In Conversation With Umberto Bellardi Ricci, The Designer Elevating Materials And Elementary Forms

Your furniture pieces explore the dialog between mundane elements, such as I-beams and concrete blocks, and elevated, refined textures like marble and glass. What intrigues you about contrasts and dualities?

I am German-Italian which I always think of as chaos and order and they somehow work well together. I almost need contrast in order to appreciate something—Rome for example is totally overwhelming to me as everything is just so ‘beautiful’. Also, historically the contrast of something of a modern era such as an I-beam, or a rolled bronze piece with a million years old piece of stone or a vernacular wood fabric really works well; it can touch upon multiple contexts and references at the same time.
“I am German-Italian which I always think of as chaos and order and they somehow work well together”
Scale, material, visual delight, or purpose—what comes first?

I love to experiment in non-scale, meaning working out good proportions, moving back and forth in the dialectical process of 2D and 3D, the translation of which may result in some beautiful accidents and findings. One of my favorite moments with one of my mentors, the Japanese architect and professor Shin Egashira, was in Brussels when, looking at a radical building project from the 1950s, he pointed at a beautifully intricate drawing in a small old book and asked the Belgian professor ‘Where is this space?’. The confused man replied ‘But Monsieur, this is not a space, this is a window detail’. Admiring Shin’s ability to read beautiful space in a window detail, I am always trying to see possibilities when jumping in scale and materiality. Function almost comes last but I like to keep that open to whoever will take the object into their lives and decide how to engage with it.