Kim Swift creates environments, experiences, furniture, and objects that are made whole through the engagement of an audience. Exploring a wide range of disciplines, Swift utilizes design as a system to question, reimagine, and produce alternatives to an increasingly more chaotic and disconnected everyday life experience. She believes that design should do more than captivate the eye or solve everyday problems - it should inspire our collective imaginations. Her projects are anchored by the relationship forged between design and user opening a new dimension of possibility, where people can actively participate in building meaning around the work. Challenging conventional notions of program, material and context, she views her artistic practice as an ongoing experiment to find and nurture more interconnected ways of being.
Swift’s projects range from festival and stage design to conceptual furniture, permanent interiors, hospitality spaces, commissioned installations and participatory programs. She has designed immersive worlds for artists like Ariana Grande, Florence, Harry Styles and Maggie Rogers, and exhibited artworks in New York, Detroit, Los Angeles and Art Basel Miami Beach. Her work has been featured in Interview Magazine, Sight Unseen, Dwell, Departures Magazine, Trendland, The LA Times, The Cut, and Gestalten‘s Evergreen: Living With Plants book. She also paints bespoke murals and furniture.
Born in Galveston, Texas, Swift holds a BS in Advertising from the University of Texas and an MFA in Fine and Industrial Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She was a recipient of an ArtPlace America grant focused on transforming Detroit’s Avenue of Fashion through placemaking, named one of the “Top 35 Event Designers in North America” twice by Bizbash, was a Pophouse Cranbrook Design Fellowship recipient, and recently named “Best New Designer” in the Editor’s Awards category at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF). She is based in Detroit.