Daring designs and an unmistakable style. Avant-gardism applied to each piece, resulting from a melting pot of cultures. The perfect pairing of classic and modern. These are all the necessary ingredients for this Spanish architect and designer to be considered today’s most influential designer.

Patricia Urquiola was born in Oviedo in 1961. Since the age of 12, her fascination for lines and objects shaped her career—like a piece that reaches its final state slowly but surely. The most renowned design critics use her as a reference when it comes to combining shape and function; her style exudes freshness and innovation.

Upon finishing high school, she took her first big leap by moving to Madrid to study architecture. Her second leap took her to Milan, where she reached two milestones: graduating from the Politecnico di Milano and getting married. There, in the capital of avant-gardism and style, Urquiola rubbed shoulders with the best designers while growing and defining her style. After setting up a studio with other talented colleagues and working as coordinator of the creative group at Lissoni & Associates, she went out on her own. She opened her own studio and obtained clients like Alessi, Moroso, Padova, Kartell and other prominent names in design and architecture. These companies not only delegated to her everything that has to do with avant-garde design, but also put her in charge of designing point-of-sale displays and marketing.

Her career, talent and relationships put her in a place where she feels complete freedom to create and to predict what the public needs both in shape and function. The Asturian designer has the genius of those who can forecast what’s coming and are able to create it. That freedom allowed her to dare to create designs that previously she would have thought of twice before proposing. Her furniture pieces adapt to all environments without being any less than completely original—and they provoke emotions when they’re seen and used.

This internationally famous, immensely talented designer was put in charge of Milan’s Christmas decorations for 2009, decorating the city’s nerve centers with geometric elements in 3-D that were attached to the marvelous urban buildings.

A prophet is without honor in her own country. But when you have a talent like the one Patricia Urquiola has, you enter the land of the universal and the eternal—something much more important and substantial, which is only achieved by true creators.