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Design Pin-Ups: Rafael de Cárdenas
by Amy Preiser

True design lovers can't limit their aesthetic crushes to furniture and patterns. So we're spotlighting the designers that make us blush. This week, we can't take our eyes off Rafael de Cárdenas.

My crush on Rafael de Cárdenas started with his work. His use of geometrics in a rainbow of colors is so modular and modern while still feeling decidedly warm and dare I say...sexy? Then I saw de Cárdenas. Yep, sexy. Not only is he rocking the smoldering handsome look, he punctuates it with focus-on-my-brains-not-beauty glasses. 

See what I mean about that look? Photo: Tim Barber

Aside from his work as a designer of homes, shops and exhibits, de Cárdenas is presenting his first collection of furniture at New York City's Johnson Trading Gallery this Friday (through June 25). The collection, which pays tribute to Bruce Goff and Frank Lloyd Wright, is built off of simple cubes and triangular or semi-circular forms that come together in amazing ways. And the best part: Not only does it looks like some sort of dreamy lovechild of a rocketship and a robot, it appears to be terrifically functional.

Courtesy of Rafael de Cárdenas

We'll have to wait to see the rest of the pieces until Friday but for now, take in the electric hues of the Cape Town, South Africa men's boutique he designed. Doesn't it make you want to run out and buy loads of cube shelving and spray paint?

A peek inside Unknown Union. Photo: Inge Prins.

It's a staircase, it's storage, it's a doorway... oh, it's classic de Cárdenas. I'll be dreaming in ombré tonight.

A peek inside Unknown Union. Photo: Inge Prins.