Forma’s first edition, Madrid’s collectable design fair
Coming up right after Madrid Design Festival, Forma is the newest addition to the European design fair tour. Its pilot edition features the best of Spanish creators focusing on the intersections between art and design.
As Madrid Design Festival moves on to its 9th year of exhibitions, a little sibling has been added to its family. Forma is a collectable design fair which took place from the 4th to the 8th of March 2026, just after the main show took place. Happening at the same time as the city’s most famous art fair, ARCO, the latest part of the festival has attracted a new kind of audience, merging art and design together.
Collectable design has been constantly growing in recent years, and as the general attention is shifting towards artistic research practices rather than conventional industrial design, we can only predict seeing more of it in the upcoming fairs. This article covers a selection of highlights from Forma’s first edition, setting the tone for what is going on in the Iberian Peninsula so far.
Gallery
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Forma – Highlights:
Folded, Nani Marquina
Nani Marquina is a design company based in Barcelona, an international benchmark in contemporary rugs. In collaboration with Manel Molina, they have revealed the Folded collection, seeking to disrupt the boundaries of traditional design by exploring the additional potentialities of a typically flat carpet.
“With this bench, we wanted to explore new dimensions of the carpet concept, taking it beyond its usual use and giving it a three-dimensional presence in space,” explains the company’s omonymous founder, Nani Marquina. Elevating the carpet’s functionality beyond the floor, Folded joins other explorations happening currently in the rug industry, like Sabine Marcelis‘ latest work for cc-tapis, or the Dune rug by Budde.
Leaky Collection, Studio Ejarque
If greenwashing is making something look sustainable when it really isn’t, what is the opposite of it? Studio Ejarque has developed a graphite bioplastic that looks so synthetic it is hard to believe it is not. Evoking the imagery of an oil spill, it remarks on the precarious state of the environment, as well as offering the idea that biomaterials are not tied to a specific aesthetic and can look like anything.
The collection features three unique pieces, whose peculiarities are also given by the randomised way the material is set on the object, creating one-of-a-kind shapes. Contrasting with the warmth of wood and the clarity of glass, the graphite bioplastic becomes even more captivating.
Justino Del Casar
Any material holds memory, but paper, specifically, has a particular value to it, as we use it to purposefully inscribe memories onto it. Whether in the form of a diary, legal papers, or a sketch, paper often ends up holding meanings that go beyond its strictly material qualities. Justino Del Casar has decided to use this memory and transform it into sculptural objects that can last a lifetime.
The collection features sculptural objects, vases, and a table, all made of paper waste combined with metal, cardboard, or wooden structures to ensure stability. The paper used comes from all sorts of places, spanning from old exam papers to architectural floor plans, and bank documents, whose material memory will no longer be readable but forever conserved in these objects.
Silla Madrid, Jorge Vela
If you could grasp the essence of a place and translate it into a piece of furniture, what would it look like? This is the challenge behind Jorge Vela‘s research, who has been creating chairs inspired by different areas of his country, for a collection called Suite Española. Presented as part of Madrid’s city council exhibition, Silla Madrid is his proposal for the country’s capital.
The chair is a tribute to one of Spain’s greatest crossroads, a melting pot of different cultures. It is crafted from Cadalso de los Vidrios crystal white granite, a traditional material from the city, telling stories that represent the complex fabric of the Madrid community.
Fun Furniture for Friends, Francisco Jordan
Fun Furniture for Friends is a creative project by the illustrator Francisco Jordan, a collection of objects that has been steadily expanding since 2022. It is mostly a style exercise, where Jordan is free to experiment with different shapes and colours to then convert them into objects, finding a purpose for them.
The collection is clearly defined by the illustrator’s graphic style, evoking and celebrating the Memphis masters with their colourful and playful approach to design. The project reflects on the needs of our new domestic spaces compared to the past, suggesting that we all could use some more fun and lightness in our lives.
Todomuta Studio
Todomuta is a collaboration between Laura Molina and Sergio Herrera, who have been exploring the boundaries between art and design since 2011. They define their practice as more than a design studio, as it is interested in constant narrative reflections that go beyond product functionality and form.
At Madrid Design Festival, they presented a collaboration with Cuellar Stone, a company specialised in natural stones based in Almería, Spain. Merging an ancentral aesthetic with a futuristic vision, their creations are unique and mesmerising, and make the audience question from which imaginary world they come from.
Reading Table, Paula Rocio
If every object in our home were designed to fit our exact routines, habits, and style, life could be much easier. This is what Paula Rocio is imagining with her newest furniture: Reading Table is a steel table designed to fit exactly one book, a candle, and a box of matches, for a peaceful reading moment designed just for her.
Presented with Difusions gallery, the piece reflects upon the meaning we assign to the objects that make up our daily rhythm, exploring how design can amplify and add value to our rituals and therefore to our quality of life. While collectable design is often treated as a trivial part of design because of its disconnection from the industry, it is products like this one that show its true value: objects that show us how and why design is impactful, and allow us to see the field with fresh perspectives.
