People often ask where my interest in design comes from.
The truth is that I don’t remember discovering design.
I remember growing up in a family where creativity was simply part of daily life.
My mother was an artist.
My grandfather was an architect who painted.
My grandmother worked with textiles and needlework.
Music was always present.
Ideas were always in motion.
Looking back, I realize that what shaped me most was not a single lesson or profession, but an environment where creating felt as natural as breathing.
I grew up in the same building as my grandparents from my father’s side. Some of my earliest memories are tied to their apartment.
I can still picture the Cesca chairs lined up against the stainless steel countertops in my grandmother’s pantry.
A large brown velvet sectional in the living room.
Small lacquered coffee tables that seemed impossibly sophisticated to me at the time.
A leather reclining chair that felt distinctly Brazilian.
I didn’t know who designed any of these pieces. I didn’t know they belonged to a broader design language. They were simply part of the scenery of everyday life.
Years later, I find myself drawn to many of those same forms. Not because they are iconic, but because they became part of my visual vocabulary long before I knew I had one.
The funny thing about taste is that it often arrives before awareness.
Long before we learn how to describe what we love, we are absorbing it.
A few floors above was our apartment.
My mother treated our home as an extension of her creative world.
There were books everywhere.
Art books.
Magazines.
Catalogues.
Stacks of visual references accumulating long before the internet gave us an endless stream of images.
I remember a set of sliding doors she designed herself. They had off-white lacquered frames and amber translucent panels with a textured surface that transformed throughout the day as the light shifted.
I couldn’t tell you exactly what material they were made of.
I only know that decades later, I can still picture the way they transformed when sunlight passed through them.
The house was full of experiments.
Oil paints.
Pastels.
Embroidery.
Textiles.
Sketches.
Sculptures.
Materials waiting to become something else.
My mother moved effortlessly between mediums. One month she was painting. Another she was designing jewelry. Then embroidery, patchwork, sculpture, furniture, or something entirely new.
If she imagined something, she found a way to make it.
Sometimes she learned the technique herself.
Sometimes she found an artisan who could help bring it to life.
Custom making things was simply normal.
I learned early that if something didn’t exist, you could create it.
What I understand now is that I was not only being exposed to objects. I was being exposed to process.
To curiosity.
To experimentation.
To the belief that ideas are worth pursuing.
My grandmother on my mother’s side expressed her creativity differently. She worked with textiles, needlework, and handmade pieces for the home. My grandfather approached the world through architecture and painting.
Everyone seemed to be making something.
No one sat me down and explained design.
No one taught me about composition, proportion, materiality, or atmosphere.
Those lessons arrived quietly through observation.
Through rooms.
Through objects.
Through people who believed that making things mattered.
Today, when I design a home, I often think about the objects someone will remember decades from now.
Not necessarily the most expensive pieces.
Not the most impressive.
The ones that become woven into a life.
A chair where conversations always happened.
A bookshelf filled over many years.
A lamp that stayed on long after everyone else had gone to bed.
A door that caught the afternoon light in a particular way.
The details that accompany us so consistently that they eventually become memory.
As designers, we often talk about creating beautiful spaces.
But the rooms that stay with us are rarely the ones that are simply beautiful.
They are the ones that become part of our personal history.
When I look back at the rooms that shaped me, that is what remains.
Not perfection.
Not trends.
Not even the objects themselves.
What remains is a feeling.
A collection of moments made tangible through materials, light, craftsmanship, and atmosphere.
Perhaps that is still what I am trying to create today.
This journal is a place to explore the spaces, objects, materials, and ideas that continue to shape the way I see the world.
Some entries will come from projects.
Some from travel.
Some from collectible design.
Some from memories that have stayed with me for decades.
All of them, in one way or another, will be about the relationship between people and the spaces they inhabit.
I’m glad you’re here.
Marcela
