Personal Space
with Josh Itiola
Talking Prized Possessions
with the Multi-Talented
Engineer Turned Vitsœ Planner
- Interview: Naomi Skwarna
- Photography: Marquale Ashley
For Josh Itiola, it was through the lens of a camera that he first saw the rooms he occupied. An engineer by education and a planner with the design-forward furniture company Vitsœ, Itiola became interested in interiors as a young man, photographing the architecture in his hometown of New York City. Driven by intuition–a desire to “taste everything,” as he puts it–Itiola began to consider the insides of the buildings that encompassed him. Interiors were not just places where we slept, cooked, or worked, but opportunities to put ourselves at the center of comfort, beauty, and functionality.
Now, an inhabitant of one of the most elegantly striking, personally-designed apartments (online and off) you could dream of, Itiola is, as all interesting people are, as much about what he doesn’t show. There are the projects he’s working on in the half-bedroom-turned-office of his Bed-Stuy apartment, which Itiola would rather not talk about at the moment; there is the office itself, which he won’t share pictures of on his highly commented-upon Instagram account. Then there are the careful angles of his immaculately furnished apartment, filled with art and objects that reveal Itiola’s taste for European designer/architects like Ettore Sottsass, Gaetano Pesce, Ingo Maurer, and Afra and Tobia Scarpa. Between the flashes of Italian excess are glimpses of influential Black painters like Kerry James Marshall and Jacob Lawrence. Lamps crane their necks in all directions to show you where to look—many of them rewired by Itiola himself.
At heart, Itiola is a collector of three-dimensional intrigue, committed to moving things and putting them back together until they resonate with his vision. And sometimes that means putting his treasures in a place where only he can enjoy them.
Featured In Top Image: Alessi salt & pepper grinder, Alessi salt & pepper grinder and Alessi salt & pepper mill.
Naomi Skwarna
Josh Itiola
You mentioned that today you’re doing stuff around the house. What does that mean for you?
It’s tidying up things that I’ve left around. It’s a mess by Tuesday or Wednesday.
What type of mess maker are you?
Piles of books that I’ve been referencing, or my office chair ends up being my third closet. Tackling the Pile.
It’s nice to know that there are moments of disarray in your gorgeous apartment.
I live life like everyone else! The internet allows us to not see that part of people’s lives, but I literally have piles of clothes on a chair.
Among other things, you share a lot of photographs of your home on your Instagram. How do you deal with the intimacy that comes with that?
I do sometimes feel weird about showing my apartment. More now than before, because it’s been shown in more places, like the Architectural Digest piece. I’m a very private person, but my apartment is a personal project of mine. I want to show what I do, what I can do. And I don’t show most of it! No one knows what my closet or bathroom looks like. No one knows what my kitchen looks like.
A kitchen is such a personal space.
Yeah, exactly. My friends see my kitchen when I cook for them. [Laughs]
What does being a Vitsœ planner entail?
I deal with Vitsœ furniture itself. Our most popular product is the 606 Universal Shelving System, which has many components. My main job is to help clients configure our system to their personal needs.
You’ve said that you like challenging spaces that require you to be technical. Can you give me an example of a problem you solved in a space that you planned for someone?
This has happened a couple of times—and I really enjoy it—where we do a system that compresses between the floor and the ceiling and we need to know exact ceiling measurements. We have systems that are attached to the wall and others that can compress and divide space. This client wanted to do a compressed system, but their ceiling sloped. Our posts are cut to length for your ceiling height, but now you technically have multiple ceiling heights because of this slope. I had to get specific height measurements from, like, five inches from the wall, then 35 inches from the wall, and on and on, to make sure that the system, once installed, would appear as one straight unit, even though in actuality, it’s tilted.
That sounds so delicate and precise!
I love being able to incorporate math into my work because I went to school for engineering and it’s still in me! This mathematical problem-solving in technical stuff, in architecture, brings me a lot of joy.
Do you have a favorite “genre” of room?
I don’t know how nerdy I should get!
Please get so nerdy!
A while back, a friend of mine sent me such a good BBC video with Lucy Worsley talking about the history of the home. And the drawing room was so interesting! A drawing room is outside of the main entertaining spaces, and it’s where people would withdraw from the party, bringing the more personal people into that space. It’s where you kept all your personal art and your really good stuff that you don’t want to share with everybody, but you still want it on display. I would love to have a drawing room, if I ever have a home in the future. I would love a personal space that isn’t shared with everyone.
Can you tell me about one of your most prized pieces of furniture or objects? The gem of your collection.
Wow, the gem! It’s this clock. [Holds up clock] It’s in the shape of Brazil. It was designed by Gaetano Pesce for a Brazilian cigarette company called Free. This was actually never produced. He made one-offs.
How did you end up with this clock?
I’d done some work with him and his studio, and I wanted to buy a clock that he ended up mass producing. I reached out to his studio like, “Hey, do you know if Gaetano has any of these Fish Design clocks around the studio? I’d love to buy one.” And they were like, “Oh, Gaetano actually has a gift for you!” And he gives me this clock, which no one I know has. And I got him to sign it for me! This clock is something I look at multiple times a day, so it’s probably my most precious thing at the moment.
You’ve spoken previously about being totally comfortable rewiring lights and other electrical things.
My kitchen light is the craziest thing I’ve ever done. It’s this elaborate track system.
[At this point, Itiola aims his camera at a lighting system that looks like a tiny city’s power lines.]
Oh, wow.
It’s designed by Ingo Maurer and it runs pretty much the whole length of my kitchen. Essentially, it’s live power lines and you hang the elements off of them. Once you turn the switch on, it powers the lines and each element.
What makes a home or an office particularly livable to you?
Natural light is a big thing for me. Also, being able to flow through the space.
What do you mean by flow?
How you maneuver through it. I like to move freely through my space as I wish, rather than being constrained by a bunch of pieces. That begins with picking the space—like, are you able to create room to flow through it? How the furniture is placed will dictate the way you’re going to move. It has to be comfortable!
Do you go into other people’s spaces and start problem solving their interiors?
I have to bite my tongue a lot.
Have you ever secretly moved pieces of furniture around?
I’m always secretly moving stuff around.
I was wondering about your family home. Does it still exist as it did when you lived in it in your formative years?
The house is still as it is, but most of the rooms have changed, including mine. Very sad. [Deep sigh]. My room got turned into a second closet.
If you were to steal something from your family home, what would it be?
There’s a bust that my sister made when she was in high school. I don’t know who it’s a bust of, but she made it in ceramics class and it’s been around for as long as I can remember. I saw it out there the other day, and I was like, “Damn, I would take this thing.” My mom would lose her mind, though.
It's lovely that something made by your sibling is so valued by your family. You’d risk it all for that.
There are also these traditional drums from African Yoruba culture—talking drums. And I don’t know where they are [in the house]. But we have a couple talking drums that my parents had bought for us. I want to find them and take one.
It sounds like it’s already yours.
I think mine is broken. The other belongs to my brother, but he doesn’t have to know that I have it.
Naomi Skwarna is based in Toronto, Canada
- Interview: Naomi Skwarna
- Photography: Marquale Ashley
- Date: March 18, 2022
