Gonzalo Milà

This Catalan designer has created many urban elements that now enliven Spanish streets, and his work has been recognized with various industrial design awards.
Milá was born in 1967 and studied architecture in Barcelona. He began working simultaneously in the interior and industrial design studio of Miguel Milá (his father), and also collaborated with Luis Victory, with whom he had already won the 2nd Castilla-La Mancha furniture award for their Arragón espiga clothes stand. His experience with small objects, which allowed him to tightly control every step of the project, captivated him and led him to study industrial design at Elisava.
In the early 90s, Gonzalo Milá founded the Gòtic Sud studio along with a group of architects, designers, and photographers, who restored a large industrial plant in the old part of Barcelona to establish the studio. There he partnered with Juan Carlos Inés and founded the Inés-Milá industrial design studio. Those were prolific years during which they entered many competitions and fairs and designed many different kinds of objects: the Tutombas Pranha easy chair-system to stretch one's back, awarded first prize at the Valencia Furniture Fair in 1994; the Sillarga and Sicurta, two granite easy chairs for the Bogatell beaches in Barcelona; the Teula bottle rack; and the Mojón Segado boundary stone, a playful way to mark spaces in street cafés or street markets, awarded in 1995 by AEPD.
After closing down the studio, Milá established the Milá Diseño studio, where he worked for three years. Some outstanding projects from that period include reconstructing an antique apartment in Gaudí's Pedrera, and the Rama lamp series (2000-2004), which won the ADI-FAD Delta de Plata award in 2001 for managing to cover any lighting need with a unified formal solution. According to the panel of judges, "for the lamps' versatility, which allows adjusting them to different heights and orientations."
In 1999, Gonzalo Milá joined the Urban Division of Santa & Cole, where he collaborated in the production and edition sections. In 2001, he decided to work independently to create what he loves most, furniture, and to invent "little things that surprise every day without gratuitousness, starting from new technologies or from applying traditional technologies to new concepts."

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