Process to cooperative, our step towards a more sustainable world

10.11.2020
Text: Agnès Simon Udina
Illustration: Martí Ferré Carreras

We can happily say that we are already a cooperative! After sixteen years as a trading company, Bildi has taken the step, not only philosophically, but also legally. In fact, we could say that we have always shared the cooperative spirit and the ideals of the social economy, and they are part of our DNA and have always been part of our practice.

As I write these lines I remember a talk at the Blanc Festival, where we were asked if we had a commune... it was a moment when we were living in a farmhouse and sharing space with the studio; we were seven designers in a space and environment that was much more than a standard design studio, more than a typical company. In fact, when I look back on our career, I think that we have always been like that, I mean, we are like that.

We have always shared some of the common values of cooperatives such as: self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity. Other values are also shared such as honesty, transparency, responsibility and the vocation for transformation and social responsibility in design. We put all these and others into practice through different cooperative principles such as: voluntary and open membership; democratic management by members; economic participation of members; autonomy and independence; education, training and information; cooperation between cooperatives; interest in the community.

We are also very grateful to the cooperative world: the act of receiving, the help and advice that is so easily shared. It is a very comfortable and pleasant flow, which you feel moves back and forth and which is carried out by creating new relationships, proposals and even projects. It is a fair, easy and honest giving and receiving.

For our part, we have the opportunity to contribute in the cooperative world as well: making the value of design and communication visible in a natural way. Too often the cooperative world has a negative attitude towards the design world so that it associates it with certain elites and economic powers that are opposed to the values of the social economy. Now, the cooperative world must realise the importance of an image or design that matches the project, helps to better explain who it is, what it does and why it does it, and to put it in value in the eyes of the world.

Another world is possible and we want to design it together... With energy and hope we use our tool, which is design, for social and responsible purposes, looking for the growth of all and the improvement of the territory and society.

This is our vision that we share and we want to share it with you, with the world.