The work of Panorammma, the Mexico City-based design studio of 29-year old Maika Palazuelos, blends diverse references and materials. The unusual objects she crafts – from tables and chairs to lamps and vessels – become signifiers of stories, settings or time periods just out of reach.
Panorammma: playfulness and darkness
In “Wax Alarm Clock” (2022), what seems to be a stainless steel medical cabinet opens to reveal itself as a candle holder; the candle inside is pierced with metal nails that loudly fall on to a metal tray below as it burns, re-enacting how ancient alarm clocks worked. In “Chainmail Droplet Lamp” (2023), a single-pendant chandelier comprises a glass sphere encased in oversized, chunky steel chainmail; although cocoon-like in appearance, the materiality invites us to think of medieval armour.
'I call these types of objects pseudo props,' says Palazuelos, adding that she likes to create furniture that introduces 'ideas of fiction' into an interior space and 'displaces your mode of living.' There is a subversion and playfulness to the work – in “Ball Foot Chair” (2020), a chair sits on four metal spheres – but there is also a darkness.
In “Soft Vessel Collection” (2021–22), flesh-like silicone vessels are stitched together with black silk sutures and imprisoned in steel bars and screws, recalling the horrors of early medicine. In “Institution Chair” (2020), a sheet of white lamb leather is attached to an unforgiving metal frame to become a seat resembling a clinical curtain.
To the question of why she returns repeatedly to the idea of medical settings, Palazuelos reveals it is a way for her to decipher the experience of having treatment for cancer while she was studying art, years ago. 'I really started to pay attention to how the aesthetics of a clinical space affected me as a patient,' she says.
Palazuelos grew up in Monterrey, Mexico, and studied art and painting in both Mexico and the US. She began to undertake production design whilst working for an art fair and a perfumery in Mexico City, and consequently started to make her own furniture out of a desire to experiment. As people asked to buy her pieces, she grew her design work and established Panorammma. In 2022, she completed a master’s degree in contemporary design in Barcelona before returning to the Mexican capital.
Her settings and surroundings evidently influence her work. In “Neolithic Thinker” (2020), a sculptural stool in arch form, she turned to the material of tezontle, a highly oxidised and porous volcanic rock native to the area around Mexico City, and which has been used extensively for constructions there. 'I like that geologically specific information that the stone gives about the provenance of the piece,' says Palazuelos.
The work was also inspired by her research into architecture from the Neolithic era in Mexico, particularly arches, that have now become fragments of ruins for archaeologists. 'I like thinking about things that used to be architecture but that now we can analyse in sculptural terms,' she says.
If Palazuelos creates worlds of fiction, and weaves environmental influences into her pieces, then her newfound love of crafting interiors seems an inevitable, logical next step. She is currently finishing an interior project for a fashion store in Mexico City: 'I liked having control over the holistic design of the space,' she says happily. She looks forward to undertaking more projects of that sort, and if her furniture is anything to go by, they will be immersive and narrative-rich spaces, inventively mixing myriad materials and allusions.
