Make it Human

You can find the work of Tony Ingrao 81 AR all over the world. From Hong Kong to St. Tropez, Saudi Arabia to Santa Barbara, he has designed luxury residences and commercial developments for royalty, captains of industry and household names. Ingrao Inc., the award-winning Manhattan-based design and architecture firm he runs with his business partner Randy Kemper, is a regular feature on Architectural Digest’s prestigious AD100 List, which honors top design, decor and architecture talent in the United States and around the globe.

Ingrao Inc.’s portfolio is notably diverse, with an expansive design vocabulary that traverses classic, mid-century and modern. The throughline is a fundamental attention to the connection between a project’s interiors and its natural surroundings—a way of looking at a building from the inside out and outside in, Ingrao says—as well as a keen interest in creating spaces that support a particular client’s psychological well-being.

“What I’ve learned after these 40 years is that people come to me with all different types of personalities and imaginations and desires, and certain spaces are really good for certain people and certain spaces are bad for certain people,” Ingrao says. “What’s right for one person is not right for the next.”

Ingrao’s RISD training helped him develop that sensibility. “I think because RISD is a multidimensional art school, you’re exposed to many different types of mediums,” he says. “You learn the importance of the different mediums and how they affect how people feel.”

Ingrao’s route to the top of his field was not entirely linear. He grew up in a family that advised him to look for options outside of their New York-based fashion business, and then studied finance at Drew University as well as the London School of Economics and the University Libre in Brussels.

He enrolled in RISD’s architecture program because he loved to build, took on a high-profile project shortly after graduating, and then spent 15 years in the antiques and art world in France before returning to New York to focus on architecture and design.

“I had an amazing experience at RISD and thoroughly enjoyed my courses,” he says. “RISD doesn’t give you constraints. You’re allowed to change; you’re allowed to think. It was very good training.” and because his alma mater cultivates boundless creativity, which Martins, he says, exemplifies. In turn, Martins says, Ingrao creates an environment where the joys and demands of working creatively with clients are finely balanced. “You know, usually at architectural offices the work is nonstop; it’s work, work, work,” Martins says. “But at Ingrao, it’s more of a family. Tony is a very hands-on person in the design, but he lets you shine. He is very open to everyone’s ideas. It’s just putting all these brains together to create a magnificent piece of work.”

Now, Ingrao has invested in RISD students through the Ingrao Scholarship, an endowed fund that will provide support for RISD undergraduates, particularly those studying Interior Architecture.

Ingrao, who is a member of RISD’s Architecture Advisory Council, wants undergraduates to enjoy the same kind of uninhibited creativity he did at RISD while also developing an early sense of what it means to work with clients. “What needs to be explored, thought about and explained are the issues and situations that they’ll be confronted with once they get out in the real world,” Ingrao says.

Among the 50 architects and designers who work at Ingrao Inc. are RISD alumni including Carolina Martins MA 13 IA. Ingrao values working with RISD graduates he says, because of the perspective they develop training within an interdisciplinary setting

Reviewers of Ingrao’s work often marvel at his ability to respond to the natural environment and incorporate art and design in a way that is ambitious but not rarefied. How does one maintain a sense of comfort and ease after renovating a client’s home to accommodate a Yayoi Kusama piece, for example, or installing a bronze Harry Bertoia sound sculpture in a reflecting pool? For Ingrao, the answer is simple.

“We make it human,” he says.