Celebrating Life Through Design
Birthdays are a time to celebrate by gathering with loved ones, and as my own birthday approaches, I am feeling particularly grateful for the ability to do so this year. For many of us, the pandemic made it far more difficult, if not impossible, to see friends and family. It also coerced us into slowing down and allowed us to assess how, where, and with whom we were spending our time.
Birthdays give us time to reflect and look back. Finding this picture of three generations to share with this article, I am grateful for these strong women who influenced me so greatly.
The past year has offered opportunities for reflection and living with greater intention. I have put more time and energy into relationships and simple pleasures and I have been blessed with an abundance of work.
In addition to being a vocation and a career, I see my work as a “calling;” a feeling that continues to grow. With each project and new life experience I become more seasoned, skilled, and thoughtful. Architecture and design have enriched my life and provided me with a keener sense of purpose.
It is my greatest pleasure and privilege to work with people who genuinely appreciate what creating a home means on a level other than bricks and mortar, people who are seeking spaces that will serve as a backdrop for the more ethereal pursuit of a good life. While each of our clients has their own definition of what that means to them, our goal is always the same — to make them feel at home in a space that we’ve designed exclusively for them. For me, that’s what it’s all about.
As we embark on new projects, the same conversations we’ve always had with clients are evolving; they are more meaningful and thoughtful and it has refocused how we do our work. We continue to practice active listening with our clients and ask questions about their lifestyles that will ultimately inform the design. But we are seeing life through a new perspective. We are all a bit more vulnerable, open, and honest which allows us to connect on an even deeper level and to get a better sense of the kind of home our clients are trying to create.
Design is dependent on the human experience — from the awe-inspiring gothic cathedrals of Europe, with their soaring arches and high stained-glass windows, to the homes we create today — without the human experience, a building is just a building.
With that in mind, I’ll be sharing more of my own human experience here on the blog from time to time. Connecting with and relating to clients, contemporaries, and other beautiful souls in this world is a big part of what makes life worth living. I hope you’ll join me.
