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Designer takes a holistic approach to his projects
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WHO is he?
Marco Tortoioli Ricci is a designer who loves working with a total approach. He thinks that experimentation and design thinking can improve the world in which we live and offer a new perspective on things. Although his training comes from graphic design, he likes to consider the design as a discipline capable of control and match different media. This means he love to experiment with photography, video, architectural space, environmental communication, installations and of course the furniture and home furnishings that represent the ideal theater to use all these things together. He loves the experimentation and research. He is having a great experience in teaching as a professor of Design Methodology at ISIA in Urbino, a school dedicated to the communication design with a great international reputation.
Tell us some of your works and name the one you are most proud of?
I have developed projects around the world. I just finished a wonderful experience in Brazil where I designed the visual identity of an international program of cooperation between Italy and Brazil. However, the project I’m most fond of is called “Freedom Room,” a unit of 12 square meters. It is a project developed with the inmates of an Italian prison for conceiving a small living space to devote to disadvantaged people or creating popular hostels for young students that they can enjoy a low-cost hospitality. It is a small multifunctional space, really smart.
Are you currently involved in any project?
We're working on the extension of the format Casa Umbria just opened in Shanghai. The idea is to create a department store Casa Umbria Food, dedicated to experience and buy Italian typical products from the center of Italy. It will be a space of total experience where my idea is: you can buy everything you see (except for the staff of course).
Describe your design style.
Life reserves for us surprises and unexpected happenings, so the space in which we live cannot be sterile and too rational. I like to use the materials in their true nature and unspoiled. I do not like too strong alteration. I believe that nature has already developed a great dialectic capacity, we’re just giving her voice and combine it in a surprising way.
Where are you most creative?
From what I am told I think my greatest ability is always to identify the conceptual and strategic focus of each project. The individual design choices depend on it. I speak essentially of a job that can be said of pre-planning.
What does your home mean to you?
My home is my lab. It’s the place where I can feel totally confident to be able to experiment on anything. Often new ideas come from here and from times when I do other things, like cooking for example. I love the process of transformation of foods.
What do you collect?
I collect books especially. They are treasures of knowledge and real time machines. I also have a collection of what I call “accidental art,” photos that I take in my travels which portray compositions often amazing, but created by chance or by lack of knowledge.
Where would you like to go most in Shanghai?
I’ve recently discovered the Art Gallery named Power Station of Art. I found there a lot of similarities with what you can feel at the Tate Modern in London. Of course I like the atmosphere in the former French concession, the locals and the chance to meet people from all over the world, but recently I got to know the area surrounding the Yu Garden where you can still see pieces of old Shanghai.
What will be the next big design trend?
All the things you don’t really need to own but you really want to use. The next design trend will be on function and easy-access-to, not even more on “status object.”
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