05 // Artemis Valyraki
art & business
Artemis designs with the sensitivity of a poet and the precision of an architect. Born in Athens and educated in Thessaloniki, she later moved to Copenhagen, where she spent two and a half years working in an architectural firm. It was a period of growth and discovery that eventually led her back to Greece, drawn by a deeper sense of belonging that only the Mediterranean could offer.
Her return was sparked by an invitation to design 1OAM apotheke - a project that marked the beginning of a new creative chapter. Soon after came Voulkanizater, each space becoming a vessel for everything she had observed, collected and felt.
Artemis notices the quiet details: light on a surface, a sentence from a book, the space between sounds. Like Agnès Varda, whom she cites as an influence, she believes meaning reveals itself when you’re ready to receive it. For her, design is not about control, but resonance. Whether spatial or visual, each project begins with a feeling and unfolds like a story - honest, composed and deeply human.
You move between architecture and graphic design - disciplines that live at different scales but both shape perception. How do they speak to each other in your process?
My mom is an architect - sharp, grounded, deeply technical. My dad is a designer and an artist - intuitive, curious, playful. I think I exist somewhere in between them. I don’t identify with titles. I was trained as an architect, yes - but I express myself through structures, symbols, and sensations. Architecture gave me the tools to perceive the world. Design gave me the freedom to play within it. One taught me how to read; the other, how to re-write.
I usually begin with a feeling, a concept, a word. I like to think the idea itself chooses the medium. Sometimes the message is spatial. Sometimes it’s visual. Sometimes it’s just a sentence.
At the same time, I feel that everything in design - no matter the scale - follows the same essential questions: what? why? how? for whom? The answers might take different forms, but the core remains the same.
Where do you find your deepest source of inspiration - places, people or moments? Can you share a trip, an artist or a specific artwork that profoundly shaped the way you see the world or create?
I notice everything - the small, the quiet, the peripheral. I collect things constantly: images, textures, poems, gestures. Not with purpose, but with attention. They gather in a kind of internal archive. They live inside me until, one day, something clicks. Not a “eureka” moment - more like a quiet understanding. A thread becomes visible. That’s the beginning of a concept for me.
If I had to name an influence, I would say Agnes Varda. The way she draws inspiration from the world, the way she links the natural with the constructed, finding poetry between the studied and the effortless. Like her, I believe everything repeats itself in different forms. Meaning doesn’t have to be forced. It reveals itself when you’re ready to receive it.
Living and working in Copenhagen for nearly three years also shaped me deeply, both personally and professionally. But it also made me realize how much I belong to the Mediterranean. In Greek, we don’t say “I feel blue.” Blue is sacred. Blue is the sky, blue is the sea. In sadness, we say “I feel black.” And that color shift says a lot about how I feel the world - and how I design within it.
“Architecture gave me the tools to perceive the world. Design gave me the freedom to play within it. One taught me how to read; the other, how to re-write. ”
What role does music play in your life and your creative work? Do sound and rhythm influence the way you approach visual or spatial composition?
Always. Music - and before that, dance.I used to dance. Since I was four. Dance taught me how stillness can be louder than motion, how rhythm creates emotion. I learned that suppression and expansion, void and matter, silence and sound - all shape how we experience space. I think of design the same way I think of music or poetry. It’s about composition, flow, rhythm. About finding the right moment to pause. The right moment to let something be off-beat. It’s about resonance - not perfection.
How has studying architecture changed the way you perceive the world around you? Do you ever wish you could look at a space without analyzing it - or is that lens part of who you are now?
Architecture made me aware. But feeling - not theory - is what truly shapes my experience. Even the way a chair is placed, or how the light hits a corner, tells me a story. It’s not an analysis. It’s a narrative.
I’ve become sensitive to proportions, to thresholds, to atmospheres. But more and more, I’ve come to value the user’s experience above the rules of design. Architecture forms behavior. And behavior, in return, in-forms and re-forms architecture.
“Design isn’t always invention - it’s often a personal intervention. A quiet reordering of what you already carry.”
In your experience, how much does the space in which we experience something - like music, an artwork or even a conversation - influence how we feel it?
Completely. Space is never neutral. It shapes how we receive things. A song in a gallery sounds different than the same song in a kitchen. The same words feel deeper depending on the room, the echo, the light.Architecture isn’t just visual - it’s sensorial. It frames how we listen, how we share, how we remember. That’s why I think of space as an emotional amplifier.
Do you think beauty is something that can be designed or is it something that emerges through function and honesty in a space or layout?
I don’t think beauty is something you make. It’s something you trigger. It appears - you can’t design it directly. You can only create the conditions for it to emerge. Beauty is not a separate entity. It’s about correlations, interconnections, synchronicity, frequency. Sometimes it’s found in perfect alignment. Other times, in a small imperfection that feels more human than precise.
What I know is this: beauty doesn’t need to be explained. And it doesn’t need to be new. It needs to be honest. And it needs to be felt.
“What I know is this: beauty doesn’t need to be explained. And it doesn’t need to be new. It needs to be honest. And it needs to be felt.”
When working on commissioned or funded projects, how much does client approval shape the final outcome? Have there been moments where budget or direction limited what you initially envisioned - and how did you adapt without losing your creative voice?
Constraints can be beautifully challenging. They help refine what really matters. Of course, there have been projects where things didn’t unfold the way I imagined - budget cuts, compromises, shifts in direction. But my voice doesn’t come from scale or budget. It comes from the intention behind the gesture. As long as that remains intact, I feel aligned.
You’ve worked in two very different creative languages - form and image. What do you turn to when words fall short? A sketch, a moodboard, a building?
When my own words fail, I often turn to someone else’s. I find myself desperately seeking my voice through a poem, a sentence, an artwork - something that names what I can’t yet articulate. I believe in the power of language. To me, starting again often means reshuffling your words. Nothing is lost as long as you can still pronounce it. Creating a word for something is a way of claiming its existence.
As someone trained to think in terms of structure, flow and function, how do you approach a blank canvas in graphic design? Do you begin with a plan or do you allow for improvisation?
I rarely start with a fixed idea. More often, I begin with a word, a photo, a material, a sentence from a book I underlined years ago. Something that stirs something. And I follow that.
I once read a quote: “You pile up associations the way you pile up bricks. Memory itself is a form of architecture.” That feels true to me. Design isn’t always invention - it’s often a personal intervention. A quiet reordering of what you already carry. So no, it’s never really blank. The canvas is full before I even arrive.
If success wasn’t measured by recognition or client approval, what would you design or build next - purely for yourself?
Maybe a film made from the videos I’ve been collecting. Or a book - of words and drawings, fragments of thoughts still searching for their final form. Not a portfolio. But a kind of tender atlas of what I’ve felt along the way.
shot by Vas Thalis