Irma Karakis

Irma Yosypivna Karakis (4 November 1930 - 1 February 2022) was a Ukrainian Soviet architect, interior and furniture designer, candidate of architecture, winner of the gold medals of the Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy of the USSR.

Early life and education Irma Karakis was born on 4 November 1930 in Kyiv. Her father was Joseph Karakis (1902–1988), an architect. Her mother was Anna Karakis (née Kopman) (1904–1993).

Karakis graduated from the Kyiv Civil Engineering Institute in 1954. She wrote her thesis under the supervision of Jacob Steinberg.

In 1968, Karakis successfully defended her dissertation "Architectural and planning solutions and new types of wardrobe equipment in different school buildings" in Kyiv in 1968 at the Ukrainian Academy of Architecture.

Career From 1954 to 1957, Karakis was an architect at the Promenergoproekt Design Institute in Kyiv, and from 1957 to 1994, she was an architect and head of the interior and equipment sector at the Academy of Civil Engineering and Equipment of the Ukrainian SSR.

Karakis is the author of many construction projects, master plans for housing construction, and sets of mass-produced furniture, interiors, and equipment for schools, hotels, and restaurants. Interior of the hotel "Theatrical" st. Volodymyrska, Kyiv (1979–1987) Interior of the “Zhytomyr Hotel”, Zhytomyr (1983) Interior of the hotel "Dnepropetrovsk", Dnepropetrovsk (1985) Interior and furniture of the hotel "Black Sea," Odessa Interior of “Rus Hotel”, Kyiv Interior of “Kyiv Hotel”, Kyiv Interiors and equipment of the rest house "Avangard" in Nemyriv (1982)

Other projects Irma Karakis also designed the interiors of designer shops (such as the Jean-Paul store near the Passage in Kyiv), and the interiors of designer clothing stores (two of them on Bohdan Khmelnytsky Square in Kyiv), the interiors of private mansions (in Kozyn near Kyiv).