Julia Pettersson Salom and the Search for Beauty.

Our goal is to spark conversation and to question where your home ends and the street begins. One of our most recent projects in Barcelona, the Eix Verd on Carrer Consell de Cent, is the perfect example. All of a sudden, we started seeing people coming down with their placemats, their porcelain plates and their salad bowls and eating there. That is Urbidermis. You can do that because there is a table, some benches, a low light… because you feel comfortable. If we have streets full of cars, with impersonal lighting not designed for pedestrians, that simply does not exist.

In fact, a neighbour reupholstered a piece of Miguel Milá’s urban furniture. She did it because she thought of it as part of her home — which is incredible.

At first, I was genuinely surprised. What is a prosperous city? Is it a city with green spaces, squares, pedestrian streets — or one full of cars, pollution, very tall buildings and impersonal lampposts? It is clear that the city of the future must be centred on people, but change is always difficult and moving forward brings controversy.

It is not just about improving one street, but about how you improve the parallel streets or how you improve public transport. You need to offer global solutions.

It is also true that Rome was not built in a day, and urbanism is nothing but a reflection of society, of what is happening and of where we are heading. Education is still very much needed.

It is important to teach people to look, to appreciate things. There is an excellent article in El País called “How materialism can save us from consumerism.” That is exactly what I mean — teaching people to love objects. Just as you shape your intellectual culture through the books you read, the films you watch, the music you listen to, why not extend this to a material culture? What objects surround you? What is the first thing you touch when you wake up? Which toothbrush do you use every morning?

We can only think about the kind of city we want when our basic needs are met. Only then can we think about how to improve things. I really like the phrase: “Privilege comes with responsibility.” So, if my basic needs are covered, I have a duty to consume better — there is no opting out.

The power and responsibility of companies is undeniable. The world can be changed through them. And it is worth taking a bit longer and doing it better rather than trying to get it done by tomorrow. Reflection is key to driving real change.

If as a brand you know clearly who you are, who you want to be and what you want to contribute — and you are consistent and perseverant — you are unlikely to go wrong. Consistency and reflection are always good advisors.

I think both elements, rather than competing, can feed each other. The bottom line matters, and rightly so. If something is profitable and generates returns, it will motivate you to keep doing it, and it will last.

Santa & Cole and Urbidermis are proof that you can do things well and still generate profit. We have produced in the same way for forty years, and almost all of our production happens within 200 km of our headquarters. It is a reflection we made from the beginning and it has held over time. We do not have our own factory either. That makes you more vulnerable — because you do not depend on yourself and forces you to have very strong logistics and operations — but it also makes you free. In our case, it gives us enormous flexibility when choosing materials for our products.

We drew up a five-year responsibility plan and every year we assess ourselves against the objectives we set and the results we have achieved. It is important to measure your own ambitions — it helps you make better decisions. At the moment, we are in the middle of analysing the life cycle of our products, and it is fascinating.

Sometimes, not knowing something means you do not change things that neither add value nor make sense. Other times the opposite happens: you discover you are doing incredible things without being aware of it. Looking to the near future, our main challenge is to find an ethical and responsible way to integrate the vast number of technological advances that have become available to us in recent years.

Doing things well is one thing; knowing how to communicate them is quite another. Communication must be generous. The best way to build quality communities is to hand the microphone to people who help you question things and generate dialogue. Nothing is one-directional any more, and we have to make that our ally — because it is fascinating.

In the case of Urbidermis and Santa & Cole, we decided to create a publishing house where we publish books related to art and design. The project started in 1991 as a way to generate context around the product we were selling, and it has evolved since. This year, for example, we will reprint a book called El canon de Belloch — a scientific study of the most suitable tree species for the city. That in itself is an extraordinary communication tool.

I am fascinated by Filmin’s communication. Going into their Instagram profile is like being hugged. I also found the ASKET campaign very brave — they removed all their product photos and replaced them with copy like “This is just another white basic t-shirt”. Another great example is AESOP: when you see their art direction, you can smell it. You do not know how, but you can.

I think it is fine to push the boundaries, without trying to be disruptive every single moment. The great thing about agencies is that, working with multiple brands at once and understanding different ways of doing things, they have a broader knowledge base and can bring ideas and reflection. If you want to go from 0 to 100, you might not get there. But perhaps you move from 0 to 30, and that is already progress — that is change. If you prompt the person in front of you to ask a question they had never asked before, or you propose a new perspective, that will always change things.

I regret not having been braver, not trusting my first instinct more and defending more forcefully what I believed to be true. Even though I love my work, there are processes that, because of pressure or my own high standards, I did not enjoy as much as I would have liked. The important thing is to enjoy it.

I think we will appeal more and more to emotion, and trust in each brand’s own judgement will take centre stage.

It will be more global and less collection-based; the product will lose ground to the imaginary. In the end, we are people talking to other people, and we must never lose sight of that. It is the only way to create a more genuine and comfortable kind of intimacy.