Alfonso Milá

Both born in 1924, and fellow schoolmates since they were ten years old, Federico Correa and Alfonso Milá obtained their doctorates in architecture at the University of Barcelona.

In 1953, the two established their own architectural bureau, further entwining a friendly and professional relationship that has made their names inseparable. They projected with excellence as architects, interior and industrial designers. And they excelled in teaching and dissemintating both Barcelona and Spain’s creative work in the international debate on architecture and good design.

Rationality was their main trait, always bearing in mind the users’ satisfaction. "We work with the same priorities that we set for our architectural projects: rationalising".

Their work draws inspiration from the lessons on the Modern Movement taught by Josep Maria Jujol, Francesc Ràfols and José Antonio Coderch, with whom they collaborated for several years as apprentices, and from the architecture of northern Italy.

The Correa-Milá style was distinctive for its peculiar form of intervention right from its beginnings. Some examples of their rational interpretation of luxury and human warmth are their houses in Cadaqués, with built-in furniture; the interior design of legendary premises in the history of Barcelona's modernity, still active and intact, such as the restaurants Flash-Flash (1969) or Il Giardinetto (FAD Interior Design Award 1974 and 2011); the seating and tables of the Reno restaurant (1961), and the Bach lamp (1970) or the Barceloneta armchair (1953), the latter reissued in 2023 by Santa & Cole.

Renowned for their large-scale projects, such as the Olympic Ring of Montjuïc, Correa and Milá confessed their difficulties in the field of furniture and lighting design, whose process they described as 'eternal'. "Architecture has a fixed date and design does not." This led them to invite the designer Miguel Milá, Alfonso's younger brother, to join them in this task. With him they created, for instance, the Diana lamp (1993) for the office of the Mayor of Barcelona, Pasqual Maragall, edited and published in Santa & Cole's catalogue.

Correa and Milá continue to be the standard-bearers of the amiable face and human warmth of architecture and design.