Today, we’d like to introduce you to Annabelle Schneider.
Hi Annabelle, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for sharing your story with us – to start, maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers.
I am an award-winning, a Swiss born / New York based dual spatial designer and brand strategist with ties to Miami. and brand strategist with an accomplished background in branding and spatial installations – physical and virtual – with a strong focus on well-being.
I have a graduate degree in Design Management and an AAS and MFA in Interior Design from Parsons, New York. My journey in design and culture started early on with event productions for music festivals and interior- and cultural brands. For the next seven years, I developed global brand strategies, while my curiosity about how and why we inhabit spaces extended my focus toward building meaningful stages and places for people to produce memories.
I am an educator at PARSONS, teaching Interior Design Studios and Inclusive Retail. BEING IN BED debuted for NYCxDesign in May 2023. It continued to evolve for Alcova during Art Basel Miami Beach 2023: An immersive experience and performance between the physical and virtual, meshed technology with tactility more critically and humanely. Mostly, it improves mental well-being while considering the bed the only place we call “home” soon.
I run my studio and work at the intersection of art and spatial designs. I use design as a medium and speculation that fosters forward-thinking ideas for improving everyday life. My designs are research-based and immersive. I investigate the historical, material, and social forces that shape the discipline of design today and in the future to improve the sense of comfort, belonging, and well-being. Whether designing for a client or developing self–initiated projects, the studio applies the same rigorous attention to context, processes, and details.
My analytical nature translates into immersive, multisensorial visual outcomes, products, and strategies tied to the experiential stories of spaces. Applied methods challenge the conventional approach to materials and structures. At the same time, I draw on my ongoing fascination with ephemeral interiors, fashion, and wearable – or visually immersive technology to advance her work and collaborations with industry and institutions and build environments that stir dialogue and moments to explore, play, and reflect.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I am a researcher, strategist, artist, and designer whose interdisciplinary work wants to spark contemplation of the interplay between physical and virtual spaces. My innovative blend of advanced technology and handcrafted elements creates visually stunning and emotionally charged
spaces. I have a background in branding and spatial installations and a keen eye for user journeys.
My eponymous practice explores innovative spatial concepts where technology and tactile elements converge to question and enhance one’s sense of comfort, belonging, and well-being. The road is defined by curiosities and speculations of our lives and my role as a designer. I want to create a better everyday life with the spaces and experiences I build for the people who inhabit those places. As the macro context changes, we must adapt concepts and solutions. My journey in education and design projects evolves with socio-cultural changes and pulses I feel in the Zeitgeist. To me, progressive projects and clients with questions of how we can make the world a little bit better are the most promising yet also challenging.
I hold a graduate degree in Design Management, an AAS, and an MFA in Interior Design from Parsons, where I currently teach design studios focused on the future of retail and inclusive spaces. Together with partners from industry, faculty, and students, we ask challenging questions about how we live today and in the future and how spaces have to change, especially concerning sustainability, technology, and well-being parameters.
My previous collaborators include Vitra, Laufen, Eyesightgroup, and Snarkitecture. My visionary work and approach have been recognized with a Future100 Interior Design award from Metropolis Magazine and recognition in international publications such as Dezeen, FRAME, Stylepark, Domus, and Designboom.
I got her start in branding and strategy for brands like Vitra and Laufen, for whom I conceptualized fair installations and retail experiences. My sensibilities and focus on design were rejiggered unexpectedly during the pandemic when I was trapped in Switzerland at the onset of 2020 after a two-week visit unexpectedly became a two-year stay due to the global shutdown.
During this time, I worked as a caretaker in a local hospital, picking up four-night shifts a week to bring a sense of purpose to my life during this unsettling period. Witnessing and encountering many difficulties focused her creative practice on wanting to meet the increased demands of inclusive and healing spaces and questioning the role of the artist and spatial designer in a time of crisis, where health and climate to technological accelerations are disrupting our ways
of living and increasingly impacting our mental health.
Returning to my delayed engagement at Parsons, I finished my MFA in Interior Design, specializing in Mixed Realities, and, with my thesis, explored new technologies, from projection mapping to AR,
VR and AI. Today, my work in the industry challenges traditional notions of space and experience, skillfully integrating virtual reality, immersive projections, and rich soundscapes with tangible, handmade components.
This fusion of digital and physical realms results in multi-sensory environments that offer transformative experiences to audiences. I am strong in conceptualizing visions of how spaces influence emotions and well-being and providing directions and executions for the future of experiential and inclusive spatial design.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am known for challenging the traditional notions of space and experience, skillfully integrating virtual reality, immersive projections, and rich soundscapes with tangible, handmade components.
I am a very curious and empathetic designer who works with and for the people who inhabit the space. I am continuously scanning the socio-cultural landscape and trying to find new answers to how we are living and why through design. I aim to design safe spaces for communities within the specific Zeitgeist. Responding to their needs and using spatial design in a multi-sensorial and multidimensional manner to tell the story of the space, resonate with people interacting within, and mostly, provide a stage and a space for emotions. In times of new technology and living life more online than offline, designing physical spaces that allow for pure, vulnerable, real emotions in one particular physical place and moment becomes very pivotal.
Overall, I consider my biggest strength in capturing the pulse of the time and translating observations into meaningful sets that resonate with communities. I am strong in conceptualizing visions of how spaces influence emotions and well-being and providing directions and executions for the future of experiential and inclusive spatial design.
And – that time I worked nightshifts at the hospital for two years, I had an awakening moment of understanding that design isn’t just aesthetics; it’s a healer. A guardian. A silent whisperer of comfort. And as a professional, it dawned on me: We designers, we can craft our future. A future where buildings, spaces, and objects aren’t just inert bystanders but active participants in our health and well-being. Now more than ever, besides my good intuition and gut feeling, I also can have science and technology to prove my thinking.
To prove our designs in real-time. With my first solo exhibition, BEING in Bed, I journeyed to redefine the essence of design and the spaces we live in. Fusing physical and digital realms for a multidimensional and multi-sensorial experience that provokes emotions, safety, and re-connection to the self. An inclusive moment of presence and contemplation, initiated through technology, further evolving in a touch-reactive, soft, safe physical space.
Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting?
The biggest mistake in life we make is thinking we have time. Be present. Be kind and always be curious. Especially in an era of instability, we’re living in today, things may be overwhelming and daunting.
Learn to tweak the perspective and consider this a great time to innovate. The world needs new solutions for the better. And we all are responsible for innovating new approaches and ways we live. As a designer building spaces in the physical and virtual, I want to give birth to new places where we feel safe. Places for the community and the honest exchange, where new ideas can be born.
Besides your curiosity and drive deriving from socio-cultural observations and changes, I’d recommend always seeking inspirational figures. Ask them questions. Be open to conversations. A mentor is never a bad choice and a wonderful gift to have.
Also, for projects, I will always believe in the collaboration of experts. From sound to light to new tech… If the community is right, the strategic vision unites, and the projects become richer than when executed alone. If you design for the people, make sure the people also have a word in the development process.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.annabelleschneider.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annabellesbubble/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/annabelle.schneider/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annabelle-schneider-23205162/
Image Credits
BEING In Bed at Alcova Art Basel Miami (December 2022), annabelleschneider.com, Curtain Call -Housing Westbeth, Kartell by Laufen – Virtual Space, (Summer 2022), Interactive Entrance to the Artist Studio, Coffee n’ Clothes: Design of First Virtual Retail Space, Meditation Pillows by Annabelle, Jakob Schläpfer, Trinamo, (Gurtenfestival), KKADE x The Seventh Letters Art, Complexcon, Interior Design Restaurant Ci Siamo, Studio GoodRich New York 19, Life Alive Boston, and Studio Phenomena 20
