Constantin Boym was born in Moscow, Russia in 1955, where he graduated from Moscow Architectural Institute. In 1984-85 he earned a Master’s degree in Design from Domus Academy in Milan. He has become a U.S. registered architect in 1988.
In 1986 he founded Boym Partners Inc in New York City. His studio’s designs include tableware for Alessi and Authentics, watches for Swatch, lighting for Flos, showrooms and retail displays for Vitra, and exhibition installations for many American museums, including Museum of the City of New York and Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Objects designed by Boym Partners are included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Boym Partners are recipients of eight I.D. Magazine Annual Design Awards, including the Best of Category in 2000, and of two Federal Design Achievement Awards. In 2005 they were finalists in the National Design Awards in Product Design, and were invited to the White House.
Constantin Boym is the author of the book New Russian Design, published by Rizzoli in 1992. From 1987 to 2000 he was a professor and program coordinator at Parsons School of Design in New York. In 2005-06 Boym has been a Resident at the American Academy in Rome.
His work was a subject of two personal retrospectives: Oh Boym! A Sideshow of Design at the Belleview Art Museum in Seattle (2003), and America at the Musee Mudac in Lausanne, Switzerland (2005)
A 220-page book devoted to the work of Boym Partners, Curious Boym: Design Works, was published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2002; it received an I.D. Magazine Award the following year. A book Constantin Boym: America has been published by Birkhauser in 2005.
Laurene Leon Boym was born in NYC in 1964. She earned a BFA from School of Visual Arts in 1984, and a MID from Pratt Institute in 1993. Since 1995 she has been a part of Boym Partners Inc. She was the Designer in Residence at Cooper-Hewitt in 1993. In 1993, her work was the subject of the groundbreaking exhibition Mechanical Brides at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.
Laurene Leon Boym was a founder of Association of Women Industrial Designers (AWID) in 1992, co-curating Goddess In the Details in 1995 and running the organization between 1995/97. She has taught at Parsons School of Design, and presently teaches in MFA design program at School of Visual Arts in New York City.
Her studio’s designs include tableware for Alessi and Authentics, watches for Swatch, lighting for Flos, showrooms and retail displays for Vitra, and exhibition installations for many American museums, including Museum of the City of New York and Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Objects designed by Boym Partners are included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.