Maryam Moghadam is among Australian Design Review’s 30UNDER30 Interior and Product Designers for 2024/2025. Below, we get to know the passionate industrial designer, who brims with gratitude for the opportunities afforded by design and carries around a potent childhood memory as inspiration for creating and making.

Maryam Moghadam. Photo: James Braund

Australian Design Review: Do you remember your first encounter with design? 

Maryam Moghadam: When I was seven, I lived in Athens with my family. We had just moved out from my grandmother’s apartment and into a unit that my father and mother had curated with fixtures, furniture, flooring and fascias. 

It was a brief chapter in our lives, lasting only a few months before we relocated to Australia, yet some design features of the space have been etched in my memory, including checkered black and white tiles, our glossy red kitchen finished with a red Smeg fridge that my parents still use, mossy green bathroom tiles that made you feel like you were showering in a misty forest, and the retro, hourglass-shaped, translucent orange plastic stools that could be detached at the centre.

I remember noticing these features as distinct elements within the space. That apartment became a reference point in my imagination and featured in the interiors I sketched throughout my childhood.

ADR: What has been a highlight in your career so far? 

MM: Earning money for my creative work, which has been a very recent experience. It has not felt like a chore (yet) to design and make, and being paid to do something I genuinely love is the kind of dream I could not have imagined becoming a reality. 

ADR: If you could work with any designer, artist or other creative – living or dead – who would it be and why?

MM: Late poet and singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen. I am very much inspired by the mischievous execution of his wisdom, and I think that together, we would come up with a piece of furniture that reflects this. His mastery of words would craft the perfect conceptual statement to accompany it.

A Heritage Reclaimed by Maryam Moghadam, created in collaboration with artist Keedan Rigney

ADR: What do you enjoy doing in your spare time? 

MM: Unfortunately for me, I have a meagre amount of time to spare between my day job and designing. I love painting, playing on my drum kit, staying at the beach until the sun sets, catching up over coffee with the people I love, and working on an illustrated book I have been meaning to finish for the past five years. 

Cheeky stool by Maryam Moghadam

ADR: What guiding values drive you and what kind of impact do you hope to make through your work?

MM: Sustainability and the human experience. I can’t say what impact I hope my work makes, because I have accepted that I have no control over people’s response to my work. 

Gnaw ashtray by Maryam Moghadam

ADR: How did it feel to make it into Australian Design Review’s 30UNDER30?

MM: I feel grateful that I am a part of this selection and I am excited for the upcoming experience. 

ADR’s 30UNDER30 Interior and Product Designers stream is brought to you by major sponsor Neolith, alongside Krost, Miele, Interface and Tongue & Groove. The program is also supported by practice partners Arent&Pyke, BLP, BVN, Cera Stribley, COX Architecture, GroupGSA, Hassell, HDR, Richards Stanisich, Rothelowman, SJB and Williams Burton Leopardi. To find out more about the final 30, head to the winners page.