Laura Karhunen

Interior architect Laura Karhunen has over ten years of experience in designing interiors for numerous offices and residential houses. As the CEO of her own design office Karhunen plans to branch out into hotels, restaurants and retail space, New York providing her the best possible environment for inspiration and benchmarking.

Karhunen specializes in designing workspaces from six person boutique offices to 600 person complexes. While designing the décor for Leppätie elementary school in Sipoo, she utilized special themes of color and material to support the school’s student-centered philosophy of education. The classrooms are designed to reinforce the language immersion approach by offering an environment full of elucidative objects for language assimilation.

During her residency in New York Karhunen plans to delve into the design and feel of the delis, restaurants and grocery stores of the city. Karhunen has a keen interest in surveying the influences that urban farming and the Farmers market movement have on trends of modern urban planning – her focus being on contributing to the creation of a new urban environment in Helsinki.

As the Vice President of the Finnish organization of interior architects (SIO), Karhunen is interested in the collaboration between New York architects and interior architects, and also in the challenges cooperation presents. She plans to bring back home some good policies and international experience.  

Laura Karhunen is FCINY’s artist-in-residence from March through April 2015.

http://www.karhunen.eu/index.html