Rafael de Cardenas

After an architecture education at UCLA and a stint designing menswear for Calvin Klein, Rafael de Cardenas founded the interiors studio Architecture at Large in 2006. Since then, the Cuban-born, Manhattan-raised designer’s neon fingerprints have been everywhere, from the Op Art–inspired alternative art spaces he designed in New York, Miami, Athens and beyond for OHWOW gallery, to interiors for the likes of Parker Posey and Jen Brill. In the spring of 2011, de Cardenas released with New York’s Johnson Trading Gallery his first collection of furniture — geometric armoires, benches, and consoles, all built around the rotation, mirroring, and multiplication of shapes. The necklace he’s made in collaboration with Architecture at Large’s lead designer Robert Passov is the first piece of jewelry ever created by the studio.