Science has always been a passion. “Biology was my first love,” explains Londoño, who moved to Miami from Colombia as a teenager seeking political asylum. “But art saved me.” These days, those two interests entwine in her practice, for which she’ll spend hours looking at leaves, bugs, moss, and other natural tidbits through a microscope. (It helps that her atelier is part of a compound that includes AD100 landscape studio Geoponika.) Cellular structures, observed under the lens, then inspire the clay segments that, en masse, form beautiful abstract vistas. “From afar it might resemble a camouflage pattern or an aerial view of a landscape,” she explains.“But come close and you’ll discover that a hand has made every single piece.”
Each mural responds to its surroundings. At Diplo’s Brutalist residence in Jamaica (AD, June 2024) she took her cues from the rainforest, devising a pool-deck wall that “integrates the foliage of the jungle into the architecture.” A forthcoming Florida project, similarly, looks to the Everglades. And a Nashville vinyl bar channels music through “the electricity of the glaze.” The latter is just one of Londoño’s many collaborations with the AD100 firm Commune Design, for whom she has also created furniture and, soon, bespoke fireplaces.
Those hearths have become particularly poetic in the aftermath of the recent LA fires. In every image of total destruction, she notices, “the fireplaces are left standing, almost like monoliths.” But the permanence of her chosen medium is something that intrigues her. “You could trace the whole history of humanity through ceramics,” she muses. “These are the objects that survive.” sofialondono.com —Hannah Martin
Hotels: Auberge Resorts unveils its first Italian hotel in Florence
When conceiving its first Italian hotel, on a Florentine hill, Auberge Resorts Collection found inspiration in the site: an erstwhile school, dating back some 250 years, with its own chapel, library, and theater. “We channeled that sense of learning and curiosity in the concepts and styling,” says Kemper Hyers, the group’s chief creative officer, who collaborated on the design with local firm ArchFlorence. The interiors of the 83-room Collegio alla Querce may at first look austere, their muted palette drawn from the countryside. But they took care to inject playfulness. Case in point: What was once the headmaster’s office is now a cocktail and cigar bar. Though the heart of the hotel, Hyers insists, is the conservatory dining room, where guests can sip an espresso or aperitivo surrounded by preserved oak trees. Custom furnishings make use of Italian materials like Grolla limestone from Vicenza for bathrooms, sandstone for doorways, and bronzed brass for lamps and tables. The team then layered antiques, vintage design pieces, and contemporary art, lending a sense of depth and generational complexity. Top marks all around. aubergeresorts.com —Laura Itzkowitz