Purple portrait by Olivier Zahm — Ora-ïto & MAMO in Marseille

French de­sign­er Ito Mora­bi­to, who works un­der the brand name Ora-ïto, is known for his grace­ful, el­e­gant, and ergo­nom­ic ob­jects — sil­ver­ware, beer bot­tles (for Heineken), kitchen­ware, time­pie­ces (Swatch), letter opener, bags (Louis Vuit­ton), and fur­ni­ture.

His many award-win­n­ing de­signs are won­der­ful to hold and skin-like to sit in, ex­hibit­ing his na­t­u­ral way with ma­te­rials and forms. A move to ar­chi­tec­ture was a na­t­u­ral evo­lu­tion for him.

In 2010, Ora-ïto found out that the gym and so­lar­i­um on the roof­top ter­race of Le Cor­busi­er’s “Ra­diant City” in Mar­seille was for sale, and bought them straight away. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, an ad­di­tio­n­al struc­ture had been add­ed to the gym, block­ing the 360-de­gree views of the ci­ty. With the sup­port of the Fon­da­tion Le Cor­busi­er, Ora-ïto start­ed a cam­paign to bring the struc­ture back to its orig­i­nal form and trans­form it in­to a con­tem­po­rary art cen­ter, called the MA­MO for “Mar­seille Mo­d­u­lor” — as a nod to New York’s MO­MA. The ad­di­tio­n­al struc­ture was there­fore torn down and he ren­o­vat­ed the space, em­ploy­ing on­ly the materials used to con­struct the orig­i­nal struc­ture and re­spect­ing the orig­i­nal blueprint. In the mean­time, the co-op of “The Ra­diant Ci­ty” de­cid­ed to ren­o­vate the en­tire ter­race, in­clud­ing the ad­di­tion of a paint­ing ate­li­er for chil­dren, a play­ground, and a public pro­m­e­nade with views on the sea and the ci­ty.