about
claire mookerjee
Claire’s interest in how places shape the lives lived in them began with her mixed Indian and Irish heritage. As a child, she visited family in 1980s Calcutta, in a sprawling joint-family house filled with Italian tiles and Murano glass light fittings, with shared kitchens and long verandas where the elders held court all day. It was so different in atmosphere and layout from the single-family house she grew up in, in the Midlands, that it left her with a lasting sense of how particular ways of living grow out of particular places. She carries that into her work, as a kind of faith that we can reimagine how we live together, rooted in the place and times we find ourselves in.
She is a designer and creative director with 20 years’ experience across residential and commercial projects. Before founding her studio in 2016, she worked at Gehl Architects in Copenhagen, was Head of Design at Future Cities Catapult and served as a Built Environment Expert for the Design Council, speaking on human scale in design at the V&A and TED.
She holds an MSc in City Design and Social Science from the London School of Economics, a first-class BA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art and a Diploma in Art and Design from Central Saint Martins, and is a BIID Registered Interior Designer.
Her Scottish cabin project, Borradill, was a finalist in the hotel category of the MIX Interiors Awards, and her work has been featured in the Financial Times, Dezeen, The Telegraph, The Times and Homes & Interiors.
She lives in London with her husband and two children, in a flat that, for now, is full of paint splashes, charcoal smears and an eclectic hang of art and objects.
design ethos
Rooted in place. Shaped around you.
The places we remember most feel as if they could only exist where they are, and could only belong to the people who live there or visit.
That comes from roots: a connection to the land, the culture and the people the place is for, a coherence you can feel.
When a place has that, it's powerful. It sustains the people who spend time there, and it grows with them. It becomes a story they tell, a fragment of their identity: a home, or a pilgrimage.
how a place takes root
1./Listen to the place
Every project starts with what's already there: the landscape, the history, the architecture, and the people who will live or stay. What could this place be that nowhere else could?
2./Ask how you want to feel
Then comes what the place is for: how you want to feel there, and what you want to happen. Rest, focus, gathering, retreat.
3./Design for the senses and the nervous system
Layout, light, sound, texture, colour and materials are composed around those answers, drawing on what neuroscience and environmental psychology tell us about how spaces calm, restore or energise us.
4./Shape the experience
What people do in a place matters as much as how it looks. Rituals, routines and new kinds of experience, from wellness practices to immersive sound, light and sleep technology, are designed in from the start, not added on afterwards.
5./Bring in culture and story
Art, objects and heritage, whether the place's own or yours, give it meaning and memory. Most interiors are designed first, with art added later. Working with Adam Art Advisory, we develop art and interiors together from the start.
6./Carry it through
In hospitality, the same story shapes how guests find you, from photography to press. In a home, it shapes the finishing details that make a place feel complete and unmistakably yours.
Claire's approach brings together design, psychology, culture and storytelling. As creative director, she draws on a trusted network of collaborators, from art advisers and wellness experience designers to visual storytellers and digital marketers.
