Industrial Design - Galan - History

Introduction

Galán is a trace, an outline invested with a soul, a sketch suffused with life. This is the story of how I chose to live for several years with a gesture that helped me to share my world.

First sketches

The story begins in 1993 with a few quick traces. Those first small sketches saw the birth of a spine-like gesture. It was a support.

My mind struggled with a series of ideas.

Where to hang the trousers? In front or behind?

At last I arrived at a balance that solved my doubts. The jacket would hang behind and the trousers in front. The gesture was now solved and I put it away. But my mind didn’t.

An idea. A sculpture in use

After leaving London, this gesture accompanied me for a long time. I felt that those first few strokes had a power and a soul of their own; they had to become part not only of someone’s furniture but of someone’s life.

I felt that if I was going to animate this gesture, it had to come to life as a sculptural gesture. It was then that I began to understand the underlying principle that should guide my efforts and my work: to create a sculpture to illuminate everyday life. Daily contact with my sculpture should invite people to want to learn more about it and to come to understand it better. Paul Valéry used to say that ”the best work is that which holds its secret the longest.“

Making the invisible visible

When I returned to Galán in 2004 I had the feeling that both of us had evolved. I wasn't the same person I had been ten years earlier. I was more impetuous then. It was at this point that I decided to define the shape of Galán and give it my proportions.

Identity

I then produced a small model. It had elegance and finesse, but it didn’t have life. I realized that if I wanted Galán to transmit a sense of vitality, I had to imbue it with the experience and weariness of life I had gained since I drew my first sketches back in 1993.

Born in Vorarlberg

In 2011 I found a master carpenter who adheres to the finest traditions of European craftsmanship, working exclusively with solid woods and building furniture to the highest standard in his workshop located in the region of Vorarlberg (Austria). I visited his company in late September with a full-scale prototype in wood. That morning we decided that Galán would come to life in Austria. Three prototypes were made over a period of one year in order to achieve the final piece.

By way of an epilogue

I have found it fascinating to arrive at the point where a form that had never existed before becomes a perfect reality to my eye. Galán is now alive because it has a tension of its own, because it has an identity of its own. Standing still, it is in movement. Doing nothing, it does.