Barcelona Cultura

Summer has arrived: 5 refreshing designs!

This year the heat has kept us waiting but, this week, summer has finally arrived. We take advantage of the change of season to go through our collection in search of designs and objects born from high temperatures.

Europa 16''C  (industrial design)

In 2000, the industrial designer Ramón Benedito Graells, winner of the National Design Award in 1992, donated this electric fan created for the Taurus household appliance company in 1996. Now it would be hailed as a "vintage" design.

Model Shouldaire (fashion design)

What were swimsuits like in the 30s? We can get an idea from the bathing suit donated to the Museum by Pere Sans (of the legendary brand Abanderado) in 2016. It is a model in alpaca wool from the American firm Janzten which (in a different colour), can also be seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Uruguay (photography)

Established in 1977 in Barcelona, the advertising photographer Maria Espeus (National Prize of Culture 2017) extended the Museu del Disseny’s photographic collection with this suggestive classic style fashion photography, featuring a JFLD swimsuit.

Rigid fan (design objects)

Before the arrival of electric fans, circulating the air has always been an effective method for combating the suffocating heat, and one of the oldest objects for doing this is the fan. At the Museu del Disseny you can see a rigid nineteenth century example made of cardboard, silk, cloth and wood, which was donated in 1969 by the collector Manuel Rocamora.

Las Arenas (graphic design - poster design)

If we don’t have a fan or a ventilator, but we have a pool nearby, we are saved! In order to publicise the historic swimming pools of Las Arenas in Valencia, in 1932 Josep Renau (one of the most prominent poster designers of the Civil War) designed a daring and modern poster that, without doubt, would not have survived Franco's censorship.

Ajuntament de Barcelona