Meet Amanda Gunawan – A Millennial with an Eye for Elegant Design

Amanda Gunawan is making her mark on the LA architectural scene, and what a beautiful mark it is!

LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / March 11, 2021 / At only twenty-nine, Amanda Gunawan is proving to be a force in the LA architectural scene. Combining a lifelong love of real estate development, an eye for visual communication, and a degree in architecture, Gunawan is changing the face of LA living and workspaces, one creation at a time. With a brand that includes two of her own companies and a growing social media following, Gunawan has big plans to leave behind a legacy of creating only thoughtfully designed spaces that evolve over time, witnessing their evolution over time.

Born in Indonesia, Gunawan grew up in Singapore. Obtaining a Bachelor’s Degree in Architecture from Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), she received the prestigious merit thesis prize. While attending school, Gunawan delved into the content creating and photography realm through social media, starting an Instagram account to track her work, thus allowing her to connect more personally with future collaborators and clients in Los Angeles, where she would later open her own firm. Together with partner Joel Wong, Gunawan established her own design firm early in her career. “We thought to ourselves that it’s either now or never,” she says. “We’re young, we have a lot of energy, and every time we fail, we are going to pick ourselves up fast and have the strength to trudge forward.”

The firm Gunawan and Wong started is OWIU, an acronym for “The Only Way Is Up.” The firm is an architecture and design office in LA, with a showroom in the burgeoning Arts District. The firm focuses on architectural design, construction, urban design, and product design. Gunawan also works to create creative content for some of the largest brands in the world.

For Gunawan, the seeds for entrepreneurship and design were planted at a very young age. “I have wanted to be a real estate developer since I was eight years old,” she says. She has always loved spaces and wanted to be the designer responsible for the creations themselves. Architecture was a natural choice of study, allowing her to use her intuitive visual communication skills, internal processing of the external world, and analysis skills. “At the end of the day,” she says, “to get the creative freedom I wanted, I needed to be my own client, hence the real estate developer dream.” Starting OWIU to create a firm that encompasses the philosophies that both Gunawan and Wong believe in and speak about daily, they have crafted a business that allows for careful craftsmanship through a part-to-whole process. Ideas spring forth and evolved slowly in a controlled manner to create a dense, complex result.

A natural next step was to create Inflexion, a full-service design and build team, which does quick remodels, compared to the thoughtful design projects of OWIU. Inflexion recently completed a stunning garage remodel where an otherwise ordinary space was made into an impressive home gym, which you can see here. The project took about a month and displays an effortless flow from one stage of a workout to the next, proving that one can burn their gym membership with the right designer. The design is practical but elegant, Zen-like, and boasts indoor and outdoor utilization.

One of the keys to Gunawan’s success is that she has created a career that never feels like work. Despite facing obstacles and stereotypes because of her gender, race, and age, Gunawan stays true to her original dream of leaving behind a legacy of continually evolving work. “I get to design and realize spaces, find creative solutions to problems, and learn more and more about the field every day, so it never feels like work,” she says. Gunawan never feels the need to escape work because it is the very thing that provides her with purpose. “Being a young Asian woman in the building and construction industry in the US comes with challenges,” she says. “I have to prove my worth, my experience, and work harder than many others in the industry.” However, that hasn’t slowed Gunawan down. Her Instagram accounts have a combined 147k followers, and her client list is rapidly growing throughout the LA area.

To learn more about Amanda Gunawan and OWIU, follow her on Instagram Amanda’s personal Instagram and OWIU Design Instagram and Inflexion Builds Instagram. Additionally, you can check out the OWIU Design website.

CONTACT:

Email: bigworkagency@gmail.com

SOURCE: BIGWORK MEDIA

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