Zolaykha Sherzad

Zolaykha Sherzad

Zolaykha Sherzad was born in Kabul, Afghanistan where she lived until the age of ten. During the Soviet occupation, her family were forced to flee and settled as political refugees in Switzerland. She trained as an architect, and received her Masters in Architecture from the School of Architecture at the Federal Institute of Technology. Zolaykha now lives in New York City, where she and her partner Frederic Levrat founded the architecture practice, ARX New York which has received numerous design awards, including the New York Foundation of the Arts Architecture Fellowship in 2000.  She was a Professor of Architecture at the Pratt Institute from 1998 to 2003.

In 2000, Zolaykha founded School of Hope, a non-profit organization that has successfully rebuilt and supported primary and secondary schools in rural Afghanistan and developed programs in the US and Europe to raise cross-cultural understanding.  For two years, Zolaykha and her family lived in Kabul, Afghanistan, where she designed clinics, housing and school development projects for the School of Hope.

In 2004, she started Zarif Design (it means fine, precious in Farsi) aiming at reviving the Afghan Artistic Culture, and in May 2005 her first collection was presented in Kabul to great acclaim.  Since then there have been shows in Dubai, Delhi, London, New York and Paris where her designs are currently on sale in Agnes B.  She also exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2009.

Zolayka now lives between New York & Kabul and sees Zarif design as the perfect way to weave together her lives in two very different worlds.   She says, ”I want to show people that Afghanistan is not all about war, orphanages and burquas.  It’s also about textiles, and history and culture.  It’s about beauty.”