André Ricard wanted to read in bed without waking his wife. From that wish, the Tatu lamp was born in 1972: three independently rotating parts, adjustable light and beam, a body that adapts to the moment. A private problem turned into an elegant and charismatic solution. That is how he worked. André understood design as a tool: the most sensible form for every object, so that it does what it has to do and nothing more.

Santa & Cole also edits the Fontana lamp (1970), a tribute to Lucio Fontana. Just as the painter slashed his canvases, André seems to cut into a semisphere, projecting light outward from the wound. In a Spain marked by dictatorship, where everything was yet to be invented, that kind of gesture was its own statement.

Alongside his friend Miguel Milá, André Ricard placed Barcelona on the map as a reference point for modernity. The Olympic torch carried by a billion eyes. The Norit container on every kitchen shelf. The Copenhagen ashtray. He designed many objects that entered our lives at very different volumes, but all of them found, eventually, everywhere. “Design in Use” at Centro Cultural de la Villa Fernán Gómez traces that career.