Design That Begins From Within

Victoria Yakusha's practice resists the language of trend entirely; it draws its authority not from what is current but from something older and more personal

Over the past decade, the Ukrainian architect and designer has built one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary design through FAINA, YAKUSHA studio, and, most recently, Victoria Yakusha Gallery — a body of work that moves fluidly between architecture, interiors, collectible design, and cultural curation without ever losing its central thread: the philosophy she calls Live Design.

Live Design is shaped by primal forms, animism, and Ukrainian craft traditions. It proposes that objects are not products but presences — carriers of memory, emotion, and identity, tactile and symbolic in equal measure. Yakusha traces the conviction back to instinct rather than theory. When FAINA was four years old and Vogue US published a feature on the work, she recalls feeling not that the objects had been seen, but that they had resonated — a distinction she still considers more significant than any exhibition credit. The Design Miami presentation that followed, a collection of animal-like creatures that sat somewhere between collectible design and sculpture, was, by her account, a leap into the unknown. She had never made anything like them. She trusted the instinct anyway.Roots, for me, are not about a place or a country. They are about your inner core. When you create from there, you find your path.

That instinct has since expanded in scale and responsibility. Yakusha today describes her role as increasingly curatorial — interested not only in creating her own pieces but in discovering and amplifying the work of other talented designers. The Victoria Yakusha Gallery, founded in 2023, was a direct response to a gap she had long observed: almost no one outside Ukraine was speaking about Ukrainian design. She was among the first to help establish it as a phenomenon internationally, and she felt the obligation to open that door further. The gallery is her answer to that obligation.

Asked for advice to young women building their own design paths, her response is characteristically precise: look deep inside yourself, into your roots. Roots, she clarifies, are not about a place or a country. They are about your inner core. When you create from there, you find your path.

Key takeaways

• Victoria Yakusha's Live Design philosophy treats objects as presences rather than products — carriers of memory, emotion, and identity shaped by primal forms, animism, and Ukrainian craft traditions, positioned between collectible design and sculpture at a scale that resists easy categorisation.
• Yakusha's practice has expanded from object-making into curation and platform-building: the Victoria Yakusha Gallery, founded in 2023, was established to give contemporary Ukrainian design the international attention it deserves, growing out of her conviction that she had a responsibility not only to represent but to open doors for other talented voices.
• Her advice to young designers — particularly women — is to look inward rather than outward, understanding roots not as place or country but as inner core: the conviction that meaningful design begins from within, not from trends, formulas, or the approval of others.