PAVO Armchair by Patricia Urquiola for Driade

Spanish-born, Milan-based architect Patricia Urquiola doesn’t lack for commissions these days, and, unlike the work of many other high-concept architects, her projects tend to get constructed, envelope-pushing though they sometimes are. And when she’s not imagining covetable creations for contemporary furniture houses — including B&B Italia, Driade and Cassina, where she was named art director in 2015 — Urquiola makes headlines by designing some of the world’s most aesthetically ambitious hotels, such as 2016’s Il Sereno on Lake Como in Lombardy, Italy.

Born in Oviedo, in northern Spain, Urquiola grew up in a family that valued creativity. Everyone in the house, she says, talked and cared about design. She fondly remembers her mother going to London in the 1960s and ’70s and coming back home with a Mary Quant this, a David Hicks that. When it came time to go to university, Urquiola decided that her place was architecture school, first at the Polytechnic University of Madrid and then at the Polytechnic University of Milan, where she completed her design thesis — a felt carpet with a panel that connected to a home’s electricity source and telephone line so that you could plug, say, a table lamp and your phone into it — under the direction of legendary Italian industrial designer Achille Castiglioni.

Today, Urquiola has become a go-to when it comes to avant-garde product, hospitality and retail design, working with such blue-chip international furniture, fashion and hotel companies as Alessi, Baccarat, Salvatore Ferragamo, Kvadrat, Mandarin Oriental, Panerai, Rosenthal, W Hotels and Louis Vuitton, among many others. Her residential projects, meanwhile, though few and far between, stretch from such far-flung locations as Punta del Este, Uruguay, and Melbourne, Australia, to closer-to-home Udine, in northeastern Italy, where she designed the two-story, largely open-plan glass-and-cedar home of Patrizia Moroso, creative director of the family-owned design company that bears her last name.

Over the course of a long-term and highly productive collaboration spanning some 20 years, Urquiola has created dozens and dozens of Moroso-branded products. A chair from her 2001 Fjord line of seating, tables and poufs for the company sits in the collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and Moroso debuted (love me) Tender, her modular sofa system upholstered in jersey, during Milan’s Salone Internazionale del Mobile in April of 2014.

Find Patricia Urquiola furniture on 1stDibs.

Italian furniture brand Driade offers modern designs that are joyful, whimsical and slightly mischievous — words that might be used to describe the tree nymph of Greek mythology for which the company is named. Faye Toogood’s chunky, stout Roly Poly armchair and Fabio Novembre’s enigmatic Nemo chair — in which a backrest assumes the form of a human face — are just two examples of Driade’s eclectic furnishings.

Driade was founded in 1968 by brother and sister Enrico and Antonia Astori, and Adelaide Acerbi Astori, Enrico’s wife. Described by the company as a “factory of art,” Driade was focused solely on bringing distinctive and creative seating, case pieces and decorative objects to market in its early years. The brand sought to mass-produce decor and furniture that could also be seen as provocative works of art.

Driade's initial collaborations included Italian designers such as Enzo Mari, Nanda Vigo, Giotto Stoppino and Rodolfo Bonetto, to name a few. In the 1980s, the brand worked with influential and renowned designers from around the globe. In 1984, Driade partnered with French designer Philippe Starck and debuted his iconic Costes armchair during the same year. Projects with architects and furniture designers such as Ron Arad, Toyo Ito, Borek Sipek, Patricia Urquiola and others followed into the 2000s.

Over more than five decades — the company celebrated their 50th anniversary in 2018 — Driade’s fruitful partnerships have culminated in a vast catalog of chairs, sofas, coffee tables and other furnishings for the home and garden that evoke a unique and diverse blend of cultures.

Driade has also garnered international acclaim, winning the Compasso d’Oro award in 1979 and 2001 for Enzo Mari’s Delfira chair and ebony-finished, chipboard-top table, and again in 2008 for Ron Arad’s MT3 rocking armchair.

On 1stDibs, discover a range of vintage and contemporary Driade tables, cabinets, armchairs and other furniture.