Gloria Cortina creates spaces and pieces that are conceived and composed as art in three dimensions. They express ideas and emotions prompted by modernity and myth – ‘a search for the harmony and beauty that can be found in conscious and unconscious imaginings.’

Working from her bases in New York and Mexico City her designs, curations and artistic collaborations overlap dynamically. ‘It’s like a dance, a series of movements’ she explains, ‘the weaving together of a complete three-dimensional living experience by giving and receiving ideas.’

Gloria describes a key part of her approach as being ‘almost like sculpting space and light’. She creates compositions that bring together art, architectural form, and culture to create extremely place-sensitive atmospheres and aesthetics.

Her designs, for clients who have included leaders in the tech and communication sectors and art world figures, flow from her intense interest in the physical, emotional, and creative qualities of spaces, materials, and objects.

Gloria’s inspirations range from Mayan artefacts to Cubism, 20th century Modernist art and architecture, México’s unique Arts and Crafts heritage, and natural and archaeological environments. These, and other sources, give her spatial compositions the character of three-dimensional art.

They often include pieces from her own Collectible Design series and are characterised by the use of beautiful and unusual materials, crafted with exceptional attention to detail by her own team of highly-skilled makers.

Her furniture has been acquired by major cultural institutions such as the Cooper Hewitt and Smithsonian in New York, and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, and it has been featured in publications including Vogue, Architectural Digest, Elle Decoration, Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times.

Gloria’s ability to transcend familiar forms of spatial design reflects her own personal journey. After training at one of the world’s elite creative powerhouses, the Parsons School of Design in New York, she collaborated with outstanding architects who included the Praemium Imperiale-winning Ricardo Legoretta, and she then established her own design studio in 2009. And this journey has come full circle: having begun her design Odyssey at Parsons, she now lectures there.

• 
  Interiors, Modernity & Myth
  Rizzoli, 2022
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  Mexico
  Editorial RM, 2016
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  Infinite Sublime
  2022
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  Ediciones
  2014