The Romantics: For Paloma Urquijo, Design Is an Act of Care

Paloma Urquijo on care as it informs her practice, her creative values, and the way she sees the world and the spaces people gather within.

Romance, as a way of seeing, shapes more than personal relationships. It informs how people design their lives, approach their work, and remain open to the world around them. For Vogue Philippines’ Love Issue, we profile individuals, across disciplines, who live a life shaped by romance.

Paloma Urquijo’s relationship with place began outdoors. Madrid was home, but weekends unfolded on her father’s family countryside home just outside the city. A place she describes as “mythic,” where time felt elastic and rules dissolved. Days were spent building forts, foraging, riding horses.

“Those weekends were unscripted and physical,” she recalls. “My father lived on a tractor, blasting country music, and the outdoors became our playground, classroom, and refuge.” Looking back, she sees how that rhythm shaped her instincts: “curiosity over comfort, movement over stillness, and an instinctive understanding that creativity often begins when you’re allowed to wander both physically or mentally.”

At eight years old, that world fractured. After her father passed away in an aviation accident, her mother returned to the Philippines, and Paloma and her brother were sent to boarding school in Somerset. The shift was abrupt in every sense: geographical, emotional, cultural. “Community wasn’t optional; it was survival,” she reflects of the time. Friends became family, and adaptability became second nature. It was her earliest lesson in shared care and resilience, one that continues to inform how she thinks about culture, hospitality, and the spaces people gather within.

Her thinking sharpened further in New York, where her undergraduate studies introduced her to design as more than surface or style. It was there she learned to see design as “a tool for meaning-making, systems thinking, and long-term impact.” One that demands questions of context, relevance, and responsibility. A project, she learned, must know why it exists.

That philosophy came to life through Piopio, a hospitality and cultural project rooted in place, storytelling, and collaboration with local artisans. Working closely with craftspeople and communities whose knowledge spans generations reshaped her creative values. “There is nothing more authentic than true collaboration,” she says. “Take care of people, and they will take care of the work.” Piopio became a testing ground for reciprocity, proof that integrity and scale do not have to be at odds.

Today, as Creative Director of Ayala Land Hospitality, Paloma carries those same principles into much larger developments. Her role centers on shaping identity across properties, ensuring that each space belongs to its environment rather than imposing upon it. “Design, for me, is an act of stewardship,” she explains. Research comes first: history, climate, culture, lived experience. The goal is never to overwrite a place, but to allow it to evolve while keeping its essence intact.

What grounds her, even now, is terrain. “Exploring unfamiliar terrain, creating with your hands, pushing your body, and being met by a sunset or an open sky of stars,” she says, are moments that recalibrate perspective. “They remind you that you’re alive, small in the best way, and part of something much larger.” For her, this is a way of living attentively. Ending the day grateful, aware of “the quiet generosity of the world, if you know where to look, how to pause, and how to truly experience it.”

See the full story featuring Ambeth Ocampo, Rhea and Jayjay SyCip, Chito Vijandre and Ricky Toledo, and Antonio and Gema Garcia in the February 2026 Issue of Vogue Philippines, available now on newsstands and at the link below.

By BIANCA CUSTODIO. Photographs by GABRIEL NIVERA. Beauty Editor JOYCE OREÑA. Art Director: Jann Pascua. Multimedia Artists: Mcaine Carlos and France Ramos. Producer: Mavi Sulangi.