Karen Lee is a designer of objects and materials and is based in Detroit, MI. Karen holds a BFA in Textiles Design from the Rhode Island School of Design and MFA in 3D Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She has worked at NIKE Inc. as a Materials Designer working in Sportswear, Performance Basketball, and Field Sports categories.

Her current work attempts to find new communal systems that oscillate between our human understanding of them and that of the objects’ experience of inhabiting those structures. Some of these structural design experiments explore the ‘in-betweenness’ of objects in terms of their value as both functional furniture and as objects that can possess their own agency.

Karen has been featured on Dezeen, Sight Unseen, and Artsy. She has exhibited work in Design Week Portland, Design Month Detroit with Form & Seek, and International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) in New York City and has work in the permanent collection of the Cranbrook Museum of Art. She currently teaches the Color & Materials Design graduate program at College for Creative Studies.