Valentine Maeder is an interior architect and co-founder of apropå, a Geneva-based interior architecture studio that focuses on material circularity and light design through a sustainable approach. She has been teaching lighting design and studio in the BA program at HEAD – Genève since 2020. In 2022, she joined the teaching staff for the MAIA program, where she instructs on circularity.
After graduating from HEAD – Genève with a BA in Interior Architecture in 2015, Maeder worked for a year and a half at CCHE in Nyon. Being passionate about lighting design for a long time, she decided to further her education in Stockholm, graduating from KTH-Stockholm with an MA in Architectural Lighting Design in 2018. Upon returning to Switzerland, she worked for more than two years at Aebischer & Bovigny, an office specializing in lighting.
In 2019, she co-founded apropå atelier with Manon Portera. Since then, they have worked on various projects, including the renovation of housing projects, commercial premises, and scenography. They recently designed a scenography for the Nouvelles Galeries in Annecy and are currently collaborating with Baubüro In Situ on the renovation of the Red Cross Museum in Geneva. Engaged in the practice of reuse, Maeder is a member of Materiuum and Cirkla (Association of the actors of reuse in Switzerland).
