I moved from Colombia when I was four. Grew up in New York City — the melting pot, the cultural capital, all of that. And for about 30 years I did what a lot of immigrant kids do: I tried to fit in. I tried to be American. I filed down the edges that made people look at me sideways. And somewhere in there I lost a lot of what I came from.
The thing is, it didn't work. I was always too Latino for some rooms and not Latino enough for others. I got comfortable in that in-between space because I didn't have a choice. But comfortable isn't the same as settled.
That started to change as I got older. It wasn't one moment. It was a slow thing — wanting to cook the food, wanting to learn what I didn't learn as a kid, wanting to understand what was mine to claim. Bad Bunny's DTMF didn't start that for me. It was more like the period at the end of a sentence I'd been writing for years. Seeing Benito be fully himself — and watching the world come to him instead of the other way around — that hit different. I flew to Peru with my wife and three of my closest friends to see him play a stadium full of Latinos and it was one of those moments where you feel something click. Not because it was new. Because it was familiar in a way you'd been missing.
That's what the casita is. It's a tiny house from a place I'm still finding my way back to. The arched doorways, the louvered windows, the pink walls with gold trim — it's the architecture of somewhere warm that lives in my head whether or not I grew up walking through it every day. I designed the whole thing myself and each one is 3D printed in pink marble filament — nearly 24 hours per house. A fuzzy skin texture gets applied during the print process, so the surface comes off the bed with this raw, tactile feel that looks like actual stucco. Then I assemble it and paint the some white trim by hand. It marries the two things I love most: the technical problem-solving of making something real and the design work of making it mean something. A little flamingo stands in the doorway because somebody should be home even when you're not.
Put a plant in it. Let it grow wild. Hang it on your wall as a reminder that where you come from doesn't have to be a place you remember perfectly. It just has to be something you refuse to let go of.
Details:
3D printed in pink marble filament
Fuzzy skin texture applied during print (stucco-like finish)
Designed entirely in-house
Hand-assembled.
Wall-mounted or tabletop
Fits small succulents and trailing plants
Includes miniature flamingo
Mounting hardware included
Care: Water the plant. Not the house. The flamingo is decorative and does not need to be fed.
I moved from Colombia when I was four. Grew up in New York City — the melting pot, the cultural capital, all of that. And for about 30 years I did what a lot of immigrant kids do: I tried to fit in. I tried to be American. I filed down the edges that made people look at me sideways. And somewhere in there I lost a lot of what I came from.
The thing is, it didn't work. I was always too Latino for some rooms and not Latino enough for others. I got comfortable in that in-between space because I didn't have a choice. But comfortable isn't the same as settled.
That started to change as I got older. It wasn't one moment. It was a slow thing — wanting to cook the food, wanting to learn what I didn't learn as a kid, wanting to understand what was mine to claim. Bad Bunny's DTMF didn't start that for me. It was more like the period at the end of a sentence I'd been writing for years. Seeing Benito be fully himself — and watching the world come to him instead of the other way around — that hit different. I flew to Peru with my wife and three of my closest friends to see him play a stadium full of Latinos and it was one of those moments where you feel something click. Not because it was new. Because it was familiar in a way you'd been missing.
That's what the casita is. It's a tiny house from a place I'm still finding my way back to. The arched doorways, the louvered windows, the pink walls with gold trim — it's the architecture of somewhere warm that lives in my head whether or not I grew up walking through it every day. I designed the whole thing myself and each one is 3D printed in pink marble filament — nearly 24 hours per house. A fuzzy skin texture gets applied during the print process, so the surface comes off the bed with this raw, tactile feel that looks like actual stucco. Then I assemble it and paint the some white trim by hand. It marries the two things I love most: the technical problem-solving of making something real and the design work of making it mean something. A little flamingo stands in the doorway because somebody should be home even when you're not.
Put a plant in it. Let it grow wild. Hang it on your wall as a reminder that where you come from doesn't have to be a place you remember perfectly. It just has to be something you refuse to let go of.
Details:
3D printed in pink marble filament
Fuzzy skin texture applied during print (stucco-like finish)
Designed entirely in-house
Hand-assembled.
Wall-mounted or tabletop
Fits small succulents and trailing plants
Includes miniature flamingo
Mounting hardware included
Care: Water the plant. Not the house. The flamingo is decorative and does not need to be fed.
