User:Toni.arnau/EINA University School of Design and Art of Barcelona

EINA University School of Design and Art of Barcelona (formerly called the Eina School of Design and Art and also known simply as EINA) is a private art and design university founded in 1967 in Barcelona. It was one of the first design schools in Spain. Since 1994, it has been attached to the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Ranked as one of the top 50 design schools in Europe by Domus magazine, it has received several awards, including the Fomento de las Artes Decorativas silver medal (1983), the Government of Catalonia's Creu de Sant Jordi (1987), the Habitácola'88 award for the best pedagogical guidance from the ARQ-INFAD and an honorary distinction in the year 2000 National Design Award.

It currently operates as a private non-profit foundation whose primary objective is to teach art and design and promote creativity and cultural debate.

Origins
EINA's origins can be traced back to 1953, when a group of young artists decided to create a new school dedicated to the visual arts, inspired by the Bauhaus. The idea emerged from conversations held at the Artistic Circle in the Plaça de Catalunya, where a group of two hundred artists mobilised to consider "the problem of living art, under the dominance of official art". As a result of these meetings, a small group was authorised to set up a school, exhibitions, and a museum to offer an alternative to the existing institutions. The work conducted by this group led to the creation of the Association of Contemporary Artists, chaired by Alexandre Cirici i Pellicer, in 1956, and the FAD Art School in 1959, but in 1963 the school was forced to close due to a lack of financial backing. In that same year, the ELISAVA school was founded under the auspices of the CICF (Centre of Catholic Influence for Women). Three years later, in 1966, strong ideological disagreements with the management of the CICF led to tensions between the CICF and a group of teachers at the school. The institution's decision to suppress Romà Gubern's cinema classes, against the wishes of the school's directors, led to a definitive rupture and the departure of many of the teaching staff and a group of students on the 20th of September 1966.

Creation
The breakaway group, formed by Albert Ràfols-Casamada, Alexandre Cirici i Pellicer, Federico Correa, Josep Alemany, America Sanchez, Enric Steegmann, Maria Girona and Joan Antoni Blanc, responded by founding a mixed school named EINA in 1967. This group of intellectuals, technicians and artists, who aspired to offer avant-garde art and design studies open to new cultural and humanist criteria, created a school conceived from the outset as a centre dedicated to art and design with a dual purpose that would make it both receptive and active. On the one hand, it would serve as a place to meet and exchange ideas and, on the other, as an educational centre providing professional training. It was funded by contributions (some of which were non-recoverable) either from people directly linked to the school, such as several of its teachers, or from people within Catalonia's cultural sphere, such as Sigfrid Blume and Antoni de Senillosa.



In November 1966, the school rented Casa Manuel Dolcet, a building designed by modernist architect Joan Rubió i Bellver, located at No. 44 Avinguda Vallvidrera. The initial organisational meeting was held in Xavier Miserach's studio on the 22nd of November 1966. This meeting produced the first general programme, which included four courses: two joint courses, one speciality course and one thesis course. The subjects were grouped under three distinct categories: informative (construction technology, graphics, mechanics, 20th-century culture, 20th-century visual arts, literature, cinema and visits and lectures), formative (knowledge of the subject, of form, theory of design, graphics, urban planning, urban sociology and descriptive geometry) and communication (geometric and representational drawing, photography, engraving and perspective).

In January 1967, classes began under the supervision of Albert Ràfols-Casamada. At that time, EINA offered three specialisations: graphic design, industrial design and interior design (a term invented by the EINA team to replace the term “decoration”). The teachers who taught regularly during this first semester were Josep Alemany, Joan Antoni Blanc, Anna Bricall, Alexandre Cirici, Federico Correa, Jordi Gali, Josep Grau-Garriga, Román Gubern, Josep Guinovart, Lluís Izquierdo, Xavier Miserachs, Maria Antònia Pelauzi, Domènec Peraferrer, Enric Poblet, Juan Carlos Pérez Sánchez, Albert Ràfols-Casamada, Manuel Sacristán, Enric Tous and Jaume Verdaguer. The entity's initial capital was increased in 1968 with the formation of the EINA Limited Company, which was set up with individual contributions from different teachers and friends. Subsequently, it became a cooperative (Sociedad Cooperativa Disseny, 1977-1985) and an Association (Associació EINA, 1986-1990).

EINA and the artistic trends of the 60s and 70s
In the 70s, EINA abandoned the traditional teaching scheme based on a rigid syllabus and focused its teaching activities on a continuous programme of experimental workshops, courses and seminars. Its varied artistic activities and ongoing scheduling of cultural events cemented the centre's reputation as one of the gateways to the postmodern thought of the time. Different actions and conceptual manifestations, such as Environament Experimental (1969), Tramesa postal, mail art (1972), Entorn al tronc (1974) and Escultures a l'aire lliure (1974), linked EINA to the most innovative conceptual art trends on the international scene.

In addition to EINA's own activities, in the 1970s, the centre collaborated with other initiatives promoted by intellectuals and artists of the time. One of these initiatives was the College of Philosophy, a philosophy debate and lecture group inspired by the model of the French Collège de Philosophie (1974) and, above all, by the Collège de Sociologie (1937-1939) of Georges Bataile and Michel Leiris, which was created by people with links to EINA such as Xavier Rubert de Ventós, Eugenio Trias, Jordi Llovet and Antoni Vicens.

EINA in the 80s
In 1985, the architect Miquel Espinet took over the school's management, and Albert Ràfols-Casamada became dean. During this decade, the centre's active programme of seminars and workshops continued, complementing its curriculum, and the Faculty of Architecture signed agreements with the Polytechnic University of Catalonia to offer a doctoral course in furniture design, coordinated by Ramón Benedito. In 1987, EINA was recognised by the BEDA (Bureau European Designers Association), and in that same year, it celebrated its 20th anniversary. Among the events held to mark the anniversary was an exhibition at the Palau Robert entitled “EINA, twenty years of avant-garde 1967-1987”. The anniversary coincided with the redesigning of the school's corporate image by the person who had been responsible for it since the school's foundation, America Sanchez.

EINA in the 90s: the constitution of the EINA Foundation
EINA became a Foundation on the 24th of October 1990 and Albert Ràfols-Casamada, Maria Girona i Benet, Miquel Espinet, Antoni Marí i Muñoz, J. E. Lahosa, Josep Emili Hernández Cros, Josep Alemany Barris, Toni Miserachs and Mercè Valeri were appointed as patrons. Today, the foundation's patrons are Josep Bagà, Jordi Colomer, Mario Eskenazi, Roser Gomila, Anton Granero, Miquel Molins, José María Milà, Sonia Mulero, Alicia Núñez, Xavier Olivé, Lluís Simon, Enric Steegmann and Gerard Vilar.

The 1996-1997 academic year commenced under the direction of Toni Miserachs. In November 1998, the school's director resigned, and the course closed under the joint management of Antoni Marí and Oriol Pibernat, pending the approval of the internal statutes that would govern the Foundation in the future. From the following academic year until 2016, Oriol Pibernat and Octavi Rofes took charge of the school as director and deputy director, respectively. In February 2017, the roles of director and deputy director were assigned to Anna Pujadas Matarín and Enric Mas Barceló. In 2019, the school entered a new period under the direction of Pau Solà Morales, with the management of the newly created Eina Idea headed by Manuel Cirauqui.



Inauguration of the Barra de Ferro facility
In 2005, EINA expanded its facilities with the purchase of premises at No. 2 Carrer Barra de Ferro in the La Ribera neighbourhood. The new space was renovated by architects Josep Emili Hernández Cros and Lluís Camí and officially inaugurated in the 2006-2007 academic year.

Until the first semester of the 2021-2022 academic year, the facility hosted theoretical and practical sessions on manual and printed graphic expression techniques, which were then moved to the facility in Carrer del Bosc in Barcelona.

Alignment with the European Higher Education Area
During the 2010-2011 academic year, the school's graduate studies were adapted to align with the new European Higher Education Area. The move saw the existing graduate studies phased out to make way for the new official Bachelor's Degree in Design. In recent years, the academic offer has been expanded to include various master's degrees and postgraduate courses, such as the Master's Degrees in Art and Design Research, Advanced Typography, Photography and Editorial Design and Graphic Design, postgraduate courses in Creative Illustration and specialist courses in Children's Illustration and the Design of Graphic Elements.

EINA Bosc
In 2022, EINA inaugurated a new academic headquarters at No. 2 Carrer del Bosc in Barcelona. On loan from the Government of Catalonia, the building expands the surface area of the centre's workshops, which have moved to the new location, and provides new facilities for learning and research. It also adds to the spaces available for creation, exhibitions and performances. In addition, EINA Bosc will be the setting for a programme of artistic interventions by artists, designers and architects in collaboration with EINA's students, which will be coordinated by EINA Idea and the artist Jordi Colomer.