Santa & Cole, Ediciones de diseño S.A.

On 18 and 19 September last, Miguel Milá and Antoni Arola travelled to Copenhagen and Stockholm to present "Light Matters: Miguel Milá + Antoni Arola", a very personal exhibition which brings together some of the most significant light objects from the history of Spanish design. They were accompanied by Nina Masó and Javier Nieto, founders of Santa & Cole and currently Indoor Publisher and Chairman of the Group, respectively.

The intention was to show two key generations of Spanish design and to favour an informal encounter with Scandinavian designers, architects and artists, a relaxed chat between the two Spanish designers and their publishers, to recount and recover the history of the objects and share four decades of design in Spain with the world of Scandinavian design.

The exhibition "Light Matters: Miguel Milá + Antoni Arola" was well received in Sweden and Denmark. Scandinavian architects, designers and friends were delighted to receive designers of the stature of Miguel Milá and Toni Arola "at home" and to be able to discover first hand their personal way of understanding the profession of design. In turn, the two designers were excited to travel to the cradle of Scandinavian design, a reference for both of them in view of its characteristic simplicity, functional nature and timelessness.

Two masters

A decade later, Miguel Milá, then an architecture student, helped his brother Alfonso Milá and his partner Federico Correa in planning the interiors that they designed for José Antonio Coderch. And, indeed, "to be able to plan well, many things were needed: furniture, lamps and all kinds of objects. And we decided to do it ourselves. Urgency came from necessity. It was necessary to redesign everything".

When Antoni Arola began in industrial design, Miguel Milá was already a recognized designer of objects. It was an interplay of chance which pushed a young man of an unbelieving nature to the desks of the school where Miguel Milá gave classes.

Like Milá, Arola is recognized as a designer closer to craftsmanship than industry, although his creations are the result of "inspirations", magical stories which allow him to play with light.

We are faced with two key figures of Spanish design who, although they reflect different moments and histories, share an in-depth interest in the life of things and an intimate determination to search for simplicity in all their work. Design as a result of common sense which grants all their works the timelessness of good design.

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