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Patricia Urquiola
3 actieve items
Patricia Urquiola was born in 1961 in Oviedo, in the Asturias region of northern Spain. She began her architectural studies at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid before relocating to Milan, where she completed her degree at the Politecnico di Milano in 1989 under the supervision of Achille Castiglioni - a mentor whose insistence on the relationship between object and user would shape her entire practice.
Her early professional years were spent in close proximity to the Italian design establishment. From 1990 to 1996 she ran the product development office at De Padova, working alongside Vico Magistretti, before moving to Lissoni Associati, where she served as head of design until 2001. These years gave her a command of materials, manufacturing processes, and the particular rhythms of Italian furniture production that few designers outside Italy acquire.
In 2001 she opened Studio Urquiola in Milan, and the work that followed quickly positioned her among the most-commissioned designers in Europe. The Fjord armchair for Moroso (2002), with its cupped, almost cradle-like seat, brought her international attention. The Antibodi chaise for Moroso (2006), its surface patterned with fabric petals, became one of the decade's most reproduced images of contemporary design. The Caboche pendant for Foscarini, designed with Eliana Gerotto, suspended hundreds of transparent acrylic spheres to scatter light across surfaces in a way that felt simultaneously technical and sensuous.
Urquiola's practice resists easy categorisation. Her work for Moroso tends toward tactile softness and biomorphic form; her interiors for hotels including Il Sereno on Lake Como and the Mandarin Oriental in Barcelona operate in a more restrained register. Since 2015 she has served as Art Director at Cassina, where she has guided the reissue and reinterpretation of the house's Le Corbusier, Perriand, and Rietveld archive alongside new commissions.
Her collaborators read like a survey of Italian and European manufacturing culture: B&B Italia, Flos, Kettal, Kartell, cc-tapis, Kvadrat, Haworth, Glas Italia, Mutina, and Gandia Blasco, among many others. She has also worked outside the furniture sector with Louis Vuitton on the Objets Nomades travel accessories series and with BMW on vehicle interior concepts.
Her work has entered the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Vitra Design Museum, and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. In 2011 the Spanish government awarded her the Medalla de Oro al Mérito en las Bellas Artes and the Order of Isabella the Catholic. She received the Compasso d'Oro, Italy's oldest and most rigorous industrial design prize, and in 2023 was named Interior Designer of the Year at the Dezeen Awards.
At auction, Urquiola's work appears primarily at Swedish houses, with Bukowskis Stockholm and Stockholms Auktionsverk leading in volume. Chairs and lighting dominate, consistent with the items that moved most freely through the European design market of the 2000s and 2010s. The Caboche pendant has appeared at Hagelstam with a hammer price of SEK 5,429, and a Nub sofa for Andreu World achieved SEK 4,800 at Stockholms Auktionsverk Magasin 5. Secondary market prices reflect practical collector interest rather than speculative investment - her work trades as quality contemporary design rather than as rare collectible.