Raquel
Guardia
Interior designer and curator. Mexico City devotee. Oaxacan workshop regular. Arizona minimalist by education. The story of where I come from is the story of how I work.
The Long Version
"My design education didn't happen in school. It happened in an artisan's workshop in Oaxaca, in a Polanco apartment where the afternoon light hit a chair and I understood exactly why it was there, and in the Sonoran desert where the landscape taught me that earning an object is more powerful than accumulating one."
Mexico City · Polanco & Beyond
The city that taught me to see.
Mexico City arrived as a confirmation. A confirmation that the most powerful objects in a room are made by hand, by someone who cares, using knowledge passed through generations. The Polanco apartments I moved through had a quality I couldn't name at first: the furniture was often expensive, but it never looked precious. Warm stone floors, open windows, one extraordinary hand-woven piece beside something custom-built. Nothing matching. Everything belonging.
That quality — call it ease, call it intention — became the benchmark. I stopped pursuing a look and started pursuing a temperature. A room that breathes. A room that feels as if someone with real taste has been living there for years.
The artisan workshops of Oaxaca and Chihuahua deepened it further. Hand-carved mesquite, Mata Ortiz pottery, Zapotec wool rugs colored with cochineal — these aren't things you find at a trade show. They are the result of relationships built over years with makers who know their materials the way a master architect knows stone.
Mexican Craft Traditions
What hands can do.
There is a precision to hand-craft that machine production can never replicate — not because machines are imprecise, but because imprecision is exactly the point. The slightly uneven weave of a Zapotec rug. The tool mark left in a parota table. The variation in glaze across a set of stoneware. These are not flaws. They are the record of a person at work.
My sourcing trips take me to the family workshops of Oaxaca, the joiners' ateliers of Mexico City, the clay studios of Chihuahua. In each place I am looking for the same thing: makers who are in full command of their material. Who have nothing to prove and everything to offer.
These pieces don't exist in trade showrooms. They exist in relationships — years of return visits, of trust built through commissions fulfilled, of understanding what a particular maker's best work looks like and waiting for it.
Mexico City · Polanco
Where ease became a design principle.
Polanco is where everything comes together. There's a quality to the light in those colonia apartments in the late afternoon that makes every object look like it belongs exactly where it is. The furniture is often expensive, but it never looks precious. Warm terracotta floors, open windows, a hand-woven piece next to something commissioned. Nothing matching. Everything coherent.
The plants here are not accessories — monstera, bird of paradise, fig trees, agave. Indigenous to Mexico and the desert Southwest, they bring the outside in without pretending the outside isn't there. A room in Polanco breathes. That's the quality I'm always chasing.
That's the feeling I build toward in every project. Not a look. A temperature. A room that feels like it has already been lived in by someone with good taste and no need to prove it.
Arizona Desert
The desert taught me to stop.
Arizona changed my relationship with restraint. In the desert, the landscape is so powerful that anything you add to a room is competing with what's outside the window. You learn quickly to earn your objects. If it doesn't do something essential, it goes.
The materials there also deepened how I think about texture. Adobe walls, sandstone countertops, rough-sawn mesquite, Sonoran desert pottery fired from local clay. These aren't aesthetics — they're honest materials that age well, get better with use, and don't pretend to be anything other than what they are.
The desert asked: does this need to be here? I kept that question as my best editing tool.
The Work Now
What all of it adds up to
Every project draws from those four chapters. The Polanco standard of ease — rooms that breathe and never announce themselves. The hand-knotted textiles and hand-carved furniture of Oaxacan and CDMX artisan masters. The mineral restraint of Arizona — travertine, sandstone, plaster — that teaches you to earn every object you bring into a space.
I work primarily in Mexico City and the American Southwest. I bring Zapotec textiles into Arizona homes. I put Sonoran stoneware on Polanco dining tables. I source mesquite furniture from CDMX joiners for clients in Scottsdale. None of it competes. All of it belongs.
That convergence — modern Mexican warmth held against Arizona desert minimalism — is what I call AriMexico™: warm modern interiors shaped by desert light, layered neutrals, natural textures, and sculptural calm. It is not a look I apply. It is the temperature every room is tuned to.
Collected, not decorated. Warm, not matchy. Like you actually live there.
The Designer
Raquel Guardia
Founder · Guardia Designs
Raquel Guardia is an interior designer and curator based between Mexico City and Scottsdale, Arizona. She founded Guardia Designs to source singular furniture, textiles, and objects from the artisan workshops of Oaxaca, Chihuahua, and CDMX — and deliver them, white glove, into homes that deserve them. Her design language, Tierra Curada, sits at the intersection of Mexican craft mastery and the mineral restraint of the American Southwest — its signature expression, AriMexico, brings that warmth into desert-modern interiors and landscapes across Phoenix, Arizona, and Mexico City.
Her eye was formed in the streets of Polanco and the workshops of Oaxaca, sharpened by years of sourcing trips to family ateliers that don't exist in any trade catalog. Her work is defined by objects with real provenance, honest materials, and a refusal to let a room look like it was assembled in an afternoon.
Affiliations & Board Service
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ASID
American Society of Interior Designers · Professional Member
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IIDA
International Interior Design Association · Professional Member
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Nevada Museum of Art
Board of Trustees · Trustee
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