Manijeh Torfeh is an lnterior Architect and Designer, with a degree from the "École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Paris" in the lnterior Decorating Department.

The designer Manijeh Torfeh

She was a prize winner in the contemporary furniture competition run by the " Centre Technique du Bois," and worked as a Consultant with the "Ministère de l’organisation du Plan." After going back to Iran, her native land, in the late sixties, she worked for the Imperial Court. She designed, renovated, transformed and redesigned several palaces, gardens and large homes (the most noteworthy being the Saadabad, Nowshahr. Niavaran and Jahan nama palaces). Manijeh Torfeh’s familiarity with the architectural and artistic heritage of ancient Iran and the Qajar period, as well as her in-depth study of Persian craftsmanship, inspired the very personal style of her most recent creations. The latter conjure up visions of oriental palaces, using a blend of the most futuristic lines and materials.

A number of Government Commissions gave her a chance to experiment with many different structures, including a lecture hall at the University of Teheran, an office complex for Iran’s national radio and television, a boarding school for mentally retarded children with a three-hundred bed capacity (dormitories and a clinic), public libraries, exhibition halls, conference rooms, hotels and banks.

Her interior design commissions in Teheran, then in Paris, Nice and Cannes for private clients add still another, less monumental and more intimist dimension to Manijeh Torfeh’s career. In the process of designing the interior decoration of numerous town houses or apartments, as well as restaurants, embassy offices and headquarters of industrial groups, she achieved such a powerful concentration of her artistic means and impact, that she has now reached a perfect and unique symbiosis of all the styles and genres which helped shape her particular approach.

It is no accident if Manijeh Torfeh is now projecting the essence of her vision through a series of treasure tables, namely, eleven pieces of interior furniture which reflect just as many original viewpoints on her art. It is as though interior decorating had culminated for a while in the field of design - this kind of plastic poetry totally free of the ties which still bind interior architecture to architecture per se, and concerned only with the orchestration of form and matter. The very essence of the law of creation becomes tangible here, in these incredible stuctures thanks to wich a piece of furniture turns into a painting, a lyrical and geometric abstraction about which one’s gaze may wander endlessly.