NYC –based interior designer Laura Kirar’s got more enviable product launches under her belt than NASA’s got rockets.  The founder and creative director of TRU Design, she holds licenses with Tufenkian rugs and Baker Furniture, among others.  Kirar’s soaring career has shot her straight into Dallas, with a $2 million turnkey penthouse in the W Residences for developer Mark Molthan.  A collection just debuted for Big D’s own Arteriors lighting and accessories company.  Happy landings!

Air Rights
Armed with degrees in sculpture and interior architecture from the Art Institute of Chicago, Kirar turns out rooms that are sculptural and materials-driven.  She often teams up with local artisans on projects, and for this 31’st floor Dallas condo at the W Residences, Kirar tapped Dallas metal artist Robert Wohlfeld to carry out her design for a patinated zinc wall and a bronze plate fireplace surround.  Quirky textural ideas make the functional less mundane, such as a headboard in the master bedroom that is actually an entire wall tiled with rectangles of hair on hide.  A room divider in the entry is made from a blown up photo of a tumbleweed (her homage to Texas) and developed on semi0translucent film, by NYC artist Amanda Weil.

Kirar designed all the furniture for the W project.  “I’m influenced by turn of the century Vienna, Orientalism and Danish modern,”  she says.  Kirar collects vintage furniture and lighting from flea markets and thrift stores in every city she visits.  When designing a room with a view of the city, Kirar pays particular attention to where the eye rests, keeping art and accessories to a minimum.  “There’s so much going on outside the window, you need places that are contemplative, such as the zing wall.  Inside there’s not a lot going on, but there are a lot of materials and detail.”

Soft-Bespoken
Kirar’s newest additions to the 150-piece collection for Baker Furniture she launched in 2006 are “pieces the designers are telling me they need,” says Kirar, “such as a low cabinet specifically made to go under a flat screen TV on a wall.  I’m excited about a new contemporary sofa, too, that’s deep and elegant and generous.”  Kirar’s Tufenkian rugs collection that launched last year, The New Moderns, consists of nice wool and hemp carpets inspired by contemporary artists such as Gerhardt Richter, Richard Serra and John Cage.

Light Motif
“I felt like I was a kid in a candy shop working with Arteriors owner Mark Moussa,”  says Kirar of the 90-piece collection of lighting, tabletop and decorative accessories that debuted in April at the High Point, North Carolina furniture market.  “So often you can be limited by a company’s resources, but I ended up doing twice as many designs for them as originally planned.”  Working in leather, inlaid mother of pearl, carved marble, and metals such as cast bronze, Kirar’s produce concepts were derived from the hundreds of sketches she’s made during the years in a travel notebook that she keeps in her purse.  “I’m always sketching,”  she says.

Kirar was hands-on designing many of the pieces for Arteriors.  “I did a lot of sculpting in clay, making models that we sent off to the manufacturer to copy exactly.  It makes a difference to have had your hands on the materials and to have literally made a product yourself, so that you can design more intelligently.”