Community Highlights: Meet Aimee Kirby of Ferox Studio

Today we’d like to introduce you to Aimee Kirby.

Hi Aimee , thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I was born and raised in Youngstown, Ohio, an old steel town shaped by what once was and what remains. Its rusted facades and industrial scars carry a quiet beauty. That landscape of contradiction, where struggle and tenderness coexist, was my first teacher. It showed me how resilience can emerge from ruin, and how self-realization often grows from fractured ground.

As a child, I found solace at the edges of things: the woods behind our home, the liminal spaces between what is tended and what is wild. Those margins taught me to see the world as a series of interwoven systems, fragile yet resilient, capable of healing when given time and care. That way of seeing has stayed with me.

In collage, I studied studio art and sculpture, focusing on living systems as sculptural forms. This eventually led me to the concept of creating “place” and would eventually become the heartbeat of my interior and exterior design practice. After college, I traveled to Jefferson, Virginia, where I worked on an 11 acre flower farm. Living and working with the land each day, harvesting blooms before dawn, moving through fields in the early morning light, I found a quiet rhythm and clarity of purpose. Each cut stem felt like an act of self-design, shaping what would come next.

With a suitcase, a few hundred dollars, and a bus ticket, I moved to New York City to pursue landscape and rooftop garden design, a natural union of my industrial roots and my desire to bring life into urban environments. I went on to build public green spaces across the city, training formerly incarcerated individuals and at-risk youth through horticultural therapy programs. Those spaces became places of belonging, and healing, reinforcing my belief that landscapes can mirror human growth and connection.

That instinct to gather, mend, and make meaning eventually led me to create Ferox Studio, my multidisciplinary design practice grounded in ecology, story, and material exploration. Ferox, Latin for “wild” or “feral”, reflects my approach to design, intuitive, layered, and deeply connected to place. I see landscapes as living poems, both ecological and emotional, and interiors as opportunities to connect clients more deeply with their lives, current location and personal histories.

In 2020, a series of west coast projects and a growing love for the American Southwest brought me to Southern California. The region’s seamless integration of indoor and outdoor living allowed me to work holistically across disciplines, designing spaces that flow intuitively between architecture, landscape, interiors and atmosphere.

Now based in Los Angeles, I approach interior and exterior design as a dialogue between art, environment, and experience. With over fifteen years of shaping spaces and objects, and a background in textile art and large-format photography, my practice is rooted in sensitivity to light, texture, and story. Each project is crafted with intention and reverence for place, drawing on natural materials and atmospheric light to tell layered narratives. For me, design is a process of discovery; the result is an immersive environment that becomes a portrait of place, shaped by creative intervention, memory, and atmosphere. Ferox Studio aims to move fluidly between interiors and exteriors, blurring the boundaries of how spaces are experienced.

Alongside my design practice, I practice large-format photography and weave textiles on my Saori loom. Weaving is a meditation for me, a physical dialogue between hand and land. I see the earth itself as a textile: roots, waters, and winds interlaced over centuries, repaired after every disturbance. Each seed is a knot; each hill, a fold. This practice gives me a space to explore creativity freely, without a client, a budget, or constraints, allowing the work to remain poetic, intuitive, and limitless.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
There is no story without struggle; no life moves in a straight line. Growing up in Youngstown was hard at times, especially for someone creative, in a place where opportunity could feel limited. But the creative community there is/was strong and deeply supportive, and that sense of connection stayed with me. Community is strenghth. Eventually, leaving for New York City with a few hundred bucks and a suitcase felt inevitable to pursue my bigger dreams. I figured the worst that could happen was I’d return home exactly as I was before. Nothing to lose. I took a bus overnight from a gas station in Youngstown to China Town in Manhattan. It was terrifying and it was very electric all at once. I worked hard and hit the ground running. It became the best decision I ever made. From there, opportunities in the design world and landscape began to unfold, and with every relationship, my community and emotional strength grew.

Owning your own practice is not easy; being the designer, administrator, accountant, and publicist all at once can be exhausting. I’ve often fantasized about “getting a normal job.” But the truth is, for as hard as it can be, I wouldn’t trade this life for anything. I’ve built a practice, and a life, guided by my own rules, aesthetics, and cadence. My heart and mind are better for it.

We’ve been impressed with Ferox Studio , but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Ferox Studio’s design work lives at the meeting of landscapes, interiors, and objects, where memory, mood, and intention take form. Each project begins as an inquiry: into the spirit of a site, the rhythm of its light, the stories that linger in its air. From there, we weave color and texture, stone and vessel, fabric and form, into compositions that speak of place. Design of place, for Ferox, is not just decoration but dialogue, between interior and exterior, human and landscape, object and atmosphere, permanence and ephemerality. It is the choreography of material, carefully chosen and placed with intention, until form becomes feeling and matter becomes memory. In every project, we ask: what is this place, what can be revealed, what can be remembered, and what world can be made here?

Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
The ability to see and create brings me endless joy. Each day, I wake up to the two most extraordinary beings: my husband, Benn, and my Australian Shepherd, Jasper. They fill my life with boundless happiness, constant inspiration, and a deep sense of gratitude. Truly, they are living angels on this planet. And pistachio ice cream, of course.

Pricing:

• Pricing is specific to each project and it’s goals.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.feroxstudio.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ferox_studio/

Image Credits
Madeline Tolle, Carly Hildebrand, Jillian Guyette.