ONE OF THE KARL LAGERFELD’S ARCHITECT-DECORATOR

 

Born of a French mother and an Iranian father, the architect-decorator Shirine Zirak was raised in these two radically different cultures. She combines two ways of seeing the world and can perhaps be described more accurately as a bridge, a link between two different worlds. An educational background providing an open-minded view of the vastness of our world. Even when very young she did not play with dolls like other girls of her age. No, she preferred Lego, building sets and drawing. This propensity, which was in evidence from a very early age, led her in later years, and in the course of her travels, to observe how architecture is adapted to climate and culture and how it responds to the way of life of the population. This curiosity fed her resolute sense of freedom, and certainly her rejection of ever becoming locked in by a particular trend. However she took her education and training still further, being the only one among her collea- gues to have obtained the three architecture diplo- mas: Architect DPLG in 1990, Interior Designer in 1993 and Archi- tect for Historic Monuments in 1995. She has also worked with the greatest: Christian de Portzamparc, Architect, Jacques Garcia, Interior Designer (she has been his mainstay for 11 years), and Pierre Antoine Gatier and Christiane Schmuckle- Mollard, Chief Architect for Historic Monuments. “My role as architect for historic monuments allows me to combine the knowledge of classical architecture with the constraints of new technologies”, she notes. So we went to meet this amazing woman who, in 2007, decided to branch out on her own by setting up her own interior design agency.