World Design Spotlight: Butaca Granada, by Javier Carvajal and Martínez Medina

In 1963, the architect Javier Carvajal obtained first prize in the competition to build the Spanish Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair, which would earn him an Award from the Rockefeller Foundation leading to international recognition. The Institute of American Architects corroborated this, granting him the certificate of excellence for the project.

Destined to be placed in that magnificent pavilion, Carvajal thought about a piece of furniture that would see the light at the same time as the building. That piece was the Granada chair, destined to be iconic, which would be produced by the Valencian firm Martínez Medina, a leader in product manufacture, and which would become a highly valued and timeless work with extraordinary aesthetic qualities.

The architects of the nineteen-fifties became, thanks to their obsessions, and without being very aware of the fact, advocates of industrial design. And Javier Carvajal was obsessed with the design of the pomegranate (‘granada’, in Spanish).

As explained by José Miguel Martínez Medina, CEO of the Valencian company with more than 120 years’ experience in furniture design and one of the most important in the country, “the design of the chair reminded Carvajal of a pomegranate cut into four pieces.”

Martínez Medina and Javier Carvajal were introduced by the interior designer Paco Muñoz, of “Casa y Jardín”, who led the architect to those who would transform his obsession into a real piece, into an iconic chair, the company that had the technology necessary to achieve this difficult product.

The first prototype made had more rounded forms, which architect and manufacturers, the father and uncle of the current CEO of Martínez Medina, honed and redesigned until the definitive chair took shape.

The composition of the chair is very complex, with stamped steel finished in copper, a self-supporting glass fibre frame and polyurethane foam modules, all of this with a base in bronze. “It was a difficult piece, which moreover was made in record time so that it would be ready for the Pavilion in New York”, explains Martínez Medina.

It was a design that triumphed, “it was in all the foyers of banks, in hotels … it was even seen in the halls of some of the buildings of the Gran Vía. It was a highly sought-after chair; it was a good quality item and it was sculptural.”

The professional relationship between Martínez Medina and Javier Carvajal was very good and very fruitful. Together, they made embassies and hotels. Carvajal, an excellent architect, was not very prodigious in product design, although somewhat more so in interior design, being responsible for the interiors of the shops of Loewe in Calle Goya and Calle Serrano, in Madrid.

Martínez Medina remembers that “despite not being very well-liked, perhaps because he belonged to Opus Dei or perhaps because he was a monarchist, Carvajal was a very brilliant architect. He drew all the buildings he designed on vellum and represented them on transparencies, floor by floor. He was a very precise and very clean professional.”

The reedition of the Granada armchair, completed by the company in 2016, responded to a request by the architect’s son, the lawyer Javier Carvajal. A piece that, although expensive owing to its costly manufacture, remains in the catalogue of Martínez Medina, updated with materials adapted to today’s tastes.

“It is an armchair that symbolizes Spanish design at its most brilliant, it is wonderful. Just as Mies van der Rohe created the Barcelona armchair for the German Pavilion, Carvajal designed the Granada armchair for the Spanish Pavilion. There has not been such an iconic design as this in Spain.”

Photographs: Martínez Medina.