Ep. 214: Architect & Designer Marc Thorpe on Relationships, Responsibility, and Uncertainty

Architect & designer Marc Thorpe spent his youth, just outside of Washington DC, drawing and learning to navigate a destabilizing home environment. The son of two academics, he learned discipline, rigor, and resilience from his mom, while his dad, a critical thinker, taught him to challenge and interrogate everything. Always knowing he’d be an artist, he studied Industrial Design and Architecture, and instinctively flexed his ability to seize every opportunity, as well as create them from scratch. Now, as the founder & principal of Marc Thorpe Design, a multidisciplinary studio, and (along with Claire Pijoulat) Edifice Upstate, a design & build architecture agency, he’s worked with world-renowned designers, led groundbreaking projects, and is leading the charge toward more responsible architecture. And while he has always been certain he’d be a professional creative, it is uncertainty that is his greatest inspiration. 

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Read the Transcript

Marc Thrope: The work that we produce are just byproducts of the relationships that we’ve cultivated…being aware of that enables us to transcend the material world into something more real. 

Amy Devers: Hi everyone, I’m Amy Devers and welcome to Clever. Today I’m talking to Architect & Designer Marc Thorpe. Marc is known internationally for his innovative and dynamic work, which takes a rigorous approach to the integration of architecture, design and hand craftsmanship. Founded in 2010, his firm, Marc Thorpe Design, works across fields of Architecture, Interiors, Graphics, Product, Furniture, Retail and Exhibit design and has worked with leading international brands including LVMH, Mercedes Benz, Under Armour, Stella Artois, Saatchi & Saatchi, Hearst, Cappellini, Tod’s, Acura, Moroso, Venini, and many more. He earned his Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Design from the University of Maryland, and followed that up with a Masters Degree in Architecture from Parsons School of Design. He’s taught in the Architecture Department at Parsons and the Industrial Design Department of Pratt Institute. In addition to running his design studio, he, and his wife Claire Pijoulat, have launched Edifice Upstate, a design & build architecture agency in the West Catskills focused on the design and development of affordable, solar powered homes. His book, Towards an Architecture of Responsibility, published in 2022, is an artful detailing of the philosophies that drive his work. I’ve known Marc for awhile, from the greater design community, but I didn’t know him know him… so it was particularly refreshing, as you’ll hear, that he shows up so candidly, and reflects on that very question… the relentless, ongoing, existential pursuit of knowing one’s self… here’s Marc.

Marc: My name is Marc Thorpe; I live and work in New York City and I am an architect and designer and I do what I do because I think I’ve been doing what I’ve been doing ever since I was a kid. 

Amy: Can you take me back to young Marc and talk to me about your family dynamic and where you grew up and paint the picture of your childhood for me? 

Marc: Yeah, so I was born right outside of Washington DC, grew up in Maryland on the border of Washington DC, in that area. My mother and father were academics, both teachers. My mother, she taught elementary school and my father taught at the University of Maryland. He was also a practicing graphic designer and he focused mainly on corporate identity and branding at the University of Maryland. But my mom, she grew up outside of New York City, on Long Island and then moved down there and got her master’s degree in education. She really spent a lot of time with us, raising us, and myself and my sister, I have a younger sister. She really instills a sense of discipline, rigor and resilience, I think are important words to use with her. This all starts to come into play later on as I grew up, as a creative. And again, being able to carry with me this sense of discipline and rigor and being able to lean into the resistance, both external and internal resistance, was important. On the design side, about my mother, was the family of Venini, that is the glass company from Murano, so my grandmother, her mother was one of the very first Venini’s born outside of Italy, over here. And she was a concert pianist, again, very talented family. But within the home there were all these glass pieces, Italian glass pieces and my grandmother would come over and she would point them out and say, like, “These are your family, this is Venini,” and I was like, “Yeah, that’s cool.” 

Amy: That’s very cool heritage. 

Marc: Like I’m going to go play Nintendo now. (Laughs)

Amy: Yeah, can’t really appreciate it as a child, but it does seep into your subconscious, for sure. 

Marc: Yeah, totally. So the exposure to the glass was quite interesting and again, that kind of comes full circle later on in my career. But my mother was very proud of that and so that was a constant, something that we discussed in the home. And then about my father. My father was an artist, he was a professor, he was a graphic designer and he was deeply influenced by the surrealist, the data movement and just the 1960s counterculture as a whole. Again, he came from a pretty rigid, strict background, both born in the United States and raised in Europe, in Germany. And then came back. So there was a bit of a rebellious spirit within him, which he totally channeled into his work. So his work is quite exemplary of the spirit in which he carried through.

Amy: Can I just unpack that for a second. When you said he had a ‘rebellious spirit’ and he channeled that into his work, but he was really influenced by the surrealists, was he rebelling against existing cannons and movements or was he just rebellious in the way he practiced art and taught it.

Marc: Yeah, he never took anything at face value. It was always like there is an ulterior motive behind most things that are presented to you. So in a lot of ways he declared war on the status quo as a teenager…

Amy: Interrogating everything? 

Marc: Yeah and I guess in some way I did too. I got to a certain point where I started to do the same thing. I’m not the only example of this, because he had literally thousands of students that followed him. He taught them how to think, like really taught them how to think, critically think, critical thinking, parallel thinking. And that means that you need to study history, you need to study philosophy. You need to study sciences; you need to be able to have your hands in everything. You might not be completely fluent in those languages, but you need to delve deep into as much as you can in order to create what he would refer to as an arsenal, to combat whatever might be presented to you., a very challenging home to live in because you’re talking about somebody that’s really not that agreeable. (Laughs) And where everything is challenge. And let me make sure that you understand my perspective on these things, by the way, it’s right… and this is my art that represents this idea. And so that was the home that I grew up in. Needless to say it was also shrouded in music, my mother’s side was the classical and then on his side was the rock ‘n roll, so there’s again this duality of resonance if you will, that was co-existing in the home. So ultimately I was able to grow up in a home that had a footing in… or which evolved into appreciations for various different aspects of art as a whole and being able to…

Amy: Can I ask you… I’m feeling all of this swirling stimuli and I’m wondering was it… do you characterize as chaotic, or did it feel more like a rhythmic percussive conflict almost? Was there a predictability to it that allowed you to establish a kind of order or did you as a child, end up kind of on eggshells? 

Marc: You know, that is a proper therapy question. Congratulations! (Laughter). I should be lying down for this! Just to get back to the polarity and the balance. My mother did a really great job of keeping it stable where again, he did the best he could to keep it not stable. (Laughs)

Amy: Yeah, it’s interesting when there is somebody who is trying to establish stability, I can imagine your father would be the one who is constantly undermining that stability because that’s his nature, to question it at every step. 

Marc: It was in his nature, yeah, absolutely. I think fundamentally understanding that the laws of nature, anything that’s out of balance tends to destroy itself. (Laughs)

Amy: How long did the marriage last? 

Marc: Right, they got divorced when I was about 12, roughly, and my sister was about six, but it was actually a positive thing because yeah, growing up in a household with that type of dynamic, my mother just called it quits, she said no way, I’m going to make sure that at least these kids have some stability in the house. And that being said, it was a lovely home. (Laughs)

Amy: Sure, sure, let’s offer up that it’s okay to have a great childhood that also you’re willing to investigate the shadows of a great childhood in service of paying tribute to the full spectrum of humanity. No parents are capable of being perfect, because no human is. 

Marc: Yeah, for sure .

Amy: I guess the point is, this isn’t about casting a shadow on what you’ve already learnt to process and make nutrition out of. 

Marc: Well put. Another therapy drop. (Laughs) Amazing. Yeah, that being said, the transition to this stable household, which my mother helped facilitate, ultimately led to a lot of time to begin to start focusing on the work that I was doing as a kid, the drawing and the model making. These are all things that I learned via my father. I was a kid, the basement was the studio, so he would bring me down into the studio as a child and give me the pens and all the paints and we would make models together and I would sit there and he’d be working at his desk on his art and playing everything from Hendrix through all of the alternative new wave, this was the height of the 80s into the early 90s, but mostly it was in the 80s. So that music, it really settled in me and still stays as a major influence around the work that I do. And also that attitude that you bring to every project as well, which is important. 

Amy: How would you describe that attitude, if you had to put words to it? 

Marc: Let’s say the earlier part of my career as an industrial designer, somebody referenced it, they said something to the effect of ‘punk rock minimalism,’ and I was like yeah, kind of makes sense. That’s cool. But again, this is sort of early 2000s into the 2010s, that time period, specifically to industrial design. But yeah, so look, coming out of that environment gave me this, I think, perfect balance of the structured and the abstract, sort of the concrete and the abstract. So my mother is this foundation and my father allowed for the free form to happen. And those two coming together, again with the right amount of care or attention to it, could be structured in a way that could propel somebody into particular direction regarding design. And so again, I was drawing ever since I was a kid, making models, it was just natural and inherent to me, there was no decisions around schooling or anything, it was just like, I’m just going to be an artist and that’s it. And so that persisted all through elementary school and then into school. High school is the first time… I’m also very, as a person… again, I think it’s more inherent but very industrious, just had this internal ambition that fueled and fired ever since I can remember. And so going into high school it was like oh wow, this is the first opportunity I have to present my work. I was never afraid to present anything that I did and so I made sure that I would leverage every opportunity to get work published or in front of somebody, to get into the shows, to just participate. I was very, very interested in people, I just love working with people. That all started in high school. 

Amy: You say ‘unafraid,’ and I’m assuming there was some sort of exposure to what a professional artist needs to do in order to get a career going, just from living in it. I don’t think I even understood the mechanics of getting published and even really exhibiting my work, much less didn’t have a handle on my own creativity at high school. So it seems like you’re on some level ahead of the game, and on another level I’m wondering if this… how would you characterize this ambition? Was it purely I have a voice and I need to say what I need to say or was a little bit of it maybe like I want to make my dad proud of me? 

Marc: I chalked it up essentially to two things. One, again, when a child is born a lot of times they just are who they are, it’s fascinating. And so like I don’t know where that comes from, but I do feel there is a part of it that’s genetically linked and I just happen to get that particular section of the DNA strand that suggests that this person is just going to go for it. So there’s that. And then the other part is to get more into the psychology of it, yeah, maybe there was quite a bit of overcompensation for inadequacies growing up. Meaning in the sense that hey listen, I can do something that nobody else can do, like growing up, I can draw, I can do this thing. I couldn’t play football and I couldn’t be the greatest in the math class… and to this day do not even show me anything relating to numbers. (Laughs) But I felt like this was something that I could use to excel…so when I finished high school I was the head illustrator for the newspaper and basically took care of all artwork for the school, which was pretty cool. It was very exciting. Which also meant that I had to interact with all sorts of different groups. Like all the football team needed to have their jerseys or their specialty shirts for the prep rally and I would be the guy, they’d be like, oh, we’ve got to go to that dude that does all that. And then I went to the University of Maryland for my bachelor’s degree and again credit to my father because he got tenured, so I was able to go to college for free, which is pretty crazy. 

Amy: Wow, wow. 

Marc: I’m not sure if it’s still that way, but if you were a state employee working at the university, your family would be able to have access to that university, which is pretty impressive. So I started at the University of Maryland and I immediately just went into the journalism building and started drawing for them and that continued on and on. Meanwhile I’m studying architecture, in industrial design and graphic design in my other classes and that was the really beginning of the exposure to industrial design and there’s some very important key Italians that were my educators at the university level. There was Claudia De Monte who is an artist and she’s here in New York. She was the artist; Fabio Fabiano was the industrial designer and Guido Francescato was the architect and they’re all amazing. And so they were really the pivotal foundation of my beginning in terms of my registration of understanding design and understanding how it all started to come together. But the other thing about that too was I didn’t pick… I was like no, I’m just going to do all of it. I think I should focus on all of it. (Laughs) So as I began my career, I went to Washington DC and I applied for a job which ultimately ended up becoming… I became the art director for this showroom and I was very young, I was only about 19 years old. This is while I was in college. It was all high end Italian furniture and lighting, so everything from Saporiti Italia to Foscarini etc. I was pretty much a kid there, but the owner, a young guy who was in his 30s, his name was John, he just believed in me and he was like, I really like what you’re doing, this is great and you do graphic design and you do furniture design and you do all this stuff. It was all at the beginning, so I was just making stuff up, right? But definitely no hesitation to putting it out there and just went after it. And then eventually he was like, yeah, listen, I’m going to start flying you around to all the shows and so I was able to go to Salone for the first time and start to interact and meet with the professionals.

Amy: So you’re 19, are we in the early 2000s?.

Marc: This would be late 90s, this is 1998/99. Something like that, the late 90s. That first trip to Salone, I was sold, I’m done, I love this, this is amazing. we were all invited to a dinner for Saporiti Italia and the architect and design, Mauro Lipparini was a celebrated designer for the company and we were all sitting there and I had smuggled my portfolio into the dinner.

Amy: You really do know how to seize an opportunity. 

Marc: And tried to sit next to him. I was really trying, yeah, I was really trying… I was trying to get his attention. And I did. And he said, you know, “Let me look at it,” and he looked through the portfolio and he said, “Listen, why don’t you come to Florence and work with me?” And I was like wow. I was like holy shit, you know? (Laughs) Yeah, it was a dream and I couldn’t believe it. And then he leaned in and he said, this is an old Japanese saying, but he said, “When you’re young you have hair to grab onto, but when you’re old, that hair is gone.” It’s obviously a metaphor for opportunity and age,so I said, “Yeah, absolutely.” So I went back and made plans and then that summer I ended up in Florence. I subsequently went there two summers and worked in Florence in his studio. And the most important thing about that, is the way he’d set up the studio, which was an Italian way, which is we design everything, literally everything. There was scale models of buildings, there were interior set-ups for theater productions, there was branding, graphics, fashion and of course furniture and products and again, at the time they were working a lot with Zanotta and what have you. So it was just like the exposure to that in the context of the center of Florence, at 19 and 20, that time period was just mind-blowing. And so that left a mark. 

Amy: Being in Italy, being exposed to not only this way of practicing creatively, but the economic viability of it and the reasons why all of this is linked together and if you do all of these things in your studio, then there’s no reason why you can’t work on projects of any scale. And so that makes a lot of sense to me too and I can see how you would be, you know, with your eyes wide open, just absorbing this whole opportunity deep into your pores. 

Marc: Yeah. In addition to that, I also enjoyed the challenge of not knowing what to do. Just going in there and being like, let me learn. I just want to get exposure to this because I really appreciate it. I find it fascinating and I just want to learn as much as possible. I think being able to lean into your own insecurities and your own humility is extremely important, as a creative, but also just as a human being… it might not be completely conscious of this in the moment when I’m 19/20 years old, but I am now, for sure. So once I graduated from Maryland with a degree in industrial design and graphic design, the arts, I was accepted into Parsons, to study architecture in the master’s program at Parsons was like a dream come true. So I moved to New York, totally solo, sold all my stuff, just moved up to New York. I did have some work because I was art direction with the showroom and John was very cool about it, he supported it and he was like, so just so you understand, I’m going to come up to New York all the time, we’re just going to party. I was like cool; it sounds like a great idea. And I would go back to DC like twice a month, so that was convenient too because I would end up being able to see family and friends and still work and then go to Parsons and build my life up here, which I did. So that was how I got into New York. And haven’t left. So still here. Yeah, then once I finished the master’s at Parsons, I think it’s important to mention that I didn’t know anybody while I was at Parsons in the city, right, in terms of the scene. So check this out, this is what I did, okay? 

Amy: Okay. (Laughs)

Marc: I got a bunch of magazines, like Surface and Wallpaper and all that and I was flipping through and anybody I liked in there, like I liked their work, I would circle it and I would put a folder together and then me and a couple other friends, shout out to John and Johan, they’re all Parsons grads, we all got together and we put together an exhibition. During Design Week we’re going to put on a show, an offsite show and it’s going to be called this and we’re going to have lines around the block, it’s going to be an epic party, it’s going to be super cool. But that’s how we get to meet everybody, right? So I went around and knocked on all the doors. I’m talking about everybody from Joe Doucet, shout out to Joe who is your very first interview

Amy: That’s true, episode one, yes. 

Marc: I met Joe through that hustle. You name it, like Stephen Burks, met Stephen through that, the legendary Tobius Wong, became really good friends with Tobi. And it just goes on and on and on. There were a lot of different designers doing amazing… and architects doing amazing things. It was called the Bside. 

Amy: Nice!

Marc: Like a tape, on the Bside, or a record… I was interning with Vladimir Kagan at the time as well, and he supported it. He would bring his work… it was kind of cool because Vlad, he was showing up, bringing some of his older conceptual stuff and putting it in the show. So it was really a nice cross-section of various generations and various types of work. There were concepts through some production stuff and it was really cool. And we did it three years. We did it like, yeah, I think it was 2002, 2003 and 2004/05…

Amy: Okay, so this initiative and this kind of scrappy ‘do-it-yourself’, even if the work is really high level, it’s still kind of punk rock because it’s very much like don’t wait for permission, just figure out how to do it on your own. And like coalesce all the people that are doing interesting design who don’t otherwise have an opportunity to show.! I love that you were this kind of punk rock empresario of design.

Marc: Yeah, and again, the big picture was people, it was like how do I get to know people? How do I bring people together? One of those people was Suzanne Trocmé who was at the time, I believe she was the editor for the architecture section of Wallpaper. And so she would come to the show, as I remember like waking up to this call, and there was this British woman on the other end and she’s like, ‘yeah, we’re outside, we’ve been standing out here in the rain for a good half an hour and we wondered if the gallery was going to open or not.’ And I was like, oh shit, I’ve got to get my ass over there. So just beelined it straight to the gallery and opened it up and then I was able to hang out with her and the Wallpaper team and meet everyone. Subsequently over the years just getting to know her bit-by-bit, through that scene was pretty cool, which ultimately ended up becoming my connection to Bernhardt Design, which is my very first step into becoming a professional designer, so all credit to Jerry Helling with that one.  What happened was, my daughter, Amelie, she was born in 2005 and I was like, I’ve got to figure out how to turn this into money because I’ve got to take care of this kid. So I was like, I’ve got to go to the fair. So I talked to John and I was like, are we going to go to NeoCon or any of the US shows, because we’ve got to see what’s up. And he goes yeah, absolutely, we have to go to NeoCon this year and I was like, okay, cool. So we went to NeoCon and I ran into Suzanne Trocmé there and she had just launched some new work for Bernhardt Design and I was like, wow, that’s the dream company in the US, I really want to work for them. Because Jerry was working with all these amazing designers, especially European designers too, it was a big deal. And so Suzanne said, “Give me your portfolio and I’ll see if I can get his attention.” I gave her the portfolio and I came back like an hour later and she was like, “Listen, he’s busy right now, but he mentioned to me, he said, ‘have him sit here.’” I waited in this chair for like two and a half hours, like two and a half hours just sitting in a chair watching literally Jerry just standing there talking to, I think Ross Lovegrove was there, he was talking to Ross and Luke and tom from Pearson Lloyd, they were talking. He was doing his rounds and I was just sitting there as this young kid, just kind of fresh out of college in some sense and it was just amazing.  He came over and he was just like, “Listen, I looked through your portfolio, I really like your work, I think this is cool, let’s just stay in touch, here’s my card,” and that was it, that was it. And I went on my way and back to New York. Not even thinking… of course, the hope, and it wasn’t even that long, it was maybe just a few weeks later, or a month later. It was just a direct phone call from Jerry and he was like, listen, I want to talk to you about this one piece that’s in this portfolio. The portfolio by the way was a printed book with printed images…

Amy: Oh you left a copy with him? 

Marc: Physical print… yeah, but printed in the sense of they were drawings, like physical drawings and prints and stuff in there. (Laughter)

Amy: I know, it’s hard to understand that things used to be not digital at all. 

Marc: Yeah and anyway, that’s how it started. From that point on we basically worked together since and it’s been wonderful. And now as I’ve been practicing more and more architecture, I start to spec out more Bernhardt Design and include them in more and more projects, which is also really cool. And so yeah I owe a lot is credited to Jerry for giving me the opportunity and bringing me on, which is cool.  

Amy: Can you tell me about that first project, is there a story there that’s worth sharing? 

Marc: Well, the first projects were specific to what was called the Global Edition. It was as group of international designers and some Americans that were put into a particular collection that he took to Italy for the first time. And so what was important about that was, it was exhibited during Salone and it was in Tortona and so there I am again, it was really the first time I had presented any work in Milan, right? So it was super exciting and from that point on, you know, it enabled me to spend more time networking in Europe, it did give me the opportunity to continue and just again networking and spreading out within the community of Italy, right? And I already had a nice little foundation through the work that I did with Mauro and his team, Maurizio Manzoni was also a very, very important designer that I was working with and he became one of the most important designers for the company, Roche Bobois later on. A lot of credit to him too. What ultimately ended up happening was because of the Global Edition and Jerry being able to show me the work, exhibit the work there, I subsequently was able to start to network and a friend of mine introduced me to Patrizia Moroso. And at that point it was kind of like whoa, okay, this is the dream company, the most avant-garde company that’s still family owned, right? They’ve got full creative say in terms of what they’re doing and what they’re not doing. Yeah, I got that first… it was just a quick hi and bye, but then the Design Week in New York right after that meeting in April, I went to the showroom here in Soho, it was shared by Moss actually, it was still Moss, it was Moroso and Moss on Green.

So I went there and she was there and, I went up to her and I said, “Listen, I would love to show you my portfolio, if there’s any way I can come to Udine in Italy to present to you?” And she was like no, are you crazy, let’s just go have lunch across the street tomorrow. And I was like, wow, holy shit, this is again another amazing opportunity. And soi we went to lunch the next day and she was flipping through the portfolio and Ben Watson, at the time, he was… I think he’d just taken over as CEO of Moroso, he subsequently went on to Herman Miller. And so Ben comes in and he was like, “We’ve got a big situation, it’s a big problem, the Ron Arad show at the MoMA, they’re having issues with staff and getting people to move stuff. Patrizia is like oh no, what are we going to do? And I was like, “I’ll go and help, I’m hands on deck, let’s do it.” And Ben was like, for real? This is great. And then Patrizia is like, “No, you don’t have to.” I was like, “Yeah, let’s do it.” So we all went to the MoMA and we were moving Ron’s work and setting it all up and it was a lot of fun, it was really cool. 

Amy: Wow..That’s magic, you’re in the right place at the right time, but you also have a willingness to pitch in and you understand the bigger picture, when one wins, we all win. (Laughs)

Marc: Yeah, for sure and it was a special moment. And again, like the following days or after that or what have you, we sat down again and she decided on a particular table that was called the Mark Table, it was designed for a bar/restaurant in Maryland, at the University of Maryland. And so she picked this table and I was like well, fortunately I’ve got a couple of prototypes of that table, in a gallery, so I just ran over to the gallery, grabbed them out and I just brought them over. That was it. The tables just disappear… they were, that’s cool, great, thank you, okay, amazing, and then months and months later you get a phone call and it’s Patrizia and she’s like, “What color do you want these in?”

Amy: Oh my god!

Marc: I was like, what? So she’s like, yeah, we’re going to make a bunch of them and we’re going to have them all over like confetti, she called it like ‘confetti,’ and they’re going to be like confetti all over and it’ll be really nice. And so that was the first time I was able to exhibit with a prominent Italian manufacturer. What’s really important about that… it was really through the work of working with Patrizia and her husband, Salam, and the team there, they were able to teach me a really important lesson around the process. Just tapping into… being able to tap into innocence and reclaim that spirit that you had when you were a kid, is something that they hold really, really closely to them. Being able to be present and allow mistakes to happen, allow for the inconsistencies to grow into opportunities was like really important. And it’s important in their work, and if you look carefully at who she works with, there’s always some sort of thread or element of that in everything that the company produces and presents. 

Amy: Yeah, that makes sense. 

Marc: The work of Ron Arad, as an example, is based purely on the rawness and the incompleteness of it. And you can kind of feel that through the company, which really gets to that spirit of innocence. 

Amy: Yeah, this all happened before you officially founded Marc Thorpe Design Studio, right, in 2010? Or is this at the early years of the studio? 

Marc: This would be like early years of the studio, yeah. It all started coming together at the same time, and keep in mind too, I was also very much aggressively focused on interior architecture and architectural projects, getting involved in different competitions and then winning some stuff … so the whole architectural arm of it was also still in play, but from 2010 to about 2020, so a good decade, it was predominantly focused on industrial design, product design. So a lot of travel back and forth between New York and Italy specifically. But yeah, I guess one other full circle story would be the day I met Luca Nichetto.

Amy: I can’t remember the episode number, but Luca is also an episode of Clever. 

Marc: Oh yeah, I know, for sure. So Luca and I met at bar fight at Barbaso. It wasn’t us fighting, anywayIt started as just like, oh hey, didn’t I meet you earlier at the Cassina event… you know, I just introduced myself, because I really loved his work, I thought it was great. And then next thing you know, I would be going to Udine and then I don’t know, ended up in Venice, we just sort of started to connect like lightly, you know? And then eventually meeting up in Venice and hanging out, then he would come to New York and then and then he met Claire and it was like, we were all starting to just hang out together, it was really nice.

Amy: You’ll have to tell our listeners that Claire is your partner, Claire Pijoulat, co-founder of WantedDesign and now brand director of ICFF as well. 

Marc: Yeah, absolutely and she’s also a huge inspiration for me as well, which we’ll get into. And then there was one day we were hanging out, Luca and I in Venice and he was like, “Marc, why don’t you ever work with this company Venini?” And I was like, well it’s impossible, I can’t… get on the island and know the creative director and do that… I mean it’s a very insulated company with one of the greatest histories. And he was like, “Yeah, the whole family thing and this story and it’s amazing, it would be really cool to get you over there.” And I said, “I’m not asking…” anyway, he called the creative director, which is Roberto Gasparotto and he called him and he said, “Would you like to meet this American,” and the next day I was on a boat going over to Murano. Met with Roberto and then of course with more of an American attitude you’re like, “All right, so let’s get to work, we’re going to do something, this is going to be great.” And then you start to realize this is going to be a five year thing. So what Roberto asked, he said, he was really enjoying the work of Moroso’s M’Afrique Collection, which I’d spent a lot of time on, working with Salam, Patrizia’s husband who runs that program out of Senegal and Dakar. And so he was like, would it be interesting to do a project in Senegal with Venini? And I said, “Sure, let’s try to coordinate that one.” So I got on a boat and I just went basically back out to get to the mainland so I could get to Udine, just down with everybody there. Talked to Patrizia and Salam, they thought it was amazing to work with Venini, I said, “Yeah, it would be super cool if we could pull it off.” And then that set-up essentially a four/five year project of back and forth, back and forth, of going between Senegal and Murano and then again, learning the art of glass making while at the same time working with the craftsmen in Senegal. 

Amy: Oh how super exciting. 

Marc: With the metal work and the weaving. 

Amy: That’s amazing, what exposure to craft that’s been refined over centuries, that’s just wild. And also you yourself are like weaving these relationships and navigating these possibilities and turning them into reality and I think as I’m picking up, so much of your creative process is not just the making of stuff, or even the generating of forms and ideas and colors, it’s actually being present to what is available and turning it into opportunities through relationships.

Marc: Yeah, the way that I’ve always looked at it is that the work that we produce are just byproducts of the relationships that we’ve cultivated. And in a lot of cases, even ourselves, really the landscape of experiences and relationships and so I think again, being aware of that condition enables us to transcend the material world into something more…in some sense it’s way more tangible to the spirit than the actual objects itself, right? You could have a physical thing, but there’s that aura, the realm of consciousness that’s around the object that created it, that is really what makes it real. I think again, spending time leaning into that and making that a thing is important. 

Amy: And how did that experience imprint on you? 

Marc: Exactly, again, coming out of working, especially with these masters in glass making and the craftsmen and again, these experiences throughout my entire career, yeah, ultimately it leads you to a place of appreciating the moment and appreciating the presence of presence. It’s not about the thing, it’s about the doing and the creative act. This idea of harnessing the latent potential that’s inside of all of us and being able to execute something that is relevant to that. And that’s kind of where I’ve been directing my energy. You’d mentioned Claire… so Claire and I, we built our first project upstate, a small off-grid cabin called The Edifice which garnered a bit of attention. 

Amy: Fremont House. 

Marc: Yeah, the Fremont House and then we continued building and built our house in Fremont, the Fremont House. Again, this is us spending a lot of time upstate, spending a lot of time in communion with nature and the result is essentially a recalibration of intention, so Edifice Upstate is a design build agency, if you will, that focuses on the production of sustainable ecologically responsible architecture. The idea of utilizing sustainable technology and building practices is what we’re doing upstate. And so we started with our own projects and now we’re currently moving into producing projects for clientele, to be sold. We’re addressing a handful of various issues pertaining to that, such as the housing issue here in the United States, it’s actually all over the world, but there’s a lack of housing. There’s a lack of affordable housing, is another issue. There’s an energy crisis coming, if we’re not already in it. And again, getting back to declaring war on the status quo, that’s really the intention behind what this work is. It’s suggesting that we don’t need all of these things. We need to stop outsourcing everything that we use in our life and start taking responsibility for our own actions. And we can start by how we live and that’s really what Claire and I are doing with Edifice Upstate, is offering up a vehicle for individuals to be able to take some autonomy and start working towards a more responsible future. 

Amy: So what you’re offering is essentially the architecture and building of small modern homes that are completely self-sufficient in terms of energy and through Edifice Upstate, somebody could… who has a plot of land could work with you to oversee the building of this property, which is remarkable in so many ways because you’re not the first person who wants to build a house upstate. But what you’re doing is you’re offering a working prototype for a new model of how to do it. And a new model of how to stay, not just energy efficient, but energy autonomous.

Marc: Yeah, exactly. One important aspect to the work that we’re doing is each house will be unique. Each house will be site specific. The site dictates the building. And so every project will be individual and unique, with as minimal amount of bells and whistles to it as possible. But these are projects that reflect this idea of quality over quantity, right? So the floor plan of each house is dictated by the floor plan that you would traditionally find in the 1950s, which was anywhere from 1,000 to 1,500 square feet, that would be huge. This is a time when if you had two cars, shit, if you had one car, it was worth more than the house. So we’re trying to re-establish the great American landscape, but in a responsible way.

Amy: That has a lot of logic, fortitude, responsibility built into it. I understand that they also not only capture energy through solar, but they power themselves without being reliant on a grid, which I think in the coming years will offer a lot of comfort and freedom to people, as extreme weather events and infrastructure starts to sort of, I don’t know, show itself to be not as reliable. It can be an interesting way of living, to be more responsible for your own energy usage, and a direct relationship to your own energy usage. Which I think is really interesting. I’ve been to the Fremont House, thank you very much for hosting me…

Marc: Oh that’s right, you did sleep there.

Amy: (Laughs) I can say that these homes are… or at least the one that I visited, is very much of the landscape that it’s built on. And it feels… this sort of latent potential that you were talking about earlier, feels captured in the house too. It feels like it’s got a soul, even though it’s new and crisp and modern, it doesn’t feel like tract home or like any of these other homes that I associate with new. We tend to think that only older homes have character or have soul, and this is my compliment to you, that home does have a soul and it has a place in that landscape that feels harmonious and yet not dominant. Like it doesn’t assume that it’s higher up on the food chain than the rest of the wild landscape around it, which I really appreciate. 

Marc: Yeah, thank you. That’s exactly it. Yeah, I think a lot of architecture today is really trying to gun for the cover of the magazines, so there’s a lot of tinsel. And yeah, I think again, just being able to offer up something that’s humble, but is intelligent but yet at the same time comfortable and thought provoking and unique is really the direction that I think we should be going, sort of less about excess and more about responsibility. So yeah, that’s what we’re doing, that’s what Claire and I are doing. And we’re having some fun doing it, which is great. I just want to be able to give Claire a lot of credit for her drive and inspiration because it was really her interest and motivation to wanting to get upstate, get into nature, start spending more time in communion with nature and learning from it, which is really what we’ve done. And then being able to translate that into something that resonates with people and the work that we do, like the things that we’ve been a part of our whole lives, is kind of nice full circle 

Amy: It feels to me like this is very meaningful work to you and that this is it’s propelling you to not only lean into this in terms of your profession, but it’s also this communion with nature and thinking about these things is also propelling you back to your dad, continue interrogating everything including your own sense of self, including your own ego and your own self-awareness and your own drive and I guess what matters. I’m sort of interested in where you find yourself on this path to self-actualization? What feels hardy and that you’ve maybe tackled and what feels like maybe is still something that is a challenge for you? 

Marc: The way that I’ve always looked at life is this idea, which is, I believe it was Socrates that said that … I’m not wise because I know, I’m wise because I know that I don’t know. That sentiment to me is really important because it opens up this sphere of unknown and you have to be able to engage in the unknown all the time. It’s a challenge, you have to bring a lot of courage to the table to be able to challenge yourself like that. And it is a process, it’s always changing. And I think being able to have a more refined understanding of your own awareness will enable your ability to navigate, having the willingness to not lock something up in a box and say that’s it, that’s what I planned. It doesn’t work, it’s not life. It’s like the tango, you’ve got to be able to just tango on. So you really have to be able to go with it and then learn from it and then again, re-adapt and move with it. I think what you find is new parts of yourself… which again can communicate through the work, but you’re discovering new parts of yourself through that process of being open and engaging the unknown, enables that type of self-realization. 

Amy: Yeah.

Marc: This isn’t easy, this is a process and it’s ongoing and it never ends, it will go on… which is again, I think the whole point of living, is that’s why we’re here, is to live. I think being fully engaged with the practice of maintaining your own… development and maintaining of your own personal philosophy is critical. 

Amy: What do you think, in terms of… you have your own self-perception, self-awareness, what do you think the general public knows about you and gets right and where do you think they get it wrong, either because you’re masking or guarded or because they just don’t have a prototype or frame of reference for a guy like you? 

Marc: Oh yeah, I don’t think about that at all. (Laughter) Whatever is out there is out there. (Laughs) Just kind of leave it as it is. What’s more important is how I see and understand myself and just making sure that I’m trying to be a little bit better than I was the day before. And it’s not like that all the time, but that’s kind of the most important thing for me. 

Amy: (Laughs) I describe you as successful, do you feel successful? And what does success mean to you because we all need to define our own definition of success, right? 

Marc: For me there’s this quote on the definition of success which resonates… I don’t know who said it, I can’t remember who said that. Success is finding the intersection between doing what you love and something the world needs. I think that’s a really good definition of success, right? 

Amy: Yeah. 

Marc: And then outside of that is really just what we talked about, this idea of defining a better version of yourself every day is I think a good definition of succeeding. 

Amy: I’m guilty of being hypercritical of myself. Sometimes I can be a better version of myself one day and the next day and not give myself credit for it. So I’ve had to learn to like, hey Devers, you’re doing all right. You deserve a promotion, because I’ve always been self-employed, so no one has given me a promotion, except for me, and I’m the worst boss. How do you manage that whole internal struggle between…

Marc: Self-talk. 

Amy: Also knowing that the mountain is always just going to get higher and higher to climb, you’re never going to reach the top, so how do you give yourself the encouragement you need along the way? 

Marc: I like the mountain metaphor. I think it was Ryan Holiday who talked about the two mountain principle, which is… you climb to the top and then you look across the valley and you realize that there’s a second mountain that you have to scale and it’s going to be like that all the time. Or this idea that the number one killer of dreams is achieving them. Again, this is like another platitude, but it’s heavy because you might be focused so heavily on achieving particular things in your life that ultimately then do end up playing out and then you’re left with a talent issue some of the work, like David Goggins, but he would talk about this idea that… like once you’ve done the things that you set out to do, what do you do next? And for him it was this idea of talent, he was like you’ve got to be able to get back to the basics, go back to the innocence and so like with the creative who would start making models again, you know, start drawing little sketches, do landscape drawings again. Start doing these things that you used to do and we all know what it is. There’s always something out there that’s just right around the corner that you just kind of avoided. You’re like, all right, I’m not going to touch that, that’s just way too crazy. That’s when you go for it. To say, I’m going to go for that, I’m going to try that and just see what happens and maybe I fail miserably, but at least I tried, you know? At least I did the things that I said I was going to do and I tried to do them. There’s no regret, it’s not about… you regret the things that you didn’t do, not the things that you did. 

Amy: Well I don’t regret spending this hour with you Marc, thank you so much for revealing yourself to me. I feel like I know you better and I appreciate your work even more knowing the heart and soul that’s driving it. 

Marc: Thank you, thank you for the opportunity to do the podcast, super cool. I’ve always been a big fan, so it’s really nice that we did it. I’m glad we did it now too, not like earlier, because that would have been a different guy. (Laughter)

Amy: Hey, thanks so much for listening for a transcript of this episode, and more about Marc including links, and images of his work - head to our website - cleverpodcast.com. While you’re there, check out our Resources page for books, info, and special offers from our guests, partners, and sponsors. And sign-up for our monthly substack. If you like Clever, there are a number of ways you can support us: - share Clever with your friends, leave us a 5 star rating, or a kind review, support our sponsors, and hit the follow or subscribe button in your podcast app so that our new episodes will turn up in your feed. We love to hear from you on LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter X - you can find us @cleverpodcast and you can find me @amydevers. Clever is hosted & produced by me, Amy Devers, with editing by Mark Zurawinski, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan and music by El Ten Eleven. Clever is a proud member of the Surround podcast network. Visit surroundpodcasts.com to discover more of the Architecture and Design industry’s premier shows.

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Inside of the Fremont House in upstate New York.

Young Marc.

Unity by Marc Thorpe for Venini.

Marc Thorpe’s book, “Towards an Architecure of Responsibility”

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Clever is produced and hosted by Amy Devers with editing by Mark Zurawinski, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan, and music by El Ten Eleven.

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