Arpana Architects Studio

We work on numerous projects from smaller extension buildings to housing, from urban planning to bigger complexes including major public infrastructure, we offer all inclusive planning from concept to work project involving external experts where required, covering all stages of the process.

Arpana Architects was founded 2021

The name Arpana is of Sanskrit origin and means to dedicate ones full gift of talent to all beings equally. Arpana creates, develops and constructs architecture that is respectful to nature, its creatures and human beings.

Architecture is intervention to space through imagination. I see myself as a visionary with a talent to orchestrate the play of light, material and context. I am fascinated about the process absorbing a given place and its surroundings, be critical while staying open to adapt with it and then sensibly combine my observations and ideas to see the change. A few professions in the world have the power to change people`s path, to make them stop and feel. Do they sense the city, their home, the surrounding, the colors? To be able to create and to make others receive is a gift to both sides.

To create a masterpiece ones open mind and limitless thinking is needed. Sometimes architecture is the result of a dialog between the architect and the idea, while the idea is sparked by your family dream house, a social need, the beauty of nature, a must for last-for-ever. Sometimes, the architect herself creates the idea and starts the dialog within herself. Those are the most personally insane pushing-the-limit-projects, most challenging and even more so rewarding for all individuals involved. The creation process starts when ideas manifest, followed by many phases of sketching, drawing, modeling. Architecture is a dynamic process. You start with a clear vision and might end up with a totally opposite solution.

Founder Mari-Liis Vunder

Born on January 1st 1986 in the city of Pärnu, Estonia, she holds a Master degree in Architecture and City Planning from the Estonian Academy of Arts and extended her studies at AHO–School for Architecture and Design in Oslo, Norway. Studies, projects and life itself brought her through various countries in Europe and Asia. After being project manager and coordinator for the first Tallinn Architectural Biennale in 2011, she spent more time in South-East Asia before spontaneously moving to Switzerland in 2012. Parallel to holding a designing architects position in a smaller office in Winterthur she continuously worked on private projects in Estonia, Norway and Sweden.
Three and half years later she took the challenge in a big office in Zurich, where it took her from a designing architect position up to senior projects manager responsibilities. Six years later her own studio Arpana Architects is born.

“My passion is to create an emotion in space. To use the space, one needs to define it–sometimes through space itself, sometimes through walls, sometimes through roofs, always imagining the play of natural light. Then the materials come in–wood, stone, glass–and people start moving and I ask myself: will they be moved?“