Dos Mil Quatre-Cents Setanta Grams: when weight guides design
A selection of products that use weight as a starting point for new methods and as a pretext for a reflection on materials, their use, and responsibility in contemporary design.
Presented in the Porta Venezia district during Milan Design Week 2026 as part of the Ventana program, Dos Mil Quatre-Cents Setanta Grams was the group exhibition that set out to shake things up. A reverse exercise showing how creativity has no limits – or rather, in this case, only one: weight.
Realized with the support of architect Paolo Sarra, the CAP.A platform, and the Labóh agency, in collaboration with the Association for Industrial Design of FAD (ADI-FAD), the project was curated by Eva Castany, Pau Geis, Nicole Rambla, Irene Segarra, and Marina Vera – designers and communication professionals. The show brought together 18 Catalan designers presenting 12 furniture and lighting pieces with a single shared premise: each piece had to weigh exactly 2,470 grams.
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Dos Mil Quatre-Cents Setanta Grams – The exhibition:
Weight as a starting point for design
While this value is usually the result of a specific design process and material choice, here it becomes the starting point. As the curators explain: “Weight is a parameter almost universally ignored in furniture catalogs, despite being one of the most significant indicators in terms of transport, process, price, and the physical relationship between object and user. IKEA represents an exception, as a brand that has long systematically included weight across its entire catalog. Starting from this overlooked datum, we gathered IKEA’s furniture and lighting products – the two categories featured in the exhibition – and calculated an average, arriving at a precise shared base for all the exhibited pieces: 2,470 grams.”
A collective reflection on materials and responsibility
In doing so, Dos Mil Quatre-Cents Setanta Grams opens up a broader reflection on materials, their use, and above all, responsibility in contemporary design. Within the overwhelming saturation of proposals during Milan Design Week, the exhibition offers a perspective that moves away from the dominant narratives of industrial design, while also becoming a pretext to portray a collective portrait of a new generation of Catalan designers.
A community defined by an increasing sense of coexistence, a deep attention to manual and artisanal processes, and a shared desire to propose a more human and playful approach to everyday objects. The participating designers included Eduard Barniol; Bruno Blay and Jordi Font; Laia Canales and María Riera; Pere Canales, Clàudia Ros and Aitana Soliva; Joan Carreras; Eva Castany; Roger Cos; Luis C. Nikuradse and Andreu Jaumot; Isabel Miret and Marina Vera; Sergi Peguera; Irene Segarra; and Marta Torrent.
Furniture and lighting designed around 2,470 grams
The 2,470 g pieces, displayed together on a single platform, are the result of a trial-and-error process that challenges designers while activating a different design approach. The outcome is a series of seats, accessories, and lighting fixtures that range from ceramics to textiles, from metalworking to glass, emerging from practices as diverse as the designers themselves – from independent paths to roles within companies such as Marset, Santa & Cole, Vibia, Curro Claret Studio, and Rauric.
Starting with the lamps, SistemaG15 by Bruno Blay & Jordi Font is conceived as a modular product in which the repetition of light sources becomes the essential element for reaching the required weight. In contrast, Simona by Isabel Miret & Marina Vera is composed only of the elements strictly necessary for its function – a work of proportion and reduction of the superfluous to meet the goal.
Eva Castany, with Entreluces, explores the materiality of glass through an almost alchemical process in which oxides and cooling generate waves, textures, and irregularities, while Joan Carreras, with the pendant lamp Pes de la pèrdua, experiments with text as an invisible pattern within the ceramic lampshade. A-2470 by Roger Cos uses a glass cylinder, a polypropylene dome, and a light metal structure, all carefully calibrated to achieve the required weight, which thus becomes the true designer of proportions, materials, and overall balance.
In contrast, Estel by Andreu Jaumot and Luis C. Nikuradse uses only reclaimed fragments – components that failed quality control or reached the end of their life cycle. In this case, the designers sought to give new life to these scraps, transforming imperfections into protagonists and making them an integral part of the product’s beauty.
For the lamp Mono, Sergi Peguera works with aluminum, a malleable, easily sourced, and recyclable material. Starting from a solid aluminum bar, he used CNC milling to reduce its weight, then exploited the resulting voids to house electronic components. Marta Torrent, on the other hand, works with steel for Piti x tres. By reducing thickness and dimensions during development, she experiments and refines until reaching a balance between weight, aesthetics, and stability.
Beyond lighting, the exhibition also features the Puff Stool by Eduard Barniol, a foam stool in which buttons and upholstery shift from decoration to function, helping achieve the predefined weight.
7 Minutes is a borosilicate glass hourglass that takes shape from a study of weight distribution in glass and carefully calibrated thicknesses. Laia Canales and María Riera defined the volume of the first bulb and calculated the amount of sand needed to reach the final weight balance.
Irene Segarra focuses on the excessive quantity and disproportionate size of the labels that accompany IKEA products. After collecting them, she created over two meters of linear textile, which, together with stainless steel, becomes one of the two main materials of the Made In seat. Finally, Pere Canales, Clàudia Ros, and Aitana Soliva explore the contradiction between perception and reality with Divan Inflable, an object that appears heavy and bulky but is in fact lightweight.
