Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, Ricardo Antonio graduates in journalism at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro UFRJ in 1989. Soon after he enrolls the Architecture Faculty at UFF, Rio.

​

He begins his professional life at Modulo, Brazilian monthly magazine on architecture and arts, run by Brazilian modernist master architect Oscar Niemeyer, with whom he starts a lifelong friendship and collaboration.

 

The close contact with Niemeyer and most Brazilian modernist masters of the "Brasilia Generation", like landscape designer Roberto Burle Marx, architect and urban planner Lucio Costa, anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro, artist Athos Bulcao, just to quote a few, will have a definite impact on Ricardo Antonio`s formation.

​

In 1990, he opens his Studio URB, in Rio, where he designs and makes a series of award winning, good humoured, innovative furniture pieces.

URB's lifetime, however, is short. Less than one year after the opening, a severe political and economical crisis in Brazil shuts down the studio.

​

Ricardo hits the road.

Based in London in the early 2000's as a nomad freelancer journalist, he covers the international architectural and design scenes for magazines by the likes of Wallpaper (London), World Architecture (London), Casa Brutus (Japan), Projeto (Brazil). By then, he interviews  Pierre Herzog, Peter Cook, Zaha Hadid, Jean Nouvel, Hans Hollein, Charles Corea, Ron Arad, Toyo Ito, Ross Lovegrove, Richard Roger, to name a few.

​

Design runs in parallel and a series of one-offs, private residences, and colaborations with Oscar Niemeyer - like the Serpentine Pavillion (London 2003) and the Ravello Auditorium (Italy 2000 - 2010), mark this period.

​

In 2003, his award wining Ravello seats range becomes his first design to be distributed in global scale, by giant Italian furniture maker Poltrona Frau.

Featured twice in the cover of Italian magazine Interni, "La Ravello" is today part of the permanent collection of Rio`s Chair Museum.

​

Currently based in Italy, Ricardo collaborates with a myriad of companies, architectural studios and design brands like Poltrona Frau (Italy), Tonino Lamborghini (Italy), Furla, (Italy), Sicis (Italy), Legame Italia (Italy), Dupont Corian (Brazil), Sigmma (Brazil), Aeromarine (Portugal), Jacobsen Architecture (Brazil), Peddle Thorp (Australia), amongst others.

​

In 2017, Ricardo co-founds Pleasure-Lab, a Milan based non-profit research institute and design lab that investigates what he calls the Ergonomics of Pleasure, a new approach to the traditional ergonomics discipline.

"The Ergonomics of Pleasure is "less focused on human anatomy and more concerned on human nature..." - he explains.

​

Among Pleasure-Lab initiavives, the "Good Water for All" campaign has been promoting the spreading of the hand made clay filter vernacular tecnology through out low income comunities of South America and Africa.

​

​