Architect-designer Maria Vidali was born in Athens in 1977. She studied architectural design at England’s University of Portsmouth, graduating with honors and a Bachelor’s degree in 1999. She went on to earn a postgraduate diploma in architectural design from Kingston University in London (2002); a Master’s degree in History and Philosophy of Architecture from Cambridge University (2005); and a PhD in Landscape and Village Settlements from the University of Thessaly in Greece (2011). In 2012, she attended a furniture design course at Central St. Martin's College in London.
Vidali established her eponymous studio in Athens in 2007. In 2011, she opened a second location on Tinos Island in Cyclades. Vidali’s practice encompasses a variety of projects in different scales, ranging from product, furniture, and interior design to private houses, commercial spaces, building refurbishment, and landscape design. She frequently collaborates with a wide network of specialists to accomplish her projects. Vidali responds to the urban, rural, and natural features of projects’ relevant spaces, while remaining respectful the historical, social, and ecological nuances. Her work is highly research driven and often espouses clean lines, geometric shapes, natural materials, and a sense of movement or fluidity.
Notable products include the Piraeus Design Collection (2013-2016), a marble and olive wood tableware set designed for Greece’s Piraeus Bank Cultural Foundation; Tinos Design Project (2012), a handmade, aesthetically streamlined collection of wood, marble, and metal furniture, incorporating hidden features such as storage, seating, casters, and more; landscape and architectural design of a playground (plus the renovation of adjacent, related interiors) on Greece’s Antiparos Island (2013-2014); the exhibition design of The Poetics of Matter (2012), presented during the summertime Tinos Festival and made in collaboration with local craftsmen, video artist Fil Ieropoulos, and theorist Rea Walden; as well as the refurbishment, reconstruction and interior and furniture design of a private home called the Kardiani Farmhouse on Greece’s Tinos Island (2012-). In addition to her architectural and design projects, Vidali is the author of Village and Land: The Outlying Chapels on the Island of Tinos (2010, Futura Publications and Exombourgon Municipality of Tinos).
