WE DESIGN COMMUNITIES and CREATE CULTURE.

ABOUT MIIM DESIGNS:

MIIM Designs is a multi-disciplinary design studio. Our design projects range in scale: urban to landscape, architecture to interiors, furniture to products, adults to children and Anthropocene to living micro-organisms. We move beyond the projected and towards the possible. As designers, researchers, thinkers and agents of change, MIIM designs believes that architecture and design, presents opportunities for transformation: 

  1.  Design as a social practice to improve our daily lives;

  2.  Buildings and spaces to meet the diverse needs of the community they serve;

  3.  And to create immersive and participatory environments. 

We see design as an opportunity for cultural dialogue. For each project we draw from the influences of local culture, climate and histories for a deeper community engagement to integrate users and stakeholders in our process and to create an "identity" and a "place" for future communities and the future culture.

MIIM Designs specializes in special projects. We use creative and innovative ways to be agents of change to shape the built environment. By applying modern technology to redevelop and modify the local traditional methods, each of our projects asks how design fits within contemporary culture, how can we produce a sense of place, how will our design affect behavioral and social norms and how can we create environmental awareness through environmental condition beyond sustainable norms, larger cultural trends, material properties and fabrication processes. Essentially, we are designing the future communities and creating the future culture on the foundations of layered cultural narratives and history, through community engagement with stakeholders, historical research and material testing.

MIIM Designs has been recognized nationally and internationally with numerous awards, publications and exhibitions for quality and excellence in design. MIIM Designs LLC has been awarded the "Faith and Form Award" from The American Institute of Architects; the “Excellence in Design” from The International Museum of Women in San Francisco, two-time recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Award, the Doris Duke Foundation Award, National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Library and Museums Award. Currently, MIIM Designs is working on project in California, New York, Spain, Accra - Ghana, and New Delhi-India.

PEOPLE:

MARYAM ESKANDARI, Principal

Maryam Eskandari is the founding principal at MIIM Designs, a practice dedicated to community engagement, interdisciplinary collaboration and design innovation through the use of local and traditional materials.  Under her leadership, MIIM has been a two-time recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Award, the Doris Duke Foundation Award, National Endowment for the Humanities Award and three time recipient of Institute of Library and Museums Award. In 2016, Maryam was a recipient of the Cambridge Judge Business School Rothschild Prize for the innovative way that MIIM Designs implemented social enterprise architectural practices in Ghana and Oakland, California; in 2015 Maryam received Harvard University’s “Presenting the Past, Building the Future” Award and in 2014 she received the Women Entrepreneur Award at the White House under President Barack Obama for both innovative ways of an architectural practice that emphasizes social enterprise and environmental stewardship.   Maryam is the 2009-2011 recipient of the Aga Khan Program in Islamic Architecture Award and the 2005 J. Douglas Mac Neil Architecture Memorial Prize. 
Maryam was a founding Board Member for Open Architecture Collaborative – a non-profit working in underserved communities and was a Board member of Harvard’s FDR Foundation, CleanAcwa in Accra Ghana, and the 1947 Partition Archives of India.  She has taught at Boston Architectural College (BAC), Harvard University, and was the inaugural Nature’s Conservancy (TNC) Capstone Thesis Professor. 

281 East Colorado Blvd Suite #155 Pasadena, CA 91101  
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