Bridging Past and Future: Erika Mirzoyan on Armenia’s Next Creative Wave
Some creators chase novelty. Others seek to revive tradition. Erika Mirzoyan dares to do both – merging Armenia’s cultural roots with the future of biodesign. At just 23 years old, Erika has already carved out a voice in Armenia’s creative community, showing how modern design can honor heritage while imagining entirely new worlds.
For Erika, Fab Lab Armenia is not defined by its digitally controlled fabrication machines, but by what people learn to do with them. It is a place where skills are acquired through practice, where curiosity is valued, and where local challenges are approached through design, technology, and collaboration thinking with a local and global active network. More than a physical space, it is a community of learning and making, grounded in creativity, openness, and the belief that anyone can learn to design and build solutions that matter.
Erika works at Fab Lab Armenia as an Immersive Media Designer. She questions, experiments, and translates centuries-old Armenian symbolism into the language of tomorrow. That relationship deepened in 2025, when Erika joined the Fabricademy instructor team as a Support Instructor, stepping into a mentoring role at Fab Lab Armenia.
Learning Resourcefulness from Nature and Community
Erika’s creative spark was lit early. Growing up as an AGBU Scout, she was rarely far from nature – sleeping in tents, exploring Armenian forests, and discovering how powerful a close-knit community can be. “Whenever I felt lost, I’d go to the forest to find my balance,” she shares.
These experiences shaped her sense of resourcefulness, teamwork, and respect for natural materials, values that continue to guide her work today, both as a designer and as someone supporting others in their learning journeys.
Even as a child, Erika was drawn to the arts. She spent weekends in craft techniques and applied design classes, exploring embroidery, batik, macramé, and fabric work. “I always loved giving things meaning,” she says, “finding the stories behind patterns or objects.” That sense of purpose would eventually flow into her academic and professional work, from her graphic design studies at the National University of Architecture to an exchange program in Spain.
Living in Spain also deepened her appreciation of how culture and tradition can thrive alongside contemporary life. One of the most striking experiences was the Magdalena festival, where Erika witnessed how deeply local traditions are celebrated through collective care, scale, and community participation. The energy and shared sense of responsibility left a lasting impression.
“It made me even more hopeful about the many ways Armenia can continue to cherish, strengthen, and reimagine its traditions for future generations,”
she reflects — an inspiration that now shapes how she engages with cultural heritage in her work today.
Where Tradition Meets Experimentation
After graduating Fabricademy, Erika dove even deeper into her passions: biofabrication, natural dyes, and sustainable materials. She finds beauty in the humble – Armenian herbs, plant fibers, local patterns – and transforms them into contemporary design experiments, not only as an artistic exploration, but also as a response to a broader shift in contemporary design. Around the world, designers are rethinking how materials are sourced, produced, and disposed of, moving away from extractive systems toward regenerative, locally rooted practices.
At Fab Lab Armenia, this work gains a strong and practical context. By working with locally available resources and open research processes, Erika’s practice connects global sustainability conversations to local ecosystems and knowledge. Her experiments embody one of Fab Lab Armenia’s core research directions: exploring future-oriented materials through making, testing, and iteration. One of her long-term dreams — a “Living Archive” of biomaterials — reflects this approach, envisioning an open installation where materials are not only displayed, but shared through their stories of process, failure, and discovery, inviting others to explore biodesign as a collective practice.
“At Fab Lab, creativity has no borders,” she says. “It gives me the freedom to transcend formal art and design and to think, explore, and build through my hands.”
Threads of Tradition: Fabricademy Project
Erika’s Fabricademy project, Threads of Tradition, became a natural culmination of her interests in Armenian mythology, textiles, and sustainable materials. While exploring myths from different cultures, she realized how little Armenian folklore is present in contemporary cultural narratives. This insight inspired her to create a textile-based project that preserves and reinterprets these stories for a modern audience. Conceived as a modular textile book, the work uses embroidery, appliqué, and layered fabrics to tell Armenian legends through touch, symbolism, and materiality. The panels can be experienced individually or unfolded into a continuous structure, reflecting the idea of tradition as one interconnected cultural thread.
Developed at Fab Lab Armenia within the Fabricademy framework, the project combines cultural research with hands-on experimentation in natural dyes and bio-based materials. Armenian nature and mythology—such as the Sun and Moon, Fire and Water, mountains, stars, and ancient vishapakars—serve not only as visual references, but as narrative anchors shaping the material choices of the work. Envisioned as both an artistic and educational object, Threads of Tradition speaks to museums, galleries, and learning spaces, aligning with Fab Lab Armenia’s mission to connect heritage, sustainability, and contemporary design through making.
Creativity with a Purpose
More than anything, Erika believes in creating for society. Her diploma project explored Armenian holiday symbolism, reimagined for a younger generation. At Fab Lab Armenia, she channels that same impulse—rooting modern projects in Armenian identity, keeping the connection alive.
Currently, Erika is developing an Interactive First Aid Book for Children, a tactile, visual, and playful learning tool designed to teach basic first aid skills without words. Through pop-up elements, soft materials, modular parts, and illustrations of local herbs and remedies, the book allows children to learn by touching, exploring, and playing. It encourages care, responsibility, and independence while also building a connection with nature and local traditions. Digital files accompanying the project will make it adaptable for use in schools, kindergartens, or at home, extending its reach beyond the physical book.
“Design should mean something,” she says. “It’s about creating with awareness, so your work speaks beyond the object itself.”
Hands-on creativity in action: Erika developing her Fabricademy project, blending traditional inspiration with digital fabrication techniques
Leading with Curiosity and Courage
Looking ahead, Erika dreams of leading a major cultural project in Armenia—one that fuses biodesign, nature, and heritage into something transformative. She wants to help others learn by doing, to grow confidence and independence through hands-on experience.
Her message for future Fabricademy students is simple but powerful: “Stay organized, don’t give up, and remember—your failures are also your teachers.”
Erika’s story is a reminder that true creativity is not just about ideas—it is about action. It is about bringing your values to the table, your hands to the tools, and your heart to the community around you.
As Erika shows, if you stay curious, grounded, and courageous, even the simplest materials—an Armenian herb, a length of cloth, a bit of kombucha—can become a window into the future.