New York City and Mexico City, @rafaelsavvy
For years we knew Rafael Prieto simply as the founder of the creative agency Savvy Studio, where he did branding projects and produced a beautifully packaged chocolate line called Casa Bosques. But as he’s made more and more furniture — some for his interiors projects, some for galleries like MASA or Emma Scully, where earlier this year he had his first solo show — it became clear to us he belonged on this list, both as a solo practitioner and as one half of Marrow Project, a burgeoning design studio he shares with artist Loup Sarion.

What is American design to you, and what excites you about it?

According to Chat GPT: American design is a dynamic fusion of functionality, boldness, and cultural diversity. It’s practical, modern, yet approachable.

I know back in the day it was, yet now it’s much more diverse, more artful, less purposeful, and shallow in a beautiful way — it’s crafted and about technique, emotion, and feelings. The purpose is no longer just function. Lately between New York and L.A., there’s a blurring of art and design. And that excites me.

What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? 

A couple of different things. First, a group show with Emma Scully Gallery. I believe it will be a beautiful and poetic show. Then something I am quite excited about but I cannot share much about is this guest house that I’m working on in Mexico City. It’s an extension of the vision as Savvy Studio into CASA BOSQUES. Eleven rooms with a restaurant downstairs. It’s been a process of doing renovation, designing the spaces, the furniture, the lighting, interesting collaborations with different brands across the globe. It’s one of those times where I feel even more personal in my approach. It’s very me, and I hope people will feel very welcomed, comfortable, and peaceful. I’m excited about this, the mix of identity, space, and furniture design.

There’s also the ongoing project that I have with my partner Loup Sarion: Marrow. We’re working on a summer show, different formats of chairs based on our anthropological approach to time and the human body — specifically the back, so this continuation excites me. The project is evolving quite beautifully. Lots of research on materiality and proportions.

What inspires or informs your work in general?

The pursuit of beauty, at least the idea of it, looking for it, acknowledging it, its form, its context, content, and the definition of beauty itself. It’s so ambiguous. What’s pretty for some is ugly for others. The openness of it inspires me, attracts me, and makes me curious about finding new forms of beauty, ones that exist yet perhaps I wasn’t able to appreciate them before.