Philia
Magazine

Isabel Moncada is a Mexican designer and artist whose practice centers on sculptural lighting and collectible objects. Based in Guadalajara, she has spent more than three decades exploring traditional craft techniques, developing her own methods, mechanisms, and processes to transform materials into works that unite functionality with artistic expression.

Originally active in the art world during the 1990s, Moncada’s practice evolved from sculpture into a multidisciplinary approach that combines design, engineering, and craftsmanship. Inspired by organic forms, asymmetry, and material experimentation, she works with techniques including lost-wax casting, blown glass, porcelain modeling, and metal forging. Her creations blur the boundaries between utility and art, resulting in pieces distinguished by their sculptural presence, technical complexity, and expressive character.

Damon Liss is an American interior designer and the founder of Damon Liss Design, a multidisciplinary studio based in Tribeca, New York. Since its founding in 2003, the practice has become known for creating refined and timeless interiors that balance warmth, restraint, and architectural sensitivity.

Working across both interior design and interior architecture, Liss approaches each project through a collaborative process that brings together architecture, materiality, craftsmanship, and collectible vintage pieces. His work is characterized by layered yet harmonious spaces that combine contemporary living with carefully curated historical references and artisanal details.

Together with his team, Liss collaborates closely with skilled craftsmen and long-standing creative partners to develop homes that feel thoughtful, enduring, and deeply personal. The studio’s work has been featured in publications including Architectural Digest, Elle Decor, Interior Design, and The Wall Street Journal.

Thomas Van Noten is a Belgian artist and founder of TOGIGI, whose practice explores the relationship between architecture, nature, and ceramic sculpture. After leading large-scale construction projects, he established his atelier in 2024 to pursue a material-driven practice rooted in experimentation and craftsmanship. Working primarily with ceramics, he creates sculptural objects distinguished by their expressive textures, architectural presence, and organic forms.

Guided by a fascination with innovation and making, Van Noten continuously develops new techniques that expand the possibilities of ceramic craftsmanship. Drawing inspiration from both the built and natural environments, his work weaves together structure, light, and materiality, creating pieces that invite a sensory dialogue between human experience, nature, and architecture.

Marta Dervin is a Polish-born ceramic artist based in the Ardèche mountains of southern France, where she creates sculptural vessels and collectible objects shaped by archaeology, geology, and the surrounding natural landscape. Trained in Mediterranean archaeology, she founded her ceramics studio in 2018 after years studying ancient ceramic traditions, transforming her fascination with excavated artefacts into a contemporary sculptural practice. Working primarily with stoneware, porcelain, and glazes developed from wild rocks and natural minerals, Dervin creates works that bridge history, nature, and material experimentation.

Guided by a deep connection to the earth, Dervin’s practice explores the passage of time, the fragility of civilization, and the enduring force of nature. Through tactile textures, restrained forms, and a minimalist aesthetic rooted in craftsmanship, her ceramic pieces evoke weathered artefacts reclaimed by the landscape, creating a quiet dialogue between past and present, architecture and geology.

Bobby Berk is an Emmy-winning design expert, TV host, author, and founder of his eponymous interior design practice. He gained international recognition through Netflix’s Queer Eye, where his thoughtful and transformative approach to interiors helped establish him as one of the most recognizable voices in contemporary design. In 2020, Architectural Digest named him one of the “most famous interior designers working today.”

Originally from Missouri, Berk began his career in retail and visual merchandising before launching his own company and showroom in New York in 2006. He later founded his full-service design studio, which works across residential, commercial, and hospitality projects with a style defined by approachable luxury, functionality, and emotional connection to space.

Alongside his design practice, Berk leads the lifestyle platform BobbyBerk.com and is the author of Right at Home: How Good Design Is Good For The Mind, a book exploring the relationship between interior design, wellbeing, and everyday life.