was an absolute innovation, the torch that I designed which broke all the schemes of torches that existed till then... On the other hand, in the Fórum there are those two hands that, we say, are very well, but it does not happen of here. There are many buildings. Architectonically, possibly the Fórum has meant more than the Olympic Games, in spite of what was involved with the Olympic Villa and the whole urban development of that part of Barcelona.
Taking advantage that you speak about architecture, do you not believe that it has become excessive, that there are certain architects who only look for eccentric and spectacular designs?The architecture, just as the graphic design, is not my thing; but I believe that if I focused on an architectural work it would be a more pragmatic approach. I am very surprised that in the current architecture - I am generalising, in Barcelona we have big architects - nobody bears in mind the passive energies. We have a lot of sun, for good and for worse - in summer it is necessary to see what bothers -, since the architecture continues with walls, curtains, heating, air-conditioning... I do not speak of playing the ecological card, which is very easy and sometimes somewhat demagogic, but from a practical and economic point of view, if you have a few solar panels you save some money, or if you have a system of blinds or sunshades... Everything is studied. Corbusier already investigated a protection system of the heat, and he keeps on constructing as if all this had not existed, something that surprises me. To introduce this factor of the function inside the aesthetics - as we were saying before –can apply to architecture as well.
I suppose it is in that sense that is the way ONG Design for the World is directed…It is a little different; the target of Design for the World is to contribute design to those who need it and cannot pay for it. In architecture the ONG Architects exists already without borders. Design for the World is not so much to make use of the passive energies. I refer to the society that we are in, the one that speaks about ecology and about the protocol of Kyoto; we might be able to save energy in regards to pollution as well as economic. Let's avoid air-conditioners as they create legionellosis... In end, it seems a little easy to say it, but nobody puts "string to the needle", I have not seen a building in Barcelona which that has this in mind.
Returning to the previous question, perhaps yes the façade is more looked after and the fact that it attracts attention and emphasises... There are certain things that surprise me. I do not understand sufficiently of architecture and less in engineering, but it gives me the impression that architects like Calatrava spend a lot of money to achieve what could be achieved for much less. For example: the City of the Arts and the Sciences in Valencia. It is a spectacular show, there is no doubt: you cannot go past without looking at it. But for the square meters that exist: was it necessary to have all this species of structure that looks like the skeleton of a dinosaur? I don´t so. The spectacular has been searched. The Guggenheim is the same case. They are sculptures put inside the city, if it is put that way it´s ok. But the so-and-so's house that lives in the corner does not need sculptures but to save energy and not to have so much heat in summer.
To end, what advice would it give to the young design students?Advice is difficult in any aspect. My first book was called “Design, why?”. I wrote it 22 years ago, in ’82. I was in that profession for 20 years and I asked the question: what in hell does the design serve? I believe that it is necessary to have certain ideology. It is not possible to design for designing. It is necessary to know what one seeks.
Joan Pla i Vivoles :.
Tueday, 24 February '04