SCAD alumni wrap 18th-century Paris staircase in tufted colour

By Daniel Okafor

Los Angeles designer Abel Macias has covered an 18th-century staircase in tufted fabric at Design Miami.Paris. The Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) alumnus transformed the grand stair of the historic L'hôtel de Maisons in Paris, drawing on bright colours and shapes informed by the landscape of the American Southwest. A house that old rarely asks for a rug. This one got a full set.

The staircase installation anchors a wider showcase of SCAD alumni work at the fair, documented in an exclusive video produced by Dezeen. The fair ran from 20 to 25 October.

What else is on show?

The alumni lineup reads like a catalogue of the school's departments:

• Gretchen Wagner, SCAD fibres graduate and Associate Chair of Fine Arts, presented a suspended sculptural installation of accordion-folded paper cylinders, embellished with embroidered beading and hung from the ceiling like a chandelier.
• Evan Baker, furniture design graduate, showed a wood-grain credenza.
• Anne Weber Callahan, furniture design graduate, exhibited two ceramic stools meant to mimic clay.
• Katie Hagen, fibres graduate, designed a natural-dyed silk organza weaving.
• Marcelo Suro, industrial design graduate, contributed six sculptural lamps merging hand-blown glass and volcanic stone.

Suro made the lamps this past year during SCAD's Alumni Atelier residency in Lacoste, France. It's a residency with visible output, not just a line on a CV.

Who studied what, and when?

The credentials stack up. Macias completed a BFA in illustration in 2002. Wagner holds an MFA in painting from 2023 and a BFA in fibres from 2011. Baker finished a BFA in furniture design in 2025, while Callahan graduated with the same degree in 2019. Hagen obtained an MFA in fibres in 2023 and an MA in production design in 2023.

That's six alumni, five disciplines, and roughly two decades of graduation dates spread across one Parisian hôtel particulier.

Does SCAD do this every year?

Effectively, yes. Last year the school debuted an intricate plaster-cast installation at its booth during Design Miami in Florida. SCAD is the official university partner of Design Miami, and it will exhibit next at the fair's flagship event in Miami Beach this December.

The Paris showing, in other words, is one stop on a rolling institutional presence — a university that treats fairs the way galleries do. The Miami Beach edition in December will show whether the Lacoste lamps and the tufted staircase set the tone for what comes next.