(Spain) – Interior designer and Editor, Co-founder and Vice-president of Santa & Cole, Nina Masò dies aged 66.

In 1982 Masò met the designer Gabriel Ordeig Cole. Together they began a personal and professional relationship, carrying out various lighting and interior design projects for emblematic Barcelona bars and nightclubs such as Boliche, El Café del Sol, Cibeles, the Al Dente restaurant and the Sísísí bar.

In 1983, Masó opened the Paspoc shop in Cardedeu where she offered her personal selection of interior design products and gifts. In 1985, together with Javier Nieto Santa and Cole, they founded Santa & Cole, design editions. This was a new concept in Spain at the time, applying publishing to the field of industrial design, and seeking to promote a warm light that was not typical for the time.

Since 1985, Masó was the editor at Santa & Cole, and the soul of the company. She designed all the showrooms and stands for the main international trade fairs in the sector. She collaborated with Cole in the creation of the Sleeping Beauty lamp, a revolutionary proposal that coloured fluorescence.

Masó was an ambassador for the idea of warm and welcoming light, “a friendly light because good light makes you better. It’s about making people look beautiful in the light”. Her vocation led her to travel around Spain and abroad defending this light in a travelling presentation inspired by García Lorca’s La Barraca, which she made her own. Masó led other projects as an interior designer, including the Embassy of Local Democracy in Sarajevo, promoted by Barcelona City Council in 1996, the Telefónica Corporate University in La Roca (Barcelona) in 2007 and the Casa Bonay hotel in Barcelona. Her last major project was the restoration of the building that houses the headquarters of Santa & Cole, in Parc de Belloch (Barcelona). Her hallmark as an editor was based on a sensitive and warm look at the environment where objects are the protagonists.

Nina Masò, Barcelona, 14 April 1956 – 27 February 2023. 

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