Estudio PM

Paula Stoddard Sotomayor and Michael Ortiz Jiménez of Estudio PM say their win at ICFF’s Launch Pad came as a complete surprise. “We didn’t have any specific expectations,” says Ortiz. “But when we found out we were short-listed to present to the jury, we were like, Okay, it’s getting real.” The studio won in the furniture category with Herencia Tótem, a sculptural furniture collection that transforms reclaimed textiles into stackable side tables and stools.

Ortiz and Stoddard grew up in Puerto Rico, first exploring design through play. Stoddard recalls experimenting with her brother’s Legos and gravitating toward creative school projects, and Ortiz similarly remembers being drawn to crafts at a young age. They met while studying environmental design at the School of Architecture at the University of Puerto Rico and soon began collaborating. After completing graduate studies at Pratt Institute’s School of Architecture in New York, they founded Estudio PM in Brooklyn.

“We like to think of our studio as a constant experiment of spatial design, materiality, and storytelling,” says Ortiz. Herencia Tótem specifically is a tribute to his and Stoddard’s shared Puerto Rican heritage, “inspired by cultural symbols and traditions we grew up with,” he says. Most pieces in the collection begin with a collage and end up as modular forms that balance expressive shapes with symbolic resonance. One piece in the collection, Vejigante, draws inspiration from the vibrant horned masks worn during Puerto Rican festivals, traditionally used to ward off evil. The collection is a living body of work, intended to change over time as an exploration of form and narrative.

The experience of presenting live at Launch Pad proved transformative: “It was surreal in a way,” says Stoddard. As Herencia Tótem continues to evolve, one thing remains clear for Estudio PM’s founders: Design is a vessel for telling stories in new ways.

Riccardo Toldo

Riccardo Toldo travels back and forth between Milan and the Dolomites, where he grew up and still spends about 80 percent of his time. In fact, the designer says his work is inseparable from the mountains of Northern Italy. “All my designs are connected to nature,” he says. “Even when they’re complex, they feel natural.” Much like the way elegance in nature can belie its complexity, Toldo strives to make the advanced technology in his lighting objects feel sleek and effortless.

Toldo’s fascination with lighting started in childhood, but woodworking is what got him into design. “Here in the Dolomites, we work a lot with wood,” he says. He studied woodworking in high school before going on to study industrial design in Venice and Milan. After honing his skills in design studios, he branched out on his own, forming a self-named design lab where he began experimenting seriously with lighting.

This year, Toldo won the ICFF Launch Pad lighting category with Lama, a minimalist floor lamp rendered in stainless steel. “Lama means ‘blade’ in Italian. The lamp is a stainless-steel blade with a very thin LED inside,” he explains. Designed to be as unobtrusive as possible, the lamp reflects Toldo’s goal of “not seeing the design itself, just the light.” When it is turned on, which can be done only by human touch, the fixture nearly disappears in the glow of the LED.

Toldo says he didn’t expect to make the finals, let alone win in his category. Even more surprising, as soon as he’d finished presenting Lama, one of the judges, Giulio Cappellini, asked him for a meeting—a best-case outcome for any emerging designer.

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