• Name: Rafael de Cárdenas
    Profession: Architect and interior designer.
    Location: New York
    Age: 46

  • Questionnaire: Rafael de Cárdenas

    Describe yourself in a single sentence?
    – I write love songs.


    What was your last thought before falling asleep last night?
    – The Round Stone Barn in Hancock, Massachusetts. I visited it yesterday...it was built in 1826 and is the only circular barn ever built by Shakers.


    What kind of person do you want to be?
    – Every day I become kinder and more confident.


    What are you working on right now?
    – Many residential projects, a store in Beijing, a small hotel in a 19th-century villa in Italy…my own 300-year-old, pre-revolutionary house in the Berkshire hills.


    Talent, is that something you’re born with or something you can learn?
    – You can learn anything! Talent is within anyone’s grasp.


    What do you do when nobody looks?
    – What everybody else does….


    If you could give your younger self any advice, what would that be?
    – Loving yourself is more important than pleasing others.


    What do you dream about?
    – Clouds, from both sides.


    What is your favourite book and why?
    – Dave Hickey’s Air Guitar, specifically the essay “Unbreak My Heart, an Overture.”


    What is your most twisted fantasy?
    – I can’t tell you that, but I would have loved to be a backup dancer on the Blonde Ambition tour.


    How do you decide when a project is worth realizing?
    – Anyone’s wish is worth realizing.


    Name your favourite restaurant?
    – L’orée de la forêt, about an hour and change from Paris! It’s a gem.

  • Photography: Lucka Ngô, New York, June, 2021.