EINA’s history

EINA was born in 1967. Despite this, the path to this foundation is longer. In that sense its history intertwines with the initiatives of two of the founders of the centre, Alexandre Cirici and Albert Ràfols-Casamada, and with a prior genealogy of activities and pedagogical entities such as Escola d'Art del FAD.

Initiatives established in the framework named “cultural resumption” based on recovering, updating and adapting to the circumstances of the moment, the legacy prior to the war.

The EINA foundation is the result of a teacher riot. This riot spirit marked the first years of the following decade greatly, confirming the innovative and experimental character of the initiative that, however, intends to train university professionals. These are years of political turmoil, cultural anti-francoism and opening to new ideas and new plastic languages. The design is presented as a common social incidence territory from art to everyday life. The Bauhaus ideals and methods of the Ulm school are present in the training of the new kind of creator meaning the designers.

The 70s openly question the assumptions of the designer’s training, the syllabus is abandoned and the activities expand to all sorts of subjects and disciplines through courses, workshops and seminars. Right then experiences related to the conceptual approaches spread: the real-irreal dichotomy, criticism of taste, sensitive activation beyond the visual. The generational concerns and the eagerness to undermine the values, morals and conventional institutions became present at EINA in the performances and actions but also through the mass culture, cinema, music and the counterculture of the fanzine and the comic.

The 80s and 90s mean a progressive systematization of the teaching until the connection of EINA with the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the creation of the Design Higher Degree and a wide range of postgraduate courses since 1994. Since 2009 EINA’s design studies adapt to the new European Higher Education Area. In this way, the graduate studies started to become extinct leading to the new official Design degree studies. In the recent years the academic offerings has been complemented with various masters and postgraduate diplomas and Phd programme.


Documentary "EINA, l'esperit contemporani" by the director Poldo Pomés, premiered on the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of EINA.