Here, we ask designers to take a selfie and give us an inside look at their life.
Occupation: Interior Design
Instagram: @studio_santos__
Hometown: Miami, Florida
Studio Location: Miami, Florida
Describe what you make: Spaces and experiences that feel personal because they are. Through Studio Santos, we work across interior design and creative direction. Through S. Lab, we create events and hospitality experiences.
The most important thing you’ve designed to date: A sense of trust. Everything else is just its physical form.
Describe the problem your work solves: People often know how they want a space or experience to feel before they know what it should look like. We turn that feeling into something real, then handle the thousand decisions required to make it feel effortless.
Describe the project you are working on now: Studio Santos is modernizing a 1930s Key West-style home and beginning the restoration of a century-old August Geiger residence in Miami — a defining early Miami architect who helped shape Carl Fisher’s vision. The house comes from a Miami before central air and refrigeration, with extraordinary original detailing and a Pompeian identity.
At S. Lab, we are coming off Cannes Lions earlier this summer, where we produced a creator salon and oversaw two other activations. Next comes football season: food, music, team spirit, and a little chaos. Go team! Go sports!
A new or forthcoming project we should know about: This fall, Studio Santos’ creative direction for VaynerX’s new headquarters comes to life in Hudson Yards. A workplace should do more than look good. It should help people think, connect, and feel part of something.
What you absolutely have to have in your studio: A fully stocked Martie snack bar, my medicine-ball desk chair, too many USB-C chargers, and our dog, Mia, treating the floor like a tasting menu.
What you do when you’re not working: The work leaks into everything: doom-scrolling 1stDibs, walking the neighborhood with Juan and Mia, planning the next escape, and turning dinner into a production. I am good at finding inspiration and bad at sitting still!
Sources of creative envy (dead or alive): Maison Royère, for bringing Jean Royère’s archive into the present while preserving its authenticity; the artisans at Lesage, for taking craft to an almost unreasonable level; and Ricardo Bofill, for seeing an abandoned cement factory and making it a whole world. They all went all the way.
The distraction you want to eliminate: The feeling that every email or text is urgent.
Concrete or marble? Marble, especially when it feels like it’s still becoming something else.
High-rise or townhouse? High-rise. I like thinking in the clouds.
Remember or forget? Remember selectively.
Aliens or ghosts? Aliens. They’ve made some great designs on Earth so far!
Dark or light? Indirect lighting at all times, arguably too dim. Does that mean dark or does that mean light?
