The architect and designer Patricia Urquiola has entered the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando as full academic for the New Image Arts section. His candidacy was presented by professor Estrella de Diego, architect Luis Fernández-Galiano and jurist Alfredo Pérez de Armiñán.
“The designer combines creativity and innovation, interprets the environment, people’s behaviors and the techniques necessary to create products. “It is a profession that requires transversal knowledge and collaboration, a hybridization,” the architect said at the event, according to the institution.
Urquiola has thanked the academics who proposed his candidacy, as well as Alberto Schommer and Rafael Moneo, and especially Alberto Corazón, who incorporated the design in the New Image Arts section.
In her intervention, the architect reflected on the concept of design and the work of the designer, covering the ethical vision of the same, the affinities and divergences with plastic creations or the challenges posed by the continuous evolution of the world.
The architect has entered the academy with the speech titled ‘Stanza open. Identity and hybridization. The jurist Alfredo Pérez de Armiñán was in charge of the Corporation’s response to the new academic.
Pérez de Armiñán celebrated the incorporation of Urquiola because “he represents an important contribution of talent, creativity and capacity for innovation and reflection.”
GOLD MEDAL FOR MERIT IN THE FINE ARTS
Patricia Urquiola (Oviedo, 1961) began her studies in architecture at the Polytechnic University of Madrid and continued them in Milan, where she graduated in 1989. Urquiola trained in the rational discipline of use and function, learning to combine the logic of manufacturing and the spirit of craftsmanship with formal innovation and the seduction of material and color.
After his extensive training, he opened his own studio in Milan in 2001, and during the following two decades he has designed objects and furniture for the most important companies in the sector, he has designed residential buildings and hotels, art installations and interior design, shaking the design landscape with the imaginative sensuality and material rigor of his work.
His exhibitions have been held in Europe, the United States and China, and his work is part of the collections of MoMA, the Vitra Design Museum, the Museo della Triennale (Milan), the Die Neue Sammlung (Munich), the Fonds National d’ Art Contemporain or the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris.
Among his awards, Urquiola has received numerous national and international awards, such as the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts or the Cross of the Order of Isabel the Catholic, a multitude of competitions and forums have selected his creations, and his reviews are included in the ADI Design Index and The International Design Yearbook.