Designer

Patricia Urquiola

Patricia Urquiola was born in Oviedo, Spain, in 1961. She studied architecture at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and completed her studies at the Politecnico di Milano, graduating in 1989 under the mentorship of Achille Castiglioni.…

Biography

Background

Patricia Urquiola was born in Oviedo, Spain, in 1961. She studied architecture at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and completed her studies at the Politecnico di Milano, graduating in 1989 under the mentorship of Achille Castiglioni. She worked with Vico Magistretti and was Head of Design at Lissoni Associati before founding her own studio in Milan in 2001.

Signature Style

Her work joins industrial product design with architecture, art direction and strategy. It is tactile, colourful and generous, often reinterpreting craft techniques — quilting, weaving, capitonné — with industrial materials and a strong attention to sustainability.

Notable Works

Tufty-Time sofa (2005) and Husk armchair (2011) for B&B Italia
Art Director of Cassina since 2015
Hotels and interiors: Mandarin Oriental Barcelona, Das Stue Berlin, Il Sereno on Lake Como

Legacy

Her work is in the collections of MoMA, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Spain awarded her the Gold Medal for Merit in the Fine Arts and the Order of Isabella the Catholic (2011); she was Dezeen's Interior Designer of the Year in 2023.