Annie Fajardo From Folch Studio Talks Acid House, Barcelona’s Hottest Creative Hub
Barcelona, January 2020. Transmedia and branding agency Folch Studio inaugurates Acid House, a cultural and creative Hub for business innovation in the heart of Poblenou, the city’s creative and tech nucleus. Fast-forward through a global pandemic, it’s July and we had the chance to sit with Annie Fajardo, Social Editor and Curator and Folch Studio and Acid House, to talk about building Acid House, the typeface developed by Folch Studio and the future of creative collaboration locally and internationally.
Photos by José Hevia
D: First of all congratulations on launching the space! This definitely looks like an exciting new step both for Folch and the hub, but also for Poblenou.
A: Yes! Folch was previously also located in Poblenou and it is a really interesting area for business and innovation, that’s why we wanted to stay here. If you look around the neighbourhood you can find many agencies, creative hubs, innovative coffee shops. For the activities that we do here - initiatives promoting creative people around the neighbourhood like the Thursday Pill - it’s been a very nourishing space.
D: Could you walk me through the process of “building” Acid House? What led to the idea and what was the process of making it a reality?
A: As an agency, the idea was to start developing other types of products that were not directly linked to the studio. We wanted to explore and produce education, business, technology, design and culture through an innovative project that was bigger than the agency itself. That’s when Rafa Martinez (COO & Head of Brand Strategy) and Albert Folch (Creative Director & Founder) decided to create this hub to bring everything together and develop collaborations. As far as the space is concerned, when Arquitectura-G, our architects, started remodelling the space they came up with the idea of creating The Square, a room dedicated to education. From there emerged the Window Gallery, which is a pop-up exhibition space (currently hosting Adidas), a Nomad cafeteria and also the offices of Off festival upstairs.
D: What does the House aspire to be in your opinion?
A: Acid House represents a new way of thinking, mixing three things together: business, education and creativity; All in one place. Normally you go to a different place for each of these three. Albert and Rafa have been teaching in Elisava for many years and they wanted to do it in a different, non-traditional way. Here we gathered the three together, building projects around that union.
D: What was your role in developing the house? How is it like to curate it?
A: Well, I personally promote the creative scene that we have here in Barcelona, collaborating with a lot of artists and designers. However we have also started exploring the possibility of including the international creative scene as well. Although we have a space to do that physically, we’ve also begun bringing some of it on social media. What is going on in the world today gave us an extra chance to create a digital platform and gather creative minds online.
D: Design school Elisava, White House, Nomad Coffee, OFFF Festival and Adidas share your roof. How did all these brands, agencies and institutions come together? Was it the result of an organic evolution?
A: A thing I’ve learned from Rafa and Albert is that in the agency, if we need to use or do something, we should do it by our own initiative. And this is how White Horse, our production company started actually. I think this is how everything has been constructing itself in a way.
D: Acid House is also the name of the music genre of the 90s. How does it relate to the identity of the space?
A: I mean, we didn’t want to fall directly into this aesthetic. Of course, we need to recognize the name and we like to play around it but it’s not necessarily a strong piece of the identity. Everything started with creating an identity from the typeface itself. And we have managed to come up with something else, beyond the resonance of the music genre.
D: Could you talk to me about the typeface developed by Folch Studio?
A: Well, we wanted an identity that did not rely only on the smiley face of acid house as a music genre. The idea was to create something unique to us that we could use to build on any type of asset that represented our values. The typeface is our kind of trademark. If you look around you’ll see that everything in here is written in Acid Grotesk.
D: Tell me a little bit about the mixes on Soundcloud and music lives on IG.
A: It’s still in the works but something that we’ve been exploring in a lot of projects.We have a strong belief in music as an art and everything that stems from it like production companies. Music is part of a community that starts in the neighbourhood but we want to bring it to a world stage.
D: Soon after the inauguration of Acid House, the pandemic arrived. What was the effect on these very first months of the project?
A: I don't think that a lot changed in terms of goals but as for everyone and everywhere, we had to adapt to this new reality: we have to be present and relevant. For us education is super important but we have to rethink the format, we’re now looking for the best new way to deliver it. One thing that is certain is that because of the pandemic a lot of focus went to social media.
D: I noticed that you recently started creating content on Tik Tok. How do you create a space for you on this the platform, as a creative agency?
A: We have always been building spaces that are not physical and even more so since the pandemic. Creating on Tis Tok is just exploring different types of communication. As a studio we want to be out there. I don’t think that many agencies or people from the design world are trying to use Tik Tok and for us it’s is a way of showing our flexibility and openness to trying out different platforms.
D: You offer postgraduates transmitting the newest, most avant-garde practices in the field. How important is this side of Acid House in your opinion?
A: We do not want to transmit the education we’re used to receiving in Art and Design Schools. Here we mix Elisava’s established experience with ours. We want to question creative education as it’s taught so far, in terms of wording, methods as well as spacial experience. It’s a starting point of giving a different type of education where you can find a lot of different things at the same time.
