02/24/2010

Oscar Díaz

Óscar Díaz is one of several young Spanish designers who, having studied at London’s Royal Collage of Art, has settled in the UK capital. And he stands out among them because, although he’s still at a very early stage in his career, it’s obvious that he’s extraordinarily creative and imaginative.

Díaz, who was born in León in northwest Spain in 1975, studied industrial design in France. On graduating, he worked for several years in the studio of Paris-based designer Matali Crasset, and was involved in her projects for Artemide, Danese and Edra, among other companies. After graduating from the RCA, he was invited to work at Japan’s Oribe Design Centre – which brings together domestic and overseas designers with companies in Gifu in central Japan – where he designed furniture specifically for the Japanese market.

In 2006, he set up his own studio. Since then, his clients have included Veuve Cliquot, the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London and hip French homeware company Domestic.

One of his best-known products is his glass vase called RGB (which stands for ‘red, green, blue’). These combine artesanal techniques, specifically hand-blown glass, yet refer to contemporary culture. The vases – three vases, one in red, one in green and one in blue, which nest inside each other – work like a 3D pixel: once superimposed, the red, green and blue glass creates a violet-coloured pixel effect. The RGB design was shown at the exhibition, Eyes on Spanish Design, at the London fair 100% Design last September.

Equally eye-catching is Díaz’s Ink Calendar. Made of absorbent paper featuring numbers and words in relief, it exploits the principle, in physics, of capillary action: ink is absorbed slowly into the paper and colours in one number per day. The months are colour-coded using differently coloured inks: blues and other cold tones are used to indicate winter months, while warm colours, like yellow and green, represent summer months.

More recent designs include his Found cutlery and Fast Track lamp, both created last year. Found is a super-lightweight cutlery set initially made out of recycled plastic bottles. To start with, the spoons, forks and knives are fashioned out of curved parts of the bottles but are then coated with copper or tin plate to give them a metallic finish. The appeal behind this idea lies in the fact that each piece is different and that it allows everyday objects to be made out of existing objects.

Fast Track is a lamp comprising a band of electroconductive fabric which you fix to any two points in a room. One or more LED lamps can be attached to this with some pegs. The advantage of this is that each lamp can be moved to whichever point the user wants to position it at.

Among other accolades, Díaz won a prize in a ‘Young Talents’ competition organised by French publication Madame Fígaro in 2007 as well as in the Design Challenge competition, set up by London’s ICA, in 2008.
In 2009, he co-founded Parallel Projects, a programme devoted to curating and designing exhibitions. This is currently working on various shows set to open soon, among them one called Design by Performance in Hasselt, Belgium, which opens on March 13 (www.z33.be), one named 13,798 Grams of Design in Milan, which starts on April 14 (www.lambrettoartproject.com) and another called Common Language, which takes place in Bordeaux in France from May 17 to 28.

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Oscar Díaz

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