There is a celebrated connection between Geometric Measure Theory and Ricci curvature in Geometric Analysis, often boiling down to the appearance of a Ricci term in the second variation formula for the area of codimension one hypersurfaces. In the seminar I will discuss some recent joint works with Andrea Mondino, Gioacchino Antonelli, Enrico Pasqualetto and Marco Pozzetta aimed at investigating the analogous connection on RCD spaces, i.e. infinitesimally hilbertian metric measure spaces verifying synthetic lower Ricci bounds and dimension upper bounds. The main focus will be on the ability of estimating first and second variation of the area for solutions of geometric variational problems as in the smooth case, without appealing to any classical regularity theory. In the end of the talk I will describe how these new tools can be employed to study some questions of Geometric Analysis on smooth open manifolds with lower Ricci curvature bounds.