Ora Ito is a French designer. ‘Ora ïto’ is the brand name of his work and includes designs for watchmaker Swatch, appliance manufacturer Gorenje, brewer Heineken, tobacconist/fragrance chemist Davidoff, Louis Vuitton, Nike, Gucci, Swatch, Apple…
In 1997, Ora ïto hijacked top brands with his virtual Vuitton and Apple products that instantly became global icons of the digital revolution. A phenomenon in pop culture, he is the youngest designer of his generation to collaborate with jewels of luxury goods and industry, after the huge multi-acclaimed success of his aluminium Heineken bottle. Cassina, Cappellini, Bouygues, Alstom, Laguiole, Zanotta and Accor highly rate his sculptural design that has become a mark of modernity.
The multidisciplinary, transversal Ora ïto studio has since gone from telephone to architecture, from furniture to the hotel industry, from perfume to tramways and from flying saucers to restaurants, manipulating symbols to simplify them. A tenacious methodology for which he has invented a neologism: simplexity, decoding today’s DNA to conceptualise future mutations. His fluid vocabulary materialises movement reinventing streamlining in the digital era and giving shape to the desires of our contemporary society.
In 2013, he created MAMO, an art centre on the roof terrace of the mythical Cité Radieuse designed by Le Corbusier in Marseille. A historical and contemporary place high in the sky, with a 360° view that summarises his passion for levitation and lightness, ‘Defying the laws of gravity creates feelings that go beyond aesthetics.’ The greatest contemporary artists from Xavier Veilhan to Dan Graham are exhibited there before Ito inaugurates an architectural collaboration with Daniel Buren, the master of French conceptual art.
Ora ïto now attracts media and economic benefits that make him a unique player in the international design arena. Wallpaper ranked him amongst the top 40 most influential designers under 40 years old. He was appointed Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 2011.
