The brainchild of Paul Rodriguez and Javier Alarcon, a by-appointment or walk-in design showroom in downtown Quito, known as Kanzen Design, offers beautiful, Ecuadorian-made design products. The showroom features everything from textiles to ceramics, lighting fixtures to sculptures, paintings and framed photographs to woven baskets, along with office desks, dining tables, chairs and more.

© Joanna Tricorache

New design products appear daily, but the room feels more like a quiet museum gallery than a commercial showroom. Part of the showroom’s interior is a small café, offering Ecuadorian-grown coffee, pastries, sandwiches, chocolates and beverages. A cozy area with tables for laptops is situated in front of a large window with a view overlooking a landscape of lush green foliage, despite being in the middle of the city.  For international visitors, Kanzen Design ships products, large or small, to their home cities.

Kanzen Design collaborates with dozens of artisans from Ecuador, connecting South America’s traditional handicrafts with modern design. Kanzen plays a role in Quito’s catching up to other South American cities like Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Lima and Bogotá, in terms of establishing modern art, architecture and interior design scenes for residents and visitors.

© Joanna Tricorache

In 1978, UNESCO designated Quito a World Cultural Heritage site for its indigenous culture, but it has been only in the past decade the city has drawn attention from major international architects, including Jean Nouvel, Bjarke Ingels, Moshe Safdie and Carlos Zapata. These architects have designed ultra-modern, mixed-use towers in the city’s downtown area, an interesting juxtaposition to Quito’s historic districts.

Ecuador’s only contemporary art museum, Quito’s Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, is now busy presenting a growing list of new exhibitions by international and Ecuadorian artists. In the La Floresta neighborhood, it’s impossible to miss the floral painted Ocho y Medio, an independent cinema, with an equally photogenic café, while colorful murals pop up on walls throughout the city.

© Joanna Tricorache

Private art and design collector now discover the young Ecuadorian craftsmen creating lovely hand-crafted tables, chairs and sculptures out of beautiful Ecuadorian wood. In the former rural communities east of Quito, like Cumbayá, Tumbaco and Puembo, local architects restore weathered farmhouses into art galleries, boutiques, restaurants and design-driven homes for Quito’s growing middle-class, as well as for the transplanted Ecuadorian-born U.S. citizens retiring to their birth country from the States for its inexpensive cost of living and year-round spring weather.