Miguel Milá

Miguel Milá (1931-) is considered one of the greatest Spanish designers of the 20th century. He played a pioneering role in the development of a design culture in Spain from the beginning of his career in the 1950s, a period in which industrial development in Spain was still in its infancy and the country was significantly behind other major European nations. Born in Barcelona into a noble family with many ties to the world of art (the palace called Casa Milà, commissioned to Antoni Gaudí by Miguel's uncle, is famous throughout the world), he began his professional career in the studio of his brother Alfonso Milá and his partner Federico Correa. In 1958 he set up his own business and founded the Tramo brand (an acronym for Trabajos Molestos) with several partners, which was going to produce some of his most famous creations, such as the TMC (1958), TMM (1959) and Cesta (1964) lamps, all of which are still considered timeless icons of Spanish design. Very attached to artisanal production processes, Milá considers himself a “pre-industrial” designer, capable of creating fascinating and timeless objects with very modern and archetypal forms. His activity in the associative field is also very important: he was a founding member of AFI-FAD, a Spanish association for the promotion of design, which he also chaired for a decade from 1974 to 1984. Many of his best-known lamps are now produced by the Catalan brand Santa&Cole, but his creations also appear in the catalogues of brands such as Kettal and Expormim. In his long career, Miguel Milá has won numerous important awards, including the Spanish National Award for Design (in its first edition ever in 1957) and an International Compasso d’Oro in 2008.