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St. Sa. / Zahra Safaverdi

St Louis, Missouri, USA
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Practice Statement

Broadly speaking, my projects at St. Sa. explore methods of using design methodologies as a proxy for storytelling to represent collective cultural memories in relationship to varied ecologies and to materialize human and more-than-human forces that are often invisible. I work with various media and materials. The design process flows seamlessly between analogue and digital, both in ideation and fabrication. The final results are often spatial and occupiable: multi-scalar installations incorporating videos, drawings, digital collages, objects, and sculptures.

My interdisciplinary practice encompasses research-intensive design projects that are situated at the intersection of technology, design, and artistic practice. My projects often begin with questions about how narratives can be spatialized and how design can mediate encounters between people and ecologies. Imagination plays a crucial role in drawing audiences into the spaces I create—spaces that reveal unseen forces and facts often unknowable in everyday life. 

In my practice, model making functions as a critical site of translation: I use models not simply as miniature representations but as active instruments of storytelling that allow complex histories, vast landscapes, and more‑than‑human forces to coexist at tangible scales. In this context, models operate as both prototypes and provocations. By repurposing representational techniques, experimental modes of data translation, and utilizing varied materials in layers, I seek ways to visualize, materialize, and spatialize different sets of written work and collected data, translating and transforming them from their original form.

St. Sa. / Zahra Safaverdi
Select Fragments From Spatial Creatures: A Figural System for Contextual Mediation Interactive system pieces at various scales Spatial Creatures is a series of experimental structures and occupiable follies that redefine how a physical site is perceived. Acting as agents within their respective environments, these constructs frame and reorganize the often-invisible forces and powers at play in the environments they inhabit. These synthetic creatures live in natural ecologies. Whether nestled in the prairie, the forest, the creek, or the garden, the creatures generate episodes of encounter—liminal spaces of interaction and seclusion. At its core, our system is simultaneously didactic and playful. Each creature operates within a set of formal constraints while remaining open to multiple interpretations and uses. They exist within a series of dichotomies: both scaled and scaleless, interactive and static, perceptual frame and subject of attention. Whimsically repetitive yet never identical, these spatial figures share a common DNA. This procedural logic allows them to adapt across sites, materials, and scales while maintaining a sense of familiarity. The adaptability of these creatures extends beyond form. They are not self-referential nor derivative. Instead, they are defined by their edge conditions—the rules that dictate how individual surfaces interact and combine to become spatial. From two-dimensional painted murals to small volumetric casts, to medium-scale vessels that can be flat-packed and transported, to large installations functioning as screens for outdoor projections — each iteration finds its agency within the system. Lenticular prints, Birch plywood, Pine plywood, Resin casts, Walnut filament 3D print, Birch filament 3D print Project Design: Zahra Safaverdi, Founder and Principal at St. Sa. System Design: Zahra Safaverdi and Emmanuel Osorno Fabrication Team: Zahra Safaverdi, Amber Hodge (Generation 01), Jason Wang (Generation 02), Harry Park, Yiwei Shi, Nuo Xu (Generation 03), Andy Li (Generation 04)
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Select Fragments From Spatial Creatures: A Figural System for Contextual Mediation Interactive system pieces at various scales Spatial Creatures is a series of experimental structures and occupiable follies that redefine how a physical site is perceived. Acting as agents within their respective environments, these constructs frame and reorganize the often-invisible forces and powers at play in the environments they inhabit. These synthetic creatures live in natural ecologies. Whether nestled in the prairie, the forest, the creek, or the garden, the creatures generate episodes of encounter—liminal spaces of interaction and seclusion. At its core, our system is simultaneously didactic and playful. Each creature operates within a set of formal constraints while remaining open to multiple interpretations and uses. They exist within a series of dichotomies: both scaled and scaleless, interactive and static, perceptual frame and subject of attention. Whimsically repetitive yet never identical, these spatial figures share a common DNA. This procedural logic allows them to adapt across sites, materials, and scales while maintaining a sense of familiarity. The adaptability of these creatures extends beyond form. They are not self-referential nor derivative. Instead, they are defined by their edge conditions—the rules that dictate how individual surfaces interact and combine to become spatial. From two-dimensional painted murals to small volumetric casts, to medium-scale vessels that can be flat-packed and transported, to large installations functioning as screens for outdoor projections — each iteration finds its agency within the system. Lenticular prints, Birch plywood, Pine plywood, Resin casts, Walnut filament 3D print, Birch filament 3D print Project Design: Zahra Safaverdi, Founder and Principal at St. Sa. System Design: Zahra Safaverdi and Emmanuel Osorno Fabrication Team: Zahra Safaverdi, Amber Hodge (Generation 01), Jason Wang (Generation 02), Harry Park, Yiwei Shi, Nuo Xu (Generation 03), Andy Li (Generation 04)
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