003 / the why
there are two words I love most: architecture, and practice

There are two words I love most: architecture, and practice. We use architectural terms when we are grasping for the most potent of metaphors. Today, we ‘architect’ our lives, our finances, our relationships. To be an architect was once a title of gravity, of responsibility. Architects carried our collective faith- trusted with shaping our cities, our institutions, our homes, our lives. The word feels like nurturing, strength, stability, and methodology. Practice, my second word, tells us that mastery isn’t a point at the end of a line as we were once told, but rather an eternal pursuit of an ideal. How lovely it is to fall so in love with one’s practice, that the end result no longer matters. As many great thinkers say of meditation, the worst outcome of a meditation practice is that one becomes a great meditator. In other words, it's the practice that matters. 

The facts are these: Architecture has taken an existential fall in my lifetime to the role of the technician, tasked with the fastest route to permit and the cheapest permissible builds. Even our finest buildings are standing on a foundation of cheap and flimsy materials, marginalized labor, long hours, and endless iterations. Instantly, interior design became a much more interesting path for me. It still holds space for the art of creation, boundary-pushing, and client relationship. Oscillating somewhere in between the two for the last decade, I’ve found myself both totally enmeshed in the poetry of the profession, yet not quite at home in either architecture or interiors as they exist today. Within interiors, it’s the race to the instagram moment, the skin-deep design that fails to function, to nurture, and to relate to human existence. I found myself in a whirl of so-called dream projects, asking "is this all there is?"

The answer, clearly, is a resounding no. There’s a third way to approach the integration of architecture, interior design, and modern construction methodologies, but it involves a major paradigm shift within an industry rather unfond of change. But I'm not here to change an industry or to be a gatekeeper when all humans have the instinct and abilities to live in relation to their spaces. This new way holds human wellbeing at its center, and utilizes technological innovation, data, and research to solve the problems that we once tried to cover with wallpaper. Spaces, however large or small, can be calibrated to inhabitants or fully designed to better meet human needs. We have the knowledge that spaces can alter our moods, promote rest or recovery, and enable creativity, optimization, and peak performance. So how long will we continue to live, work, and cultivate families  inside of neutral, numb containers? Mine is a call to build a bridge between the research and practice and the everyday.

My work here is aimed to those who have a space, rented or owned, new or temporary, shared or solo. Like music notes, there are a finite number of foundational tools in architecture and design. I’m here to spell them out, and allow you to create your symphony. Take what resonates, leave behind what doesn’t, and if daily life seems just a little more magical and connected, I will have done my job.