Rafael de Cárdenas, Ltd.

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Rafael de Cárdenas, Ltd.

Rafael de Cárdenas, Ltd. is an interdisciplinary practice in design and creative direction based in New York since 2006.

Specializing in residential and commercial interiors, architecture, furniture design, art advisory and brand development.

03/09/2026

Five years in the making!

We worked closely with to let the “House of Gold” shine even brighter. The new boutique is now open on Paris’s historic Place Vendôme.

It has been a privilege to engage with Piaget’s extraordinary history—a house that turns gold into delight while maintaining meticulous precision.

I hold real humility for those who paved the way for moments like this. But humility and modesty are not the same thing. Modesty is often meant to keep us quiet—and this is not a moment for quiet. I’m incredibly proud of this achievement.

More than the design itself—which I’m of course proud of—I’m proud that my team and I were chosen. It’s not something I could have imagined, and certainly more than I ever expected.

Thank you to for arranging the initial meeting.

To .oconnell, to , and to for years of honing this design to its current polish.

To for the trust that we could honor this exceptional house and help carry its unbridled DNA into the future.

To for the malachite ceiling paint treatment.

To for the Savoir-Faire wall finishes throughout.

And to , the engine that has propelled this studio forward for so many years.

I’m deeply grateful to the many people who quietly supported us along the way. You know who you are.

And I can’t help thinking about the eight-year-old version of me, dreaming beyond the playground at 187 Hudson Street. In a universe this vast, it still amazes me where those childhood dreams can land.

Thank you again to . ✨

—

03/02/2026

: Schullin 💎

Hans Hollein’s Schullin jewelry shop in Vienna was less a store than a detonation. Opened in 1974, it split the historic street with a fractured aluminum façade—sharp, metallic, unapologetic. You didn’t enter so much as pass through a crack in the city. Inside, the space compressed: faceted planes, reflective metal, low ceilings, vitrines like geological specimens. The jewelry felt mined rather than merchandised. Hollein famously declared that “Everything is architecture,” and at Schullin, he proved it. The façade, the object, the display, the street—all part of a total proposition. Space becoming cosmic.

It was a tiny project with disproportionate force—a reminder that architecture doesn’t need scale to have impact.

02/27/2026

: Comme des Garçons SoHo

The 1984 opening of on Wooster Street—Rei Kawakubo’s first store outside Japan—wasn’t just retail, it was a rupture. Raw concrete floors, exposed pipes, metal fixtures. Nothing softened and nothing explained. It felt unfinished in the most intentional way, like an idea still vibrating.

At the center was a spiraling wall—the only true interior partition—wrapping a tiny fitting room at its core. No door. Privacy by maze. You disappeared by moving, not by closing something. I’d never seen space behave like that.

More than a store, it was space as provocation, downtown New York as laboratory. A defining moment in retail history.

And for me, it showed that space could carry attitude. That space could provoke action. That architecture didn’t have to seduce—it could declare membership.

02/24/2026

: John Saladino’s Manhattan Apartment

John Saladino was often called a classicist. That’s partially true—but never the whole story. His Beekman Place apartment felt less like a residence and more like a private experiment in how little a room could hold and still move you. Plaster and proportion! Air as material. Long before restraint was fashionable, he trusted quiet.

He mined antiquity without nostalgia—lifting fragments of Greece and Rome and sampling them into something spare, muscular, and entirely contemporary. Not revival. Not decoration. Translation. There’s something deeply emotional about that kind of discipline. The courage to take things away. The belief that proportion alone could be evocative. A classicist, who understood that silence can break your heart.

11/21/2025

What a dream! Our Lenox Hill Townhouse in !

“They say people get jaded… I’m still as dazzled as ever to see projects my team and I toiled over, getting recognition! We are in the business of beauty, shaping culture, and dreaming glamour. And what is it without any bit of risk. Glamour aside, we’re fortunate to collaborate with discerning clients who encourage us to create atmospheres that inspire how we live—and where we might go next.”—

Thank you: and who championed our small studio so many years ago to this exacting journal of design excellence. Grateful for for making me sound like I know what I’m talking about. Thank you to our studio, which continues to make magic and impress me every day. Extra special thanks to for managing the challenges of a six-story renovation project in the middle of NYC. from for interpreting a 15th-century medieval pattern into a fantasy of celestial flora. for romancing us. for crafting beauty through the art of placing objects for exceeding our expectations with flora. and you complete this team in no small measure. Thank you . Thank you from , and not sure how I’d manage without the potent glamour of . Finally to who has helped shape and streamline this studio over the past 15 out of 19 years to be the alchemy of capability and possibility that it is now.

Link in bio to read the full story in AD.

08/13/2025

I feel an abundance of gratitude today for being included in the 2025 . Thank you and for inspiring me and my team to keep transcending limits.

It is a feeling I’ve been learning to hold more often over the past year. RdC began as a faint spark in 2006, and then—in the autumn after my father passed—it gathered quickly, almost as if it knew it couldn’t wait. Today, I’ve already exceeded any expectation I may have had for this practice.

The matter we are made of was born in the blazing hearts of giant stars that exploded long before our planet existed. Against every astronomical odd, that stardust traveled, gathered, and evolved for nearly 14 billion years to bring us here—alive together, breathing the same air, sharing the same moment. To be here at all is unimaginably rare; to be here together, creating together, is a miracle.

That miracle has carried me to a place where I now stand among people who once felt untouchable to me: from , whose Madison Avenue Barneys left me awestruck as a young design student to , who expanded my taste and the studio’s direction in ways far more sophisticated than I had known.

But this placement belongs most to my team—past and present. Some of our former members now shine on this list, and nothing makes me prouder. The people I’ve worked alongside, day in and day out over these 19 years, have become a family forged not by blood, but by the gravity of shared vision and trust in one another.
 You have all inspired me, challenged me, taught me—and made me want to be a better person.
To every single person who has worked alongside Robert Passov and I—you are family to me in the truest, most cosmic sense. And to Robert himself—we wouldn’t be here, on this list or anywhere else, without your skill, composure, and quiet steadiness. You are the family I didn’t know I’d been waiting for.

Thank you—deeply, humbly, and with all the light and love I have.
 —

07/24/2025

We’re hiring! RDC is seeking an intellectually and culturally curious Senior Designer with 6-8+ years of experience matching the diversity of our body of work across residential, retail, commercial, and experiential design.

Link in bio to learn more and apply.

06/25/2025

: Fabergé HQ

The 1980s office of George Barrie, Chairman of the cosmetics company Fabergé, had its “eye on the future.” With its space age design, dramatic lighting, and modular furniture, the office featured a bathroom door which closed at the press of a button and neon sculpture in the screening room where commercials were previews.

06/13/2025

We are 2025 A-Listers and so proud to sit alongside these powerhouses of design and keepers of culture.

Than you for this incredible recognition of our team at RDC, as well as and for being so inspiring and collaborative.

“I feel gratitude on a daily basis working with the greatest team in the world (including Robert Passov, who may never see this). Beauty and glamour are resistance! We’ve never needed it more.”—

06/09/2025

Mr. Chow 🪭

From hosting artists such as Jean Michel Basquiat to Andy Warhol, Mr. Chow was known as the de facto clubhouse for the 1980s New York elite. “Mr. Chow has become a cultural institution,” said art dealer Jeffrey Deitch. “Indeed, more connections have been made there than in most art galleries.”

Images: Advertisement for Mr. Chow in Details Magazine | Michael Chow, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Basquiats mother and friends, 1984 | Artists of the 1980s at Mr. Chow | Tina Chow and Michael Chow at the restaurant’s 10th Anniversary Party

06/02/2025

: Danceteria 🕺🏻

The legendary 80s New York nightclub Danceteria was a place of hedonism and intellectual discourse—where influencers went before there were influencers. The first Danceteria opened in 1980 on West 37th Street. In 1984, an outpost in Water Mill became the first trendy NYC-style nightclub to open in the Hamptons. “Clubs are about music and people,” said co-owner Rudolf Piper. “The secret to a good club is magic and energy, transporting people to a different reality—or to no reality.”

Photos by Robert Carrithers

Address

New York, NY

Telephone

+12129658755

Website

http://www.rafaeldecardenas.com/

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