
What we play is life.
Louis Armstrong

About the designer
I believe it’s possible to generate happiness by designing beautiful objects and spaces. This has been my primary professional focus since I graduated from Architecture school in my native Cali, Colombia, and decided to move to New York City. My fearless, cheerful, creative, somehow rebellious yet always authentic personality is reflected in my vibrant and rejuvenating architectural aesthetic.
Since earning my Architect’s license, I have completed a wide array of institutional projects in the American Northeast as well as overseas, including the Rockland Psychiatric Children’s Hospital in Rockland, New York, and the Bayamón Correctional Medical Center in Puerto Rico.
More recently, I have had the opportunity to work on Columbia University’s new Manhattanville campus, at 125th Street in Harlem, as a project manager responsible for the development of furniture and interior fit-out for both the Jerome L. Greene Science Center, which serves as the home to the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind and Brain Behavior Institute & The Lenfest Center for the Arts designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop in collaboration with Davis Brody Bond.
Alongside my professional career, I have always pursued other creative outlets like dance, photography, painting, and especially pottery. My ceramic pieces evoke the characters found in the imaginative worlds of celebrated magical-realist novelist Gabriel García Marquez. My pottery is also inspired by the colorful colonial streets of Cartagena, Colombia, which I frequently visit.
Malpaso is an outgrowth of all these passions and influences. It’s the blank canvas I developed for my creative mind to run free finding lively expressions in different ways. Sometimes in words, sometimes in sculptures, always with LOVE.
Gloria E. Duque AIA, LEED A.P.
Unicorn Fantastique, Sculptor, Mermaid, Master of Bad-Assery, Architect, and Alien.