Marc Ciafardini

“If you approach the project from a relationship standpoint, you bring the added value of serving people, not just architecture & design”

Marc’s role as a design lead at ForrestPerkins is focused on mentoring the staff. From Australia to Japan to England, Marc has acquired a deep understanding of special relationships, culture and design expectations. Beyond guiding ownership through the design of their project, he shares design experiences to foster the next generation of hospitality designers.

As a child, Marc was constantly reworking his room. Something in him kept pushing him to develop this personal space into something that would better suit him as he got older and his outlook and needs changed. That pattern of evolving design inspirations opened the door to this profession and showed him that spaces could and need to change over time.

Since 2002, he’s worked for numerous world-class design firms, diving headfirst into one-of-a-kind projects. Marc has lent his skill to projects of various sizes for brands from Hyatt to Omni, Hard Rock to JW Marriott, and IHG to Auberge. He believes that design, first and foremost, should be a solution to a problem, but the creative team members can be most valuable to the project and the client when they become a trusted confidants. Taking the owner through the process to achieve the vision they want to see is the most necessary and rewarding. “My personal design conviction is that I have no conviction; design can always be improved, revised, and optimized,” Marc says. “Regardless of the size or scope, design should be tied to a function or idea, but one that is primarily of benefit to the inhabitants.”