Interview: meet Ana Milena Hernández Palacios,

Creative Director of Masquespacio.

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Masquespacio is an award-winning creative studio based in Valencia, Spain. It was founded by Ana Milena Hernández Palacios, an interior designer, and Christophe Penasse, a marketer. They decided to combine their different industry backgrounds to make an agency where branding, product design, art direction and space design would come as one.

The studio grew since its creation in 2010, conquering clients hearts, international recognition by specialized media, and awards like “Massimo Dutti New Values” by Architectural Digest Spain and “Wave of the Future” by Hospitality Design USA.

““We are passionate people who like to face new challenges and approach each new project with enthusiasm and eager to give the best of ourselves.””

— Masquespacio

The duo has worked on projects in several countries like Norway, USA, Germany and Spain. Would you like to know where they’re heading next?
We had the chance to make an #exclusiveinterview with Masquespacio’s creative director, Ana. Here is what we talked about.

Photography credit: Luis Beltran.

Hello Ana!
Can you tell us a bit about the creation of Masquespacio in 2010?

When I started my career as an interior designer, Spain was going through a financial crisis. The only job opportunities available were related to the technical development of interiors and I wanted to create. Chris convinced me to start Masquespacio. First we started to design houses, but we realized that we couldn’t be so creative designing houses for which we started to work on interior projects for restaurants, offices and retail, among others.
We also decided to add other services to our studio with the aim to gain more clients, but only if we felt passionate about the discipline. This way we started to do branding, art direction, consulting and product design. After a few years, in 2017, we decided to focus only on what we really like and we feel we can do best: interior design and product design.

Photography credit: Luis Beltran.

Can you describe your creative process for us?

I start every project with a phase of knowing our client, his/her business and its clients. This is important as in many projects our clients are part of our inspiration source. After that I do a research of images related to the lifestyle of the potential customer. This can go from other projects to art or to fashion. Once I feel inspired after my research of between 2 and 5 days I start to design. All I do is directly done in 3D Max and I develop more than 70 renders for each project of around 100 m2 before reaching a result to be presented to our client.

What keeps you inspired?

Lots of things! At this moment I’m having the luck of being able to travel around the world and get know new places, with different culture, architecture and spirit. So that would be it.

Photography credit: Luis Beltran.

What has been the biggest challenge you faced in the studio?

Finding the right mix between offering an authentic custom-made design and making our studio profitable.

And what was the best moment so far?

Every project and experience has been a step forward, so we always feel that we had the best moment after every project. But maybe an important one was when we closed our graphic design department, as we started to focus 100% on interior & product design, reaching higher results.
On the other hand, both Architectural Digest Spain & Hospitality Design awards we won in recognition of our work were, without a doubt, our most important personal trophies.

What do you wish for Masquespacio?

To continue growing as a team, designing relevant and authentic projects all over the world.

What can we expect to see from the studio in the future?

We are now designing one hotel in Madrid and one in Berlin. Also are we on several restaurant projects in Spain and doing some interesting products with Houtique.