Details

Mario Ruiz

Born in Alicante (Spain), 1965, Mario Ruiz graduate in Industrial Design from the Elisava School of Design in Barcelona, designer Mario Ruiz started his independent professional career in 1995. During those first years and up until 2003 his activity focused primarily on the fields of technology and office furniture design. Currently Mario Ruiz studio works for internationally renowned firms on a wide range of areas such as furniture, lighting, office equipment, digital products and applied graphics. Lately, he’s also been involved in interior design and commercial architectural constructions are also worth mentioning.

Due to his skill and multidisciplinary experience in such diverse fields, he has won the confidence of some of the largest companies in each sector, including Siemens, Steelcase, Thomson, Schneider Electric, Dynamobel, Teka, Gandia Blasco, Viccarbe, Joquer, Haworth, HBF, Metalarte, Offecct, and the list goes on. For some of these companies he not only undertakes projects directly related to their products but also acts as creative director defining their product catalogues, brand and graphic identity, as well as developing their showrooms and trade fair stands.

His work has been acknowledged with more than 30 prestigious awards in Europe and the United States. Including several Red Dot, IF, Design Plus, Wallpaper Awards08 and ADI-FAD Silver Delta Awards. For more than 10 years, he’s also been a lecturer at the Eina and Elisava design schools in Barcelona.

In 2003 the first monograph on his work, “mario ruiz / costa design”, was released by publishing house Actar.

Web-Site from Designer: www.marioruiz.es

Gandia Blasco

GANDIA BLASCO, which is nowadays known for its outdoor furniture line, was born in 1941 as a family business, manufacturing blankets. The activities of the company were developed on an industrial level, with an intensive production during the Spanish post-war period, essentially aimed at the army and hospitals. 

The company is located in Ontinyent (Valencia), a town that had 13,000 inhabitants in those times. It was an area with a large expansion of the textile branch, under the influence of Alcoi and nerve centre of the Vall de Albaida region. For almost 40 years and under the management of José Gandía-Blasco (father of José Antonio, current president of the company), the activity did not change, and it enjoyed considerable success. It was the peak of its success, and it had more than 100 employees, all of them coming from families of the surrounding towns.

In the mid-1980s the blanket branch began to give signs of fatigue, mainly due to the strong competition coming from the international markets that produced at lower costs and with higher quality. The company was forced to make a strategic turn to overcome the situation.

José A. Gandía-Blasco Canales took on more responsibilities in the company, and saw the need for a change. His arrival meant a point of inflection. Under the premise of modernising the company, both as regards the brand and the products offered, José A. got in touch with the designers Marisa Gallén and Sandra Figuerola from the design studio La Nave in Valencia. They designed the current logo of the company: a cute, stylized kitten, an animal that looks for comfort at home. The involvement of Gallén and Figuerola was also extended to the design of carpets. The first collections recovered the use of the old looms with a new material derived from cotton, and the result of countless experiments. New, modern products were created, reversible, with colourful patterns on one side and plain on the other. A third designer, Lina Vila, created a line of children’s carpets which quickly became famous throughout Europe and was a big success. In 1990, the redesigning of the firm, the logo and the products received the Impiva Award for Innovation. This award provided the company with a major boost, since it was the first sign of evolution in their philosophy.

During the years to follow, the brand settled in the textile market due to the exclusiveness and innovation of their designs: carpets with borders, with patterns, hand-woven, with original shapes. The production was almost exclusively domestic and it was carried out on traditional looms. The success of the carpets led to the creation of other products, such as sheets, duvet covers, bedspreads, fabrics and cushions.

GANDIA BLASCO  has a distribution network in 74 countries on five continents. This worldwide expansion is due to the company showing their products at the most important furniture fairs, such as Milan, London, New York, Paris, Tokyo, Dubai, Las Vegas, Kortitjk, among others.

Manufacturer site: www.gandiablasco.com