arine aprahamian

ARCHITECTURE • RESEARCH • DESIGN

for press-kit, commission, collaboration and consulting

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Lebanese-Armenian architect, designer and researcher Arine Aprahamian champions an innovative, affordable and sustainable vision of the future through architecture, drawing inspiration from science fiction and the qualities of existing sites.

She founded architecture and design studio
MÜLLER APRAHAMIAN with partner Adrian Müller in 2018, working on cutting-edge buildings and proposals, as well as on forward-thinking projects with notable designers, artists and institutions.

Aprahamian was awarded a Fulbright scholarship in 2019, and a Master’s degree in architecture from UC Berkeley, where she started a future-oriented investigative research into innovative and experimental design issues in the hopes of developing new adaptable and resistant systems.

MÜLLER APRAHAMIAN recently launched Terraforma, an in-house R&D project working with local industry to explore the traditional, ancient building material of clay and produce innovative, domestic alternatives for architectural materials. 

From 2023 to 2025, Arine Aprahamian was mentored by Pritzker prize winner Anne Lacaton as part of the ROLEX Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, producing the research project Bourj Hammoud: the Value of the Existing and a short documentary presented in the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. A more in-depth book on the project will be published in 2026.

She is currently based between Rotterdam & Beirut.



EDUCATION


UC BEREKELEY CA USA
MArch 2019― Fulbright Scholar
STUDIO ONE with Nicholas de Monchaux & Geoff Manaugh


AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF BEIRUT LB
BArch 2013     
Minor in Art History 2012



WORK


MÜLLER APRAHAMIAN ︎︎︎

BEIRUT, LONDON, ROTTERDAM
Co-founder

MÜLLER APRAHAMIAN is an architecture and spatial design practice founded in Beirut by Adrian Muller and Arine Aprahamian in 2018. 

With commissioned work for the Tate Modern and Venice Biennale alongside architectural proposals for labour housing, extreme climate dwellings, and cyberspace visions for virtual real estate of tomorrow, we adopt a trans-scalar, anti-disciplinary and future-ready approach to materials, experience, and space.


TALKS + LECTURES


The 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Carlo Ratti ︎︎︎

The Value of the Existing: Anne Lacaton & Arine Aprahamian in Conversation
May 2025

MEXTRÓPOLI 2024 ︎︎︎
Home Is Where the Earth Is
September 2024

MIT Architecture Lecture Series ︎︎︎
Anne Lacaton and Arine Aprahamian
“The Existing : the new material”
April 2024

Vitra Design Museum ︎︎︎

Global Local Architecture as part of Iwan Baan, Momente der Architektur
January 2024


EXHIBITIONS


The Value of the Existing ︎︎︎
at the Rolex Pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Carlo Ratti.

3Phase House, a Project of Sustainable Re-Homing ︎︎︎

at Dutch Design Week 2023

FUTURE READY: Survival Now + Next ︎︎︎

at the Anchorage Museum, Eklutna Dena’ina,
Alaska 2020

DEEP CITY: Climate change, democracy and the digital ︎︎︎
at the Rolex Learning Center, EPFL Architecture in Lausanne
The University of Hong Kong
Singapore University of Technology and Design 2021


PUBLISHED WORKS


 
The Value of the Existing ︎︎︎
in Room One Thousand
Issue 13: Super Trivial Mega Small Extra Common Ultra Boring

UC Berkeley /2025

Reimagining Reparations & Repair ︎︎︎
Arquine Magazine by Adrian Muller with Arine Aprahamian / Sep 2024


✦ Science Fiction And The Future Of California's Ecology: Studio One 2018-2019 ︎︎︎

by Nicholas de Monchaux & Geoff Manaugh


Neologicon: A Cosmic Codex For Anthropocenic Alterations
Time Extraction Unit (TEU) ︎︎︎
in Portable Gray Vol.4 No.2/ Fall 2021
University of Chicago


PRESS


TIME Magazine ︎︎︎
Next Generation Leaders, The Future Is in the Details

✦ ROLEX NEWSROOM ︎︎︎ Rolex announces the mentors and protégés for the 2023−2024 arts programme

✦ The New York Times ︎︎︎
Mentors Named for Next Class in Rolex Arts Initiative


✦ Archinect ︎︎︎
Pritzker winner Anne Lacaton selects Arine Aprahamian as her 2023-24 Rolex Protégé


AWARDS + GRANTS


  • ROLEX Mentor & Protégé Arts Initiative 2023-2024 Protégée to Anne Lacaton with an additional grant for a book and a short documentary
  • Med Microfinance Support System Grant 2020-2021as part of MÜLLER APRAHAMIAN
  • Fulbright Full Scholarship  2018-2019 UC Berkeley MArch
  • Raffy Manoukian Full Scholarship  2008-2013 American University of Beirut Barch
  • Association Phillipe Jabre Grant 2018
  • Fawzi Azar Architecture Award 2013 Finalist
  • Areen Architecture Award 2013 Finalist
  • AIWA Grant 2010
  • Vatche Manoukian Grant 2009
  • Calouste Gulbenkian Grant 2009


RESEARCH 


BOURJ HAMMOUD: The Value of the Existing ︎︎︎ The Value of the Existing is an architectural exercise focusing on Bourj Hammoud, a densely populated, relatively lower-income neighborhood located in the eastern suburbs of Beirut, just beyond the Beirut River.By recognizing the value in the existing before intervening, the study explores how minimal yet intentional design strategies can enhance spatial and living quality, as well as climate comfort, within the economic constraints of a neighborhood where space is a luxury and public areas are nearly absent.

Future-Ready
Architectural scenarios in an attempt to highlight and explore the limits of some of the qualities that ultimately render the world we live in a design project: cutting-edge industrial design, the global cinematic imagination, unparalleled demographic integration, agricultural innovation, adaptive infrastructure, and the effects and risks of climate change.

The Time Extraction Unit

TEU is a multi-headed operation based in and around the malleable and quasi-sentient entity that is the Middle East. Founded by a group of architects, writers, and artists in Beirut, what feels like a decade ago, TEU explores disjunctions, folds, and ruptures in the fabric of time through the creation of digital speculative accounts in each case using as a point of departure psychogeographical places which resist singular narratives and are characterized by collective amnesia, conflict or ecological collapse.


TEACHING + ACADEMIA


Gerrit Rietveld Academie
AMSTERDAM
2023  Science Fiction, Narrative Speculation & Future Defense Strategies
DesignLab3

TUMO Center For Creative Technologies
YEREVAN
2017  How Big is Architecture?
Conducted a two-week Architecture-Lab with Adrian Müller of MÜLLERAPRAHAMIAN, about the understanding and use of scale as a tool for architecture and design.

JURY MEMBER 
AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF BEIRUT
Final Year Student’s Mid-Review 03/18
UC BERKELEY
Second Year Students’ Mid-Review 03/19
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Mid Review 04/24


PROFESSIONAL SOCIETIES 


Lebanese Order of Engineers & Architects since 2015
Fulbright Alumni Association Lebanon since 2019
Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, International Exchange Alumni since 2019


LANGUAGE


Fluent English, Arabic, Armenian & French







Mark
arine aprahamian © 2025