Recognising the excellence and importance of the work of designers and on showcasing a discipline that is essential in improving people’s day-to-day lives

Until 9 April, the sixth edition of Madrid Design Festival 2023 will focus its efforts on recognising the excellence and importance of the work of designers and on showcasing a discipline that is essential in improving people’s day-to-day lives. Design harbours many of the answers to the uncertainties and complexities which our society is facing today. The climate emergency, the depletion of natural resources, energy efficiency, overconsumption, habitability and mobility in large urban nuclei, rural depopulation, the loss of the traditional artisan trades and demographic movements: all of these issues can and should be addressed from a design perspective.

Thus, the projects in Madrid Design Festival 2023 will reflect design’s attitude and the starting point of the times we are living in. In short, it will showcase projects that meet a common goal which has accompanied the Festival since it was founded: to redesign the world.

MDF23 will showcase the work of a large number of creators today whose ideas are making a decisive contribution to developing new paradigms, and who draw from the ideas of some of the key figures in the history of design.

The Festival will have a programme of exhibitions and installations with a more prominent experiential component to invite all visitors to immerse themselves in design in a more participatory and surprising fashion. To do so, MDF23 will present new formats and spaces that will foster encounters between designers, companies and audiences with the maxim of solidifying a model of festival where talent, creativity and economic development are the bedrock of its programming.

Competitions, contests, challenges, awards and four professional workshops with prominent Spanish and international designers will round out the programme of an edition focused on both younger and more experienced designers with the most novel ideas.

This edition will showcase Madrid design in an effort to rediscover new fragments from its historical legacy while also hosting new actions to support the emerging local design community. It will also continue to build bridges with prominent international gatherings and cities where design is prominent in the twenty-first century.

Seville is the guest city of Madrid Design Festival 2023. It is a city that currently figures prominently in design with the work of designers and studios that are rethinking the cities of tomorrow through an exquisite blend of its unique artisan heritage and premium contemporary design techniques. Seville is a city that is historically associated with art and creativity; they are part of its DNA.

Sevillian design will come to Madrid through several activities, including an exhibition that surveys current Sevillian design; a day of professional encounters with the top exponents from different disciplines; and a series of activities that will geographically unite the designers and their studios along the Seville-Madrid axis.

This exhibition “Seville. Illuminated Shadow” in Fernán Gómez Centro Cultural de la Villa -curated by Macarena Navarro-Reverter- will offer a survey of Sevillian design, from the most traditional languages to the city’s avant-garde. It is a journey through the excellence of its crafts and the mastery of its trades, which survive and coexist today with the work of new designers.

The goal of the show is to invite us to rediscover the city from a contemporary perspective and showcase its tangible and intangible heritage by making it visible through the talent of its people and their customs.

The show will include a selection of more than 100 pieces -with exhibition design curated by Studio Noju- that capture this fusion between past and present with 25 artists, including artisans and designers like Las Ánimas, Javier Menacho, Iloema, Todomuta, La Cartuja de Sevilla and Yukiko Kitahara.

Traditional trades and techniques team up with new designs and interpretations. Wise, sensitive hands and minds have inherited a millennia-old culture that today focuses on contemporary design to generate vibrant collaborations and unexpected ideas.