REFLECTION

This year, I intend to plant seeds – offering you an invitation into the impact and value of design, and how we might apply design for care and wellbeing. We’ll explore these ideas through quarterly themes:

Human Experience + Emotion
Community + Collective Care
Materials + Sustainability
Balance + Future

Within each theme we will cover three topics that reflect the deeper role design plays in shaping how we feel, live, and connect as individuals, families, communities, and in our environment.

THE POWER OF AWE
Awe is the moment you unexpectedly gasp at beauty. That beauty can be an object like a vase, a vista with the fog rising from the valley in the spring, the sweetness of an exchange like a son caring for his aging father, or the beauty of a song and the emotion it stirs.

These moments remind us we are a small part of a much bigger whole. Not in a sense of being unimportant, rather a reminder of our interdependence and the magnificence of all (craft, nature, and relationship). Awe is both a truly natural occurrence and can be cultivated through intentional design and awareness.

Experiences of awe affect our wellbeing by reducing stress and inflammation, quieting our focus, improving our mood, lowering our heart rate, increasing oxytocin and calming our nervous system.

In architecture, awe often begins with proportion and light. Think of how natural light filters through a high window, or how a narrow entryway opens suddenly into a vast room. These moments of contrast—compression and release—create emotional impact. They mirror experiences found in nature: walking through a forest and arriving at a clearing, or emerging from a canyon to see open sky. Our bodies respond before our minds catch up.

Interior design offers awe at a more intimate scale. The simple beauty of materials: stone that holds the story of time, wood that carries warmth, plaster that absorbs sound and light to offer a softness within a space. Awe lives in simplicity with handcrafted elements and where nothing competes. The opportunity to experience awe is in every detail.

In design, awe often shows up as alignment—between the home and its surroundings, between function and feeling. A window placed not for symmetry but for the exact moment of sunrise. A hallway that frames a single piece of art. A kitchen where light, texture, and acoustics work together to create the sense of presence and ritual.

We are all tired from the overstimulating world. Moments of awe provide a respite, a momentary experience of connection and presence. Moments where we begin to refine who we truly are to ourselves , each other, and within the greater world.