In an Era of AI and Renders, Italo Armone Lets Real Finished Spaces Speak for Themselves

Italo Armone is an Italian interior designer who grew up in Catanzaro Lido, where he lives and works. In February 2022 he started his own studio; today it is riformae, founded by Italo and Manuel Ceci. The designers are Italo, Dzintra Lidiga and Andrea Nicolardi. They design private homes and, recently, many restaurants and bars.

Italo Armone believes the spaces he designs belong to the client, not to the studio. The team investigates what the client really expects and designs for that person’s uniqueness. They work with local manufacturers and stay involved in the full manufacturing process. The studio shows only finished projects: no renders, no drawings, only high-quality photographs.

Italo Armone takes commissions: riformae does total renovations, but also smaller interventions, like a kitchen or a living room, and offers a turnkey service. The studio works with clients all around Italy and supports colleagues – interior designers and architects. “We design for the search of beauty, not for our ego,” Italo says.

Italo Armone’s earliest clients were friends. Today about 70% of new clients come through word of mouth, 20% through Instagram and 10% through Google. The studio spends nothing on promotion and has no marketing strategy; on Instagram, with about 1,300 followers, it shares only photographs of finished projects. The website gets about 100 visits a month, and the studio takes on about 30 projects a year.

Italo graduated from IED in Milan. A few weeks later he moved to London, turning down internships in Milan, and worked there for five years as an interior designer at a start-up that renovated flats while designing furniture pieces and its own furniture collection.

London wasn’t his cup of tea. He went back home and tried to write a book that he never shared. Six months later he moved to Riga, Latvia, and worked for two years at Annvil, “a proper design studio,” surrounded by skillful designers and good friends. He loved the city and helped design the Zuzeum museum – still the best project he has worked on.

After two years he felt ready to work by himself: he had grown fond of entrepreneurship and still loved design. He moved back to Catanzaro, and today he is proud to be working in his home town.

“We think the spaces we design do not belong to us but to the client,” Italo says. The studio designs with a lot of respect, aware of its responsibility, and starts by investigating what the client really expects from a space. Every person is special, he believes, and the space has to show that uniqueness.

The studio likes to work with local manufacturers and to be involved in the full process of making things. All the effort is rewarded, Italo says, at the moment the client admits he’s happy.

Three projects that got the most attention and, in Italo’s words, best represent who the studio is: Casa Levante, a private house with a good budget (italoarmone.com/13-24); Splaash, a restaurant where the studio designed both the indoor and outdoor spaces (italoarmone.com/05-26-splaash-outdoor); and Casetta Sistina, a private house with a very low budget (italoarmone.com/07-24), which has just been published in Dom i dizajn, a design magazine that is very popular in Croatia. Photos: Enrico Cicero Santalena (@j.theface).

Most of the studio’s clients are private clients, from all around Italy. Recently riformae has been involved in many restaurants and bars, such as Splaash. Some projects are total renovations; others are smaller jobs, like a kitchen or a living room. The studio also works with other interior designers and architects.

Italo’s earliest clients were friends, with ordinary interior projects. “They trusted me more based on friendship than skills,” he says. “They only knew I was working abroad.”

“Being honest, working in good faith, admitting our mistakes and solving them,” Italo says.

The studio still doesn’t have a marketing strategy, and Italo admits they struggle to describe what they do in the language of social media. So they only share their work: no renders, no drawings, only high-quality photographs of finished projects. “We believe that with AI and render technologies, it’s important people understand we are real. We make it happen, we don’t just promise.”

Today about 70% of new clients come through word of mouth, 20% through Instagram and 10% through Google.

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“Doing business costs a lot, and not only money-wise,” Italo says. For him, the work is an obsession: “It is my priority, and at the stage I’m in my life right now, it’s the only thing I care about.”

Mistakes happen. Once he ordered a kitchen island 4 cm bigger than the project. He didn’t wait for the client to notice – he picked up the phone and told them. To his surprise, the client really appreciated his open-hearted approach. Another time, the client was expecting a different color for the wardrobe carcasses. It was lost in translation: they had talked about it, but Italo never sent an email confirming it. So the studio took the wardrobe back to the joiner and had it painted as requested.

There wasn’t one. “I still don’t feel I went through a moment in which everything ‘clicked,’” Italo says. “We work hard, we do our best in every little detail, hoping one day it will pay off.” Money matters: guaranteeing stability to his colleagues is his main challenge.

When Archilovers featured one of the studio’s projects as one of the best of the week, he thought it would never happen – and when it did, he wasn’t as excited as he expected. “I like working, I like seeing our projects come to life. I don’t know what ‘being successful’ actually means.”

“In the end, what defines who I really am is myself, not what others think of me. But in my job other people’s opinion is important, otherwise I wouldn’t have clients. It’s like being a tightrope walker, finding the balance between caring and not caring. The only moment I have control over something is when I design and make drawings. After that, it depends on the manufacturer, walls that aren’t straight, uneven tiles.”

Still, he keeps hoping: “I like to believe that if you act in good faith and towards design, something at some point must happen.”

Italo Armone (@italoarmone) – co-founder and designer
Manuel Ceci (@manu_ce) – co-founder
Dzintra Lidiga (@dzidzi.li) – designer
Andrea Nicolardi (@nikflip) – designer
Enrico Cicero Santalena (@j.theface) – photographer who works with the studio

Our manifesto is Casa Levante, an old office we turned into a residential apartment. It shows our approach – that coordinating every finish is not design. There’s everything: bespoke items, a lot of finishes, cool brands, composition skills, building site control.

Who: Italo Armone (riformae studio)
What: Interior design studio
Where: Catanzaro, Italy
Started: February 2022
Audience: ~1,300 Instagram followers, ~100 website visits a month
Customers: ~30 projects a year
Custom orders: Yes
Ships: Within country / region (clients all around Italy)
Works with designers: Yes
Promotion budget: $0
Income: main
Status: active and growing
Channels: Word of mouth (~70%), Instagram (~20%), Google (~10%)