About Us
Marta de la Rica is an interior design studio creating spaces that distill beauty, harmony and joy. Through a meticulous analysis of architecture, proportion, and scale, the studio sets out to capture lightness, elegance and eclecticism. Colour and texture come together in a careful curation of materials, drawing inspiration from art and artisanal craftsmanship. New, bespoke designs align with antique pieces. Beloved paintings hang alongside tailor-made, hand-crafted textiles.
Every sense is considered and every detail accounted for. The past and the present meet in the studio’s application of life-oriented solutions and soulful objects, creating storied interiors designed to stand the test of time. These are spaces to be lived in; chairs for sitting on, tables for late nights talking over. It’s in the living, Marta explains, that materials achieve their patina – through the small daily acts that a room comes into its own.
The studio is helmed by Marta, and composed of a multidisciplinary team with many years’ professional experience across every aspect of a project, ranging from the conceptual and the aesthetic to the architectural and technical. From its laboratory in Madrid, Spain, the team experiments with a balance of design and craftsmanship, humour and elegance, and the old and the new, locating the extraordinary in the everyday.
Founder Story
As Marta de la Rica says, she is ‘a New Yorker by birth, French by adoption, and Spanish at heart’, and these three places are threads that intertwine throughout her practice. They shape both her sense of self and her approach to designing spaces for others.
Marta lives in Madrid – a city whose ease, light, and lively cultural scene paint a backdrop for her day-to-day life raising a young family. But she also spends time in Biarritz, a place she has loved since she was very young, bordered by mountains on one side and sea on the other. From the French locals there she picked up a laidback authenticity and l’art de vivre, a concept that underpins her approach to interior design today; it’s the little details of our daily existence, she believes, that shape our life. Meanwhile, she travels widely and often, drawing inspiration and energy from everywhere she visits.
Marta’s fascination with interior design was born from her childhood trips to flea markets with her father, a passionate collector of antiques. Exploring fairs and brocantes at his side, she quickly came to understand the excitement of looking for and stumbling upon a special piece, locating soul and story in objects, spaces and collections. These adventures honed her eye, and formed an inherent understanding of the beauty of fine details and artisanal craftsmanship. Today Marta’s collaboration with her father continues through Gaztelur, a restaurant, boutique, florist, and the interim home for her ever-evolving collection of antiques and interior objects. Within the world of this elegant stately home in the French Basque Country, these pieces take on a new life until they are called on to complete a project in progress elsewhere.
In 2014 Marta founded her eponymous studio, bringing together the many inspirations that drive her, with the underpinning intention to share ‘l’art de vivre’. The past and the present come together through colours, textures, artworks, crafted objects, antiques, and new, bespoke designs, creating spaces that distill beauty, harmony and joy.