The city of Barcelona in Spain is famous for its stunning architecture (think Gaudí), its soccer team and its vibrant cultural heritage. It is often a stop-over for anyone visiting Europe.
The city is also famous for design. So when the Design Museum in Barcelona decided to feature the Bios Urn ® in its permanent exhibition, it was a true honor.
Museu del Disseny de Barcelona sits in the heart is the Catalan capital’s centre devoted to the arts of the object and design. It seeks to stimulate critical reflection on what has been the real contribution of design to twenty-first century society, wether that be art collection or everyday objects born from design.
In 2022, it inaugurated its new permanent design exhibition entitled ‘Common Objects‘ curated by the historian and designer Oriol Pibernat, which features our very own Bios Urn ®.
The Bios Urn® is exhibited in the permanent exhibition of the Design Museum in Barcelona.
About the exhibition ‘Common Objects’
From 2022, the Museu del Disseny Bacelona will be exhibiting ‘Common Objects: Local stories, global challenges’, the museum’s new permanent exhibition on innovative product design. The exhibition has entailed the first major reorganisation of the museum since its inauguration in 2014 to bring design closer to the public. The exhibition has been installed in a more accessible space, in a central location on the ground floor of the building, to make the exhibition the first thing you see in the museum.
With these changes, the Design Museum in Barcelona aims to make the museum’s own collection more dynamic and more widely known on a global scale. In addition, this renovation project has led to an expansion of the collection with almost a hundred new pieces that complete and update it, incorporating modern design of the present day. The Bios Urn ® is one of them.
“Common Objects: Local stories, global challenges” is the Design Museum in Barcelona’s new permanent exhibition on innovative product design.
The exhibition aims to highlight the enormous social, aesthetic and cultural impact of design, which is capable of turning common objects into exemplary and culturally relevant pieces. It also demonstrates that design channels collective, patrimonial values, multiple and shared identities and citizenships that allow us to recognise ourselves or others in the symbolic dimension of objects.
The exhibition also shows how design dialogues with the major contemporary issues and attempts to provide answers to the collective challenges we face as a society. which is something that is part of our essence at Bios. To achieve these objectives, the exhibition links the past, which gives it historical depth, with the present, which gives it thematic relevance.
The exhibition was given the name ‘Common Objects’ because they are the kind of objects associated with everyday uses we find in our daily lives, maybe sometimes not even realizing that design played a key role in their very creation. Each of the objects featured in this collection also has an aspect which makes it special because of its design: design has given them a new meaning thanks to the services they provide us, the originality of how they look, the innovations they incorporate, what they communicate, the emotions they awake in us or how the objects take on the challenges of sustainability.
Check out the exhibition and the interview with the curator here.
Check out the exhibition and the interview with the curator here (English subtitles available).
Highlighting the link between design and Barcelona
Another of the axes of the new exhibition is the link between design and Barcelona. The exhibition highlights the predominance of design in the city from the twentieth century to the present day, its cultural weight and the role it plays in urban identity, helping to reinforce and enrich this identification. Thus, the local public will find in the exhibition an experience of self-recognition, while visitors from abroad will be able to recognise design as characteristic of the city and as a country. In this way, the Design Museum in Barcelona consolidates its position as an international point of reference for design produced in Barcelona, Catalonia and Spain.
It features some of the most outstanding designs through which we can understand why Barcelona, Catalonia and Spain have become important places in this field. Among the pieces that can be seen in ‘Common Objects. Local stories, global challenges‘ include icons of local design such as the Butterfly or BKF chair, the Catalana and GATCPAC armchairs, the Disa lights by Coderch and TMC de Milan and Sagnier, the Marquina oil cruets, the Impala motorbike and of course the Bios Urn ®.
This is a journey through History to present day aimed at explain how design has accompanied and driven the economic and culture life of the city and the country.
Even if you can’t visit the exhibition in person, the AUDIOGUIDE is available online in various languages 🙂
Among the pieces that can be seen in ‘Common Objects. Local stories, global challenges’ include icons of local design such as the Butterfly or BKF chair, the Catalana and GATCPAC armchairs, the Disa lights by Coderch and TMC de Milan and Sagnier, the Marquina oil cruets, the Impala motorbike and of course the Bios Urn®.
What do you think of the idea behind this permanent exhibition at the Design Museum in Barcelona featuring the Bios Urn ®? Have you been to it?
We would love to hear from you in the Comments section below!
To keep up to date with all the latest Bios Urn ® news and stories, you can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube!
Join our mailing list to keep you updated of all Bios® news and get a 10% Discount!
Leave a Reply