JANUARY 23-26, 2025
Metro Toronto Convention Centre North Building
In the Studio with
Safoura Zahedi
Architect, Artist, Educator
Welcome to In The Studio,
where IDS asks a series of quick-fire questions to a celebrated member of the design community.
Safoura Zahedi is a Toronto-based artist, architect, educator and geometry expert. She is the founder of her interdisciplinary eponymous studio, Safoura Zahedi Studio (SZS), where she uses geometry as a spiritual design tool to create spatial experiences, objects, and art that inspire new ways of seeing and connecting to each other and our natural world. Safoura spoke on the Keynote stage at IDS 2024, in a Globe & Mail panel discussion on “Future Neighbourhood”.
What’s the one piece of advice you’d give to someone starting their career?
Make space for your unique interests + perspective.
What’s one thing you wish you knew five years ago?
Trust + follow your intuition.
What is the most inspiring object in your studio/home office?
My home studio is filled with objects from my travel research on geometric arts across traditional crafts – from embroidered Suzani textiles from Uzbekistan to wooden Yosegi marquetry from Japan. These objects and the people behind them inspire me daily.
What has been the biggest change in your work since you started designing?
Recently, the biggest change is my pivot from corporate architecture to an independent interdisciplinary practice where I get to redefine the boundaries of ‘interiors’, ‘architecture’, and ‘art’, through a geometric lens. In all honesty, I’m learning to embrace and enjoy all changes, big and small. Motion is a fact of life.
How do you get out of a creative rut?
Reengaging motion by taking a walk in nature and letting my mind wander.
How many people work in your studio?
Me, along with a team of collaborators that change depending on the project.
What is your dream project?
Currently, a large pavilion set in a public urban park, designed to offer a geometric spatial meditation + everyday respite for urbanites.
Favourite piece of furniture in your home or studio?
A hand crafted marble-inlay table I purchased in Agra, India. It’s made from the same Makrana marble as the Taj Mahal.
Describe your work in three words.
Meditative. Innovative. Transformative.
A book that changed your outlook?
Islamic Patterns: An Analytical and Cosmological Approach, by master geometer Keith Critchlow.
Favourite piece of stationery that you can’t live without?
My tiny Drapas drawing compass.
If you had unlimited Lego, what would you build?
I’m not sure. But I think it would be fun to design entirely new Lego building blocks with new base geometry.
What fruit is best designed…explain.
The pomegranate. Minimal exterior - opens up to reveal an infinitely complex fractal interior. Every part is accounted for and serves a purpose. It's where natural curves meet geometric structure. Where logic meets art. And it's super tasty!
As a child what did you want to be when you grew up?
Dentist — I liked all the tools.
Zaha Hadid or Frank Gehry?
Zaha
Bauhaus or Art Deco?
Art Deco
Matte or Glossy?
Matte
Favourite music artist to work to?
Ayub Ogada
Form or function?
Both.