MEIMEI YANG This young interior designer employs the visual arts to imagine bespoke environments steeped in universal narratives.
Ryerson University undergrad Meimei Yang sees interior design as a way of bridging her background in fine arts with her desire to address today’s most pressing issues. She deftly implements drawing, painting, collage-making, and other mixed media in speculative projects that explore personal narrative, heritage preservation, and environmental impact. Whether it be an artist’s studio—a typology near and dear to her heart—or a mixed-use hospitality experience, Yang formulates holistic propositions on the micro-level that ultimately address macro-scale challenges. Her isometric and diagrammatic reconstitution of Isamu Noguchi’s storied 124
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workspace, for example, highlights its cultural significance by evaluating the sculptor’s creative process through his everyday rituals. Throughout her diverse portfolio, her interdisciplinary understanding of architectural, urban, industrial, lighting, motion, game-design, and advanced technologies also comes into play. “I like to think of interior design as psychology and architecture as sociology,” she explains. “[The former] is far more intimate.” Narrative is central to Yang’s Lens of Beauty project, in which she pays homage to the rich yet rapidly disappearing arts community of Toronto’s Scarborough Bluffs neighborhood. In response to the
loss of creative spaces and cultural history in cities, she has proposed an artist’s residency that establishes a meaningful connection between a house and its natural surroundings. The interior designer in training demonstrates her technical and problemsolving prowess in projects like Maison Margiela MM6, a theoretical store cleverly anchored in an unused shopping mall corridor. The modular scheme, composed of curved mirrors and integrated displays, makes better use of the overlooked space and facilitates a more engaging, personalized, and spontaneous shopping experience for unsuspecting passersby. M
COURTESY MEIMEI YANG
By Adrian Madlener
