Fernando Urquijo considers the architects Elliot Noyes and Gino Valle his mentors, as they had a decisive influence on his career. Under the direction of Elliot Noyes, the Dean of the Harvard Gradual School of Design, he became the head of the architecture program for IBM Europe, and participated in numerous projects, supervising such architects as Norman Foster, Jorgen Bö and Renzo Piano. In this period he collaborated on an important research project regarding the behavior of the employees of large offices in Europe. In 1985, together with Gino Valle and Giorgio Macola, he opened a firm in Paris for office and chair design for large-scale clients such as the Société Générale, Thompson and Allianz.