VIKTOR VIDEN’S HOUSE

This beautiful professional love story began when the Moscow YouTuber Viktor Viden decided to set up his YouTube channel, called Room Tourist. “Room Tourist” is a hit channel devoted to interior design. Viktor travels all across Russia, visiting spectacular homes of singular beauty or with some story to tell. His dream was to visit as many houses as possible to gather ideas. Taking the very best of everything he saw in each home across his different episodes, Viktor’s idea was to build his own house. Surprisingly, Viktor had decided to explore a foreign country to film new episodes for his channel. For reasons unknown to us, he chose Spain for this new goal and, more specifically, decided to come to Barcelona.

Meanwhile, over in Barcelona, there we were: RITUAL, an interior design company. We were working as usual in the office when the phone suddenly rang; someone from the “Room Tourist” production team was calling to propose filming an episode in the homes of some of our clients. Naturally, we felt honoured by their proposal, and in the end we accepted. After doing the shoot for his channel in Barcelona, Viktor — to our surprise — proposed that we design his new house in Moscow. This was a unique opportunity to launch international projects and expand RITUAL abroad, so the deal was closed quickly. Taking on an interior design project for an influencer who will constantly be showcasing his home — and receiving critiques of it — is a huge challenge.

AND THE PROJECT TOOK OFF

The first and most important thing we must do as interior designers is to get to know our clients as quickly as possible, along with their daily Rituals: their stylistic tastes, their professions, what their daily life is like, what their home life is like, what food they prefer, and so on. We soon discovered that Viktor owns a wallpaper factory called Wallstreet Studio. This was a turning point for us: to conceive a new home that was as beautiful and striking as possible, while helping Wallstreet Studio develop new products. In short, our ultimate goal was to take his products to a whole new conception.

We were determined to implement many different decorative finishes in the new home, as if we were in a great experimental laboratory, offering all kinds of large-format printing on many different materials — whether tiles, wallpaper, glass or even rugs. That is why we had high hopes that this project would be beautiful, artistic and, most importantly, that it would tell a story behind the visual concept.

The second pillar of this project was to bring in novel materials with a Mediterranean essence: clay walls, the use of glazed ceramic latticework, and Italian and Spanish ceramics.

The third commandment of the project was to capture Viktor’s eclecticism — an optimistic, colourful, chameleonic and spontaneous character, capable of the most incredible transformations. A space that is sophisticated yet laid-back at the same time, full of boldness and expressiveness. The project had to stir emotion through creativity, through surprise, with the profound idea that this is Viktor’s home, and therefore it will happen this way once and never again.

The fourth and final commandment of the project was the lighting design, created in great detail. The intimate, warm atmospheres, with some areas of minimal light and chiaroscuro, heighten the emotion and encourage contemplation of the various materials and finishes used throughout the work.