The Madrid Design Festival 2026 devotes one of its main exhibitions to André Ricard, a key figure in contemporary industrial design and a former member of the Teaching Staff at Eina. Under the title André Ricard. Diseño en uso, the exhibition offers an in-depth and pedagogical reading of a career defined by functionality, durability and the social commitment of design.
The exhibition can be visited from 6 February to 3 May 2026 at the Fernán Gómez. Centro Cultural de la Villa, and brings together a wide selection of objects, prototypes, drawings, photographs and original documents spanning more than six decades of Ricard’s work.
Far from a conventional retrospective, the exhibition route is structured around areas of everyday use —the table, the kitchen, the bathroom, the studio or memory— with the aim of showing how his designs were conceived to integrate naturally into daily life. Iconic pieces such as the Copenhagen ashtray, the Tatu lamp, the Tong tongs or the Olympic torch for Barcelona 1992 are presented alongside archival materials that reveal the intellectual process behind each object.
Curated by Marina Povedano and Arnau Pascual, the exhibition emphasises Ricard’s critical thinking, which understands design as a tool for public service, removed from fashion and focused on genuine usefulness. In this sense, the exhibition highlights the continued relevance of his legacy at a time when sustainability, ethics and social responsibility have once again moved to the centre of contemporary debate.
The exhibited materials come mainly from the archive of the Disseny Hub Barcelona and from private collections, offering a comprehensive perspective that combines professional practice with theoretical reflection.
André Ricard. Design in Use is thus established as one of the central exhibitions of the Madrid Design Festival 2026, and as an opportunity to rediscover an author who has made a decisive contribution to defining design culture in Spain and positioning it within the international context.
