This first episode of 2026 of The Color Authority podcast features an in-depth conversation with Salvador Reyes and Josefina Larrain of the Mérida-based studio Reyes Rios + Larrain Arquitectos. The discussion centres on the studio’s philosophy of "living heritage," where they restore historic Yucatecan haciendas and manor houses not as static monuments, but as functional, contemporary spaces that preserve ancestral knowledge and memory.

Design Studio based in Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico, founded by architect Salvador Reyes Ríos and Josefina Larraín Lagos. Since 2001, they have equally devoted themselves to contemporary architectural design and restoration of old haciendas, manor houses, buildings, and heritage sites, adapting them for new, compatible uses. A local and modern sensibility, combined with a comprehensive approach to architecture, interior design, furniture, landscaping, and construction coordination, characterizes their new buildings and restoration/reuse projects. Other contributions to Mexican architecture include the revival and reinterpretation of local materials and techniques, such as Chukum-based mortar and structural concrete blended with red earth known as kancab. Reyes Ríos + Larraín are also recognized for creating an original architectural language that has shaped the contemporary identity of Yucatán’s built environment, as well as the ongoing experimentation with local materials and processes. Their work has been featured in specialized books and magazines across the United States, Europe, Asia and Latin America, earning both national acclaim and international visibility. The book Place, Matter, and Belonging, published in two editions by Arquine in 2017, is the first monograph dedicated to their body of work. The studio is currently designing projects in Mexico, United States and Dominican Republic.

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Jerusalemite designer Lameice Abu Aker creates at the intersection of emotional resonance and cultural memory, exploring how form, color, and material embody the poetry of domestic rituals. Now based between Jerusalem and Milan, where she earned her Master’s in Furniture Design from Politecnico di Milano, her work fuses Mediterranean nostalgia with sculptural whimsy.

In 2021, she founded Ornamental by Lameice, a studio dedicated to glassware that blurs the line between sculpture and tableware. Collaborating closely with a family of artisans in the Palestinian village of Jaba’, where glassblowing is a centuries-old tradition, Lameice introduced an unprecedented palette of pastel hues and whimsical designs as an entirely new chromatic language within their heritage of earth and fire.

Each piece is shaped without molds or mechanical constraint, allowing the molten glass to reveal its own peculiar grace. The artisan’s breath lingers in every curve; light, once captured, seems reluctant to leave.

Drawn to the table as a stage for life’s theatre, Lameice designs vessels that hold moments of dates, spirited debates, and family stories in awkward elegance, unexpected colors, and playful forms that carry optimism, intimacy, and the sense that the object might be a character of its own.

Her collections Dreamlike, Eye Candy, and Teta Edition have been exhibited internationally from Paris and London to New York, Singapore and Monaco, each piece a small ambassador of whimsy, heritage, and light.

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Geraldine Wharry is one of the world's leading Fashion Futurists. As a Regenerative Futures Architect, she helps partners decode emergence and implement change, whilst adopting strategies leveraging creative, systemic and environmental imperatives.

Trusted by organisations ranging from Nike, Samsung, Afterpay, Christian Dior to Seymour Powell, Geraldine's blend of strategic, regenerative and creative foresight has been applied across fashion, beauty, technology, sustainability, culture, media, gaming, the arts, health, travel and industrial design. Geraldine is also a regular speaker on stages ranging from SXSW to the Adidas global headquarters.

Her views on a future of fashion that stands at the crossroads of Tech, Purpose and Sustainability are regularly featured on the BBC, Vogue, The Financial Times, BoF and other international press publications. She writes about strategic futures for Dazed Beauty and in her monthly column 'Tomorrow' for Spur Magazine in Japan.

Questioning established future foresight methods and innovation implementation problems, by applying regenerative futures thinking and Biomimicry, has been a running thread in Geraldine's practice and the school community hybrid she founded, Trend Atelier. She is a regular guest lecturer at leading universities in Europe.

As a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts and a member of the United Nations' Conscious Fashion & Lifestyle network, Geraldine Wharry's mission is to inspire leaders, industries and people to enact visionary futures, for the greater good of the people and planet.

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