Juli Capella Samper

Juli Capella Samper
Born in Barcelona on 24 September 1960.
He commenced a course in industrial design at the Massana School in Barcelona, which he gave up to study architecture. He graduated as an architect from the ETSAB (Barcelona Higher School of Architecture) in 1991.
He has worked continuously in design and architecture in the fields of creative graphic design, industrial design, interior design, architecture and town planning, as well as on theoretical aspects of all these disciplines. He worked in association with Quim Larrea from 1982 to July 1997, at which point he set up his new practice, Capella Arquitectura & Design, where he has worked since. In 2001, he creates Capella García Arquitectura for the architecture’s projects accomplishment.
In 1984, he founded and edited the magazine De Diseño, the first specialist journal in this field in Spain. In 1988, he founded Ardi, a design and architecture magazine which he edited until 1994. From 1995 until 2000 he was in charge of the design section of the Italian magazine Domus.
He has written numerous articles for a number of Spanish and international publications. He has been a contributor to El Pais newspaper, its Sunday supplement, and the Babelia arts supplement of this newspaper since 1985. From 1995 to 1998 he wrote articles every two months on design for the magazine Barcelona Metròpolis Mediterrània. From 1984 to 1999 he contributed fortnightly articles on cultural affairs to the newspaper Avui, usually in the fields of design and architecture. Currently, he is doing the same on a monthly basis for El Periodico de Catalunya newspaper.
He has also written and co-written various books, such as Diseño de arquitectos en los 80, published by Gustavo Gili in 1987; Nuevo Diseño Español, published by Gustavo Gili in 1991; Dictionnaire International des Arts Appliqués et du Design, published by Edition du Regard in 1996; Perché un libro su Enzo Mari, published by Federico Motta Editore in 1997; Diseño Industrial en España, published by MNCARS and Plaza y Janés in 1998; Arquitecturas Diminutas. Tiny Architecture, published by Edicions UPC in 2000; Oscar Tusquets Blanca. Encyclopaedia, published by Electa in 2003, Rafael Moneo diseñador, published by Santa & Cole and ETSAB, 2003, Cocos, copias y coincidencias published by Electa in 2003, 300% Spanish Design published by Electa too in 2005 and Arquitexturas published by Formica in 2005.
He has lectured and taken part in debates and round tables on design and architecture issues and has also taught in various schools, including the ETSAB, the Elisava School, the Massana School and the Eina School, all in Barcelona, professional Colleges of Architects in Barcelona, Seville, Granada or Las Palmas, the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico, the National University of Colombia, the Metropolitan Center of Design in Buenos Aires, the Saint Idelfonso College in Mexico, the Domus Academy in Milan and Expohabitat in Moscow.
His architectural and town planning projects include the Pachá discotheque in Vila-seca, Tarragona; the promenade along La Pineda beach, also in Vila-seca; the Zig Zag shopping and entertainment centre in Murcia; the Heron City Barcelona entertainment centre; the hotels Omm and
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Diagonal Barcelona (Silken) both in Barcelona; Las Liras residential building for the elderly in Terrassa, or the office’s building in Avinguda Diagonal, 203 in Barcelona.
He has planned and curated numerous events and exhibitions such as the biennial La Primavera del Disseny (Design Spring) in Barcelona in 1992; the project, Casa Barcelona (Barcelona House) for the Cultural Olympiad in Barcelona in 1992; the selection of the industrial design works for the Museum of Decorative Arts in Barcelona in 1995; the exhibition A la Castiglioni shown in Barcelona, Milan, New York and Tokyo in 1995; the exhibition Barcelona Design in the 20th Century: from Gaudí to the Olympic Games shown in Washington in 1997; the exhibition Vanity Case by Starck shown in Barcelona, Bilbao, Trento and Glasgow; the exhibition Diseño Industrial Español (Spanish Industrial Design) in Madrid, Barcelona and Seville; Oriol Bohigas, passió per la ciutat (Oriol Bohigas, passion for the city) shown in Barcelona in 1999; Ingo Maurer, pasión por la luz (Ingo Maurer, passion for light) shown in Barcelona during the 2001 Design Spring event; El Laberinto: Arquitectura, diseño y arte (The labyrinth, architecture, design and art) about Oscar Tusquets (shown in Madrid, Barcelona in 2003 and Sofia, Budapest in 2004), Cocos, copias y coincidencias (Cocos, copies and coincidences), shown in Madrid in 2003, Barcelona in 2004 and Valencia in 2005, Spain loves Japan shown in Tokyo in 2005 or 300% Spanish Design in Saitama (Japan) in 2005 too.
Together with Quim Larrea he was awarded an honorific mention in the National Design Prizes, 2000. He has been the president of the FAD (Promotion of the Decoratives Arts) since June 2001 from April 2005 and promoter of the Year of Design 2003.