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CHIMERA DESIGN

@chimera_design_

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(NY/LA) Interior Architecture + Design Studio. Wellness spaces, Hospitality, Residential, Workplace, & Custom Furnishings.

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Chimera Design celebrates boundless thinking while preserving and honoring the working knowledge and principles of Architecture and Design. We pride ourselves on an informed design process that is playful, investigative, and supportive of independent artisans and makers.

Over the next few weeks we will be diving deeper into Chimera’s backstory, who we are, and what is to come. Visit our website to subscribe and follow along! by @chimera_design_

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Our studio focuses on blending our expertise in evidence-based design, spatial installations, custom-built furniture, fine art, and a deep-rooted practice in Interior Architecture. We work closely with independent artisans, thoughtful fabricators, and skilled trades to bring our creative visions to life, ensuring each project reflects our commitment to quality craftsmanship and innovative design.

Within all areas of our work, personal and client related, we have refined a complementary and symbiotic design process that consists of progressive encounters and reconciliations between, at times, our seemingly divergent approaches and perspectives. by @chimera_design_

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We’re so excited to see Haram Haram (@haramharamstudio) in print in Hospitality Design (@hospitalitydesign). Our first time in print! It is an honor to be part of their July Wellness Issue, in the Be Well section. In the wide landscape of design, we continue to center environmental health within our practice. Creating holistic spaces that benefit the health of the people in them is a deep focus of ours. Beyond aesthetics, we consider indoor air quality, material health, and the full supply chain of everything we specify. With a WELL accredited professional on our team and a background in designing healthcare spaces, we treat wellness as the center of our projects and not an afterthought. Link in bio to read the article.

Thank you Stephanie Chen for including us, and Alia Akkam (@behdria)and Caitlin St John (@crstjohn) for capturing our intent so accurately. by @chimera_design_

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The Lounge

Alongside studio founder Natashia El-Badewi, we conceptualized Haram Haram as a portal: an immersive environment that invites exploration and creative exchange. A portal is more than a gateway, it is an opening, a puncture, a lens, or a specific view into another world or perspective.

Conceived as a multidisciplinary art space, the studio brings together a community of artists working across skin, canvas, object, sound and space. The lounge defaults as a quiet space for tattoo consultations, and has opened itself up to gatherings, screenings, and pop-up markets.

Drawing from Natashia’s Lebanese heritage, the space evokes desert landscapes and the richness of pomegranate. A constant in Lebanese cuisine and culture, the fruit surfaced repeatedly in the imagery she shared, informing a palette of deep, saturated reds. With a background in fine arts, Natashia painted the walls herself, layering tonal variations through a deliberate, gestural brush technique that builds depth and movement.

The result is a lounge that feels safe and enveloping, like stepping into a memory, or a dream.

Photo by @jeannnes by @chimera_design_

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6 months ago

On the upper level, where the tattoo stations and bathroom are located, a small lounge provides a place to pause just before the tattoo experience. It holds a sense of comfortable anticipation, a threshold between arrival and transformation. At its center, a custom table assembled from stacked pavers serves as an understated yet sculptural centerpiece. by @chimera_design_

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Working closely with Natashia, we aimed to incorporate plant life that evokes home and familiarity. The olive tree, native to Lebanon, emerged as a key reference. Rather than treating it as decor, we integrated it into the architecture, creating an oasis within the installation’s dune-like curvature. The undulating bench gives way to a recessed planter, creating a subtle threshold between interior and natural landscape.

Photo by @jeannnes by @chimera_design_

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The Retail

The retail space at Haram Haram unfolds as a sculptural landscape: soft, undulating forms that recall both desert dunes and the architecture of Lebanon. Informed by her background in fashion, we explored drapery as both threshold and veil. Custom translucent drapes soften the boundary between interior and street, and create privacy for the studio’s visitors. The original concrete slab, once hidden beneath white tile, was uncovered, sanded, polished, and stained to a warm, sandy hue.

Photo by @jeannnes by @chimera_design_

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Tattooing is an inherently intimate and vulnerable experience, and the environment plays a critical role in shaping how the body and mind respond. To accommodate a range of comfort levels, we enveloped each station, creating protected, calm, and private spaces, ‘portals’ enclosed by translucent drapery.

Layers of earthen materials and soft light guide clients from their arrival at the studio to more intimate zones. At Haram Haram, the experience extends beyond the visual: candlelight, incense, tea, music, and storytelling contribute to a sensorial environment that feels both transportive and deeply personal. By balancing precision with warmth, and hygiene with atmosphere, the space supports both Natashia’s craft and the wellbeing of every client and visitor. by @chimera_design_

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The Portal

The architecture and spatial design of each workstation was designed to support the artist and the client throughout the tattooing process by creating a warm and intimate environment. Open storage niches are embedded within the walls on either side of each archway, offering storage for artists’ tools and clients’ personal items.

Photo by @jeannnes by @chimera_design_

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Co-founders Daisy Hook and Amanda Swain

Chimera Design is a queer-owned, bi-coastal interior design studio. Inquisitive and unconventional, we create spaces rooted in authenticity and emotional resonance. Guided by the identities and visions of our clients, our work results in layered environments that are both visually compelling and deeply intentional.

We believe spaces that activate the senses do more than function; they transport. Our projects carry culture, memory, and meaning into the physical world.

X Daisy & Amanda

Photo by @jeannnes by @chimera_design_

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“This tattoo parlour and art space in Miami’s Little River has been designed by US-based studio Chimera Design to reference sand dunes and Bedouin tents.”

We are endlessly honored for Haram Haram, a project so close to our hearts, to be featured in Dezeen. Thank you to Ben Dreith for sharing our story, and to Dan Howarth for so beautifully putting it into words.

After moving to Miami from NYC, our close friend @natashia.ink expressed her plan to open her own tattoo studio in Little River. We came on as designers, confidants, and dreamers to imagine a space that could expand the notion of what a tattoo studio might be.

The name of the studio, Haram Haram, draws from the Arabic word haram, which can mean both “forbidden” and “sacred.” During a time of deep uncertainty for her homeland, we worked closely to envision a sanctuary for gathering that reflected Natashia’s Lebanese roots. Though we had been friends for years, this design process allowed us to enter her world more deeply than ever before.

We looked through years of photographs from her travels, watched films, and listened to her stories. Our concept phase is always deeply investigative; in what can sometimes feel like a therapeutic process, we pull from memories and projections to create spaces rooted in the past while supporting the future. Deep pomegranate tones and rich natural textures wove their way into an environment where community can gather and feel reflected. The space includes a retail component, a lounge, multiple tattoo stations, back-of-house functions, and, most recently, a DJ booth for a future radio show.

With immense pride, we witnessed Natashia and her partner Bryan Perez @bryan_builds_ , a Miami-based fabricator, build the space together. Ideas slowly became reality as they poured themselves into every part of it with intense determination and creativity.

It was an honor to help bring Natashia’s world to life, and for it to become the first official project our studio has shared. Huge thank you to the talented @jeannnes for capturing the space just as we see it.

Over the next few posts, we will share more details of each area. taken in Little River, Miami by @chimera_design_

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