Karen Chekerdjian

Background

Karen Chekerdjian began her career in advertising, cinema and graphic design at Leo Burnett in Beirut and went on to co-found one of the first branding firms in the Middle East. In 1997 she moved to Milan for a Master's in Industrial Design at the Domus Academy, under the mentorship of Massimo Morozzi, a founding member of Archizoom and Art Director at Edra. In 2001 she returned to Beirut, her native city, and opened her own design studio.

Signature Style

She treats design as an open language, more concerned with dialogue and narrative than with a fixed style. Her objects question the conventions of form, function and meaning and are ambiguous enough to be used or simply admired. She works with local artisans and turns culturally specific handcraft skills into product design.

Notable Works

Her first piece, Mobil, was produced and distributed by Edra in 1999. For Tacchini she designed the Elephant armchair.

Legacy

The studio has grown into an eponymous brand that makes series furniture, accessory collections, limited editions and custom-made unique pieces, and practises spatial design. Trans|Form, shown at the Beirut Art Center from 2014 to 2016, travelled on to Design Miami in Basel and Miami with Carwan Galerie. Her 2016 retrospective, Respiration, was staged in Paris at the Institut du Monde Arabe and Galerie Dutko.