Andreu World is a global manufacturer and leader in sustainable design, with a portfolio of high-quality seating and tables reflective of its industrial design culture, and passion for the details, for excellence, and for good design. Founded in 1955, Andreu World is a family-owned, global brand informed by tradition and craft, innovation and sustainability, striving to be a world leader in seating and tables that are made for a healthy, sustainable lifestyle that have a positive impact on the planet. For 70 years, its growth has been informed by its fundamental principles, its Spanish culture, and its working attitude and relationship with wood.
“We have had wood in our company DNA since 1955, which means its values are part of our culture and sustainability story. We have developed into one of the leaders of sustainable furniture seating and tables from a small wood cabinet company with 33 stores around the world, exporting to more than 90 different countries,” said Cristina Salavert, communication manager at Andreu World. “This is an important year for us, because it is our 70th anniversary and we are committed not only to the environment, but also the people. Design is a means or a way to do things and make products that help people live better, it is a tool for people to deliver better solutions.”
For Andreu World, wood is in its roots. It has largely defined the brand and its ability to remain true to its fundamental principles while yielding and adapting over the years as the company has evolved into the award-winning furnishings manufacturer it has become today. To Andreu World, wood is far more than a material, but a way of viewing the world, a perspective and relationship to the larger global landscape both natural and built. It is an expansive view that invites an exploration of innovation and technology in a way that increases the potential of wood, and has led to its zero-waste, carbon-neutral stance. It underpins its industrial culture, and the brand seeks to reduce its environmental footprint in all aspects of the product process, which has led to its entire product catalog being recognized as Cradle to Cradle certified, a first in the furniture industry.
“We are FSC-certified with all of the wood coming from reforested forests with a complete chain of custody that starts from the tree. We have also achieved total circularity, we are Cradle to Cradle, meaning all the products are ready for a circular economy, and we are also zero-waste and carbon neutral, which is an important part for us,” Salavert said.
“We started in the home and the workspace, expanding into hospitality and for the outdoors, because our products also cross over with the comfort of interiors for more public spaces. We collaborate in conversation with the designer, interior designer, and architect community, and believe that we should produce wood designs in a timeless way, that last 20-to-30 years in our catalog while also having a plan that allows you to refurbish, reuse, or replace the products that you have for a restaurant or in your home. It is designed to have a second life; this is our commitment, to practice circular economy,” Salavert added.
Based in València, Andreu World is deeply influenced by its Mediterranean culture, located on the southeast coast of Spain. València, which is a designated UNESCO Creative City in Design and World Design Capital 2022, is considered a place of creativity and a prominent hub in the global design landscape. The major port city features a mixture of historic and modern structures that coexist with the natural environment, and its creative community has given rise to a unique design culture that has led to its recent designation for design. Much of its urban infrastructure is intentional in its relationship to the surrounding natural environment, and there is an emphasis in the essential role design plays in the process of co-creation, of social participation, and integration of policy making to create a more efficient, resilient, cooperative, and sustainable city.
For Andreu World, social participation is at the heart of the intersection of sustainability and culture, where working with designers as co-creators and collaborators is a means of expression and a way of communicating their values through unique perspectives, and where after-dinner conversations are traditionally considered the best time of day.
“For us, beauty is achieving the right form, the right design, the right expression, in order to make products that can be good for people and good for wellbeing. We think you need to assert beauty,” Salavert said.
NEOCON 2025
Andreu World debuted its expanded showroom in THE MART during NeoCon 2025, introducing its latest collections and hosting designer discussions during the three-day event. The showroom, which was announced October 2024, more than doubled its previous footprint in the building, relocating its space to the third floor in the 20,000-square-foot suite adjacent to Haworth. The new showroom serves as the company’s central base for regional operations and is considered a landmark flagship, designed in-house as a celebration of its rich heritage and collaborations with designers like Philippe Starck, Alfredo Häberli, Benjamin Hubert, Piergiorgio Cazzaniga, and Patricia Urquiola, according to the press release.
“NeoCon 2025 marks two key milestones for us, celebrating 70 years of Andreu World, and expanding our footprint in the U.S. market,” said Jesús Llinares, chief executive officer of Andreu World. “We’re proud to bring our forward-thinking designs to a larger audience this year, thanks to our continued partnership with THE MART. As we look ahead, we are determined to continue our work toward a more sustainable industry through collaboration and innovative design.”
The showroom, which reflects the brand’s heritage, identity, and mission—and designed in continuity with its existing showrooms across the globe—features renewable resources and sustainable materials in a spatial layout that fosters a playful, exploratory experience. Andreu World also hosted presentations by noted designers Benjamin Hubert, on the new Velo Chair and Triada Lift Occasional collection; and Patricia Urquiola, on the new Nina Lounge, Brezal Series, and Bolete Armchair.
Andreu World was recognized with a Best of NeoCon 2025 Silver Award for its Next Executive designed by Piergiorgio Cazzaniga; Gold Award for its Velo Chair designed by Benjamin Hubert; Gold Award for its Brandy Barstool designed by Lievore Altherr Molina; Gold Award for its Garzetta Table designed by Afteroom; and a Silver Award for its Bolete Armchair, Gold Award for its Nina Lounge, Gold Award for its Bolete Lounge Outdoor, Silver Award for its Bolete Lounge Outdoor Table, and a Sustainability Award for its Valencia Stool, designed by Patricia Urquiola.
MEET THE DESIGNER: PATRICIA URQUIOLA
Born in Oviedo, Spain, Patricia Urquiola is a prolific and influential designer, architect, and art director whose work is informed by deep curiosity, empathetic connections, and fierce dedication to sustainability in design in all its aspects. Over the years, her work has explored mobility, workplace, and production cycles, the links between craftsmanship and industrial research, innovation and technology, economics and politics, color theory and light, ecology and sustainability, and the biological, chemical, and micro-organism processes that underpin the global ecosystem. She is an educator, a speaker, and a creative who drives the companies she works with to upcycle and reimagine entire processes, and believes in a design approach that finds unexpected connection between the familiar and unexplored, merging the humanistic, the technological, and the social that address challenges and break prejudices.
Urquiola, who studied architecture and design at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and Politecnico di Milano, considers herself both Spanish and Milanese, deeply influenced by both places where she has lived and worked for decades. Milan, which is a designated UNESCO Creative City in Literature, is also home to her studio, Studio Urquiola, which she founded in 2001 with her partner, Alberto Zontone and operates at the intersection of industrial product design, architecture, art direction, and strategy consulting. She has spent time as an assistant lecturer to Achille Castiglioni and Eugenio Bettinelli in Milan and Paris, worked with Vico Magistretti and Maddalena de Padova, and been the Creative Director of Cassina since 2015.
“I have had a long career working with people I like, I think I am very lucky in that way. I am also a Spanish girl from the north of Spain who moved to Madrid to study, and then went out of my comfort zone and ended up in Italia, in Milano, studying architecture and design,” Urquiola said. “I grew my roots in some ways, and have been in Milano for many years where I grew a family and I grew a big studio, working with my husband.”
Urquiola has worked with Italian brands and international companies, such as Andreu World, Agape, Baccarat, Boffi, De Padova, Flos, Haworth, Louis Vuitton, and Mutina, to name a few, and her architectural work can be found across residential, hospitality, commercial, and retail spaces, like Six Senses Rome, Il Sereno in Como, Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Barcelona, and Cassina IXC Aoyama in Tokyo.
“Things became more complex as I became the art director of Cassina, which is a company of Haworth Group. I worked with Haworth for 12 years, which is beautiful, because I had my work in Europe and my work in America, which was really an evolving work, really helping them not to do products, but to help them understand the place—which, we need to bring young American designers together, create those connections, have their voices be heard and believe more in the industry,” Urquiola said.
“For my roots, one of my teachers was Achille Castiglioni, who designed a few pieces for Haworth. He always said you have to have a phenomenal element of the project, that thing you don’t have any compromise on; all the other things around it can compromise, because they are adaptive, but there is one phenomenon in the project that is the driver, that gives orientation. That is your aim, and I believe a lot in that,” Urquiola added.
Her work has been exhibited across the world in places like the Museum of Modern Art, or MoMA, in New York; Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris; Design Museum in Monaco; Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein; Victoria & Albert Museum in London; Design Museum in Zurich; and the Stedelijk Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Amsterdam—and has been recognized with the Medalla de Oro al Mérito en las Bellas Artes by the Spanish Government and Order of Isabella the Catholic by His Majesty The King of Spain Juan Carlos I. Her portfolio is extensive, a body of work that reflects a depth and breadth of creativity and intentional thought, with throughlines of building empathetic connections, establishing the fundamental element of a project, and thinking of spaces and objects in their relationships to people and the planet.
“I try to have a conversation with the company I am working for, something I can do with someone that I will not do with another one, because the company has to offer something special to the conversation. For example, [with Andreu World], they work a lot in wood, and they are fantastic. We had a very lucky circumstance, but at a certain moment they wanted to work with me in plastic, and it was uncomfortable,” Urquiola said. “So, I said, ‘If you work with me, we do bioplastics,’ and they listened to me. For me, that is a big emotion, because it means people listen to you and find a solution to do something you are asking them.”
In 2011, Urquiola created a family of wooden seats for Andreu World known as Nub inspired from a childhood image and “the fascination for the artisanal knowledge of the women of her city,” according to the company. Urquiola then collaborated with the company on Nuez and in 2021, introduced the Nuez Lounge BIO® armchair which leveraged Pure ECO 100 percent recycled plastics. The designer-brand collaboration has also led to the 3D-printed, biodegradable, Valencia Stool, whose profits have been dedicated to go toward the rebuilding of València following the severe flooding in October 2024, known as the DANA disaster, or Depresión Aislada en Niveles Altos.
Urquiola noted the stool was deeply inspired by the emotional and physical impact of the disaster, shown in its deformed appearance, while balanced by its interwoven texture that speaks to the resilient spirit of community. And her latest work with Andreu World also includes the Nina Lounge Chair, which bridges bioplastics and materiality, and Bolete, which is inspired in part by mushroom forms and other plant-based processes.
“I am attentive to microbiology, I am attentive to the botanic, I am attentive of structures to understand how many other ways construction can be done, how many other ways of alive presences surround us that are a part of our presence in the world. We are not the center; we are part of a much more acentric conversation with the world. We are very good at problem solving, but at the same time we create a lot of problems,” Urquiola said. “We have to be much more open; to open the window to things about many of our problems in a larger window, which includes other presences, other cultures, and other intelligences.”
Earlier this year at La Biennale di Archittura di Venezia 2025, or Venice Biennale of Architecture, the team of Beatriz Colomina, international architectural historian and professor at Princeton University; Roberto Kolter, a professor of microbiology, emeritus, at Harvard Medical School; Mark Wigley, architect, professor, and Dean Emeritus of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation; Geoffrey West, a theoretical physicist and author of “Scale”; and Urquiola exhibited “The Other Side of the Hill,” which drew on the similarities of microbial and human populations to rethink a shared future.
“Bacteria have been in the world much longer than us and when they are in a situation like us [exponential human growth followed by significant projected decline] they know how to create architecture, keep more together, lower down the presence in a much more intelligent way than us. We were saying, ‘Why don’t we represent this argument and analyze how bacteria does it?’ It was a very interesting concept,” Urquiola said.
“Design is to be open, to not make too many assumptions of what it is, and to get to the questions about how we live and how we have to live in the future. What about the processes, what about the materials we are using, what is it asking for, can we evolve it, what are the cohesive elements that we can use, what is the collectivity, how can we be perceptive of other communities? Design is also beauty, finding new ways of beauty, because it moves and the sincerity, simplicity—or complexity—of a new solution can give us that connection to something deeper that could be beauty itself. It is understanding the inside of it, not just the superficial side, that it moves us and is always moving,” Urquiola added.
First published in Great Lakes By Design: Crafted Lodging, Volume 9, Issue 3
Text: R.J. Weick