It's mid-year and I have been thinking about stillness. Over my lifetime the pace of movement, decision making, and actions have changed significantly. Each of us internalize the effects of increasing responsibility, the speed of technology, the places and environment of which one lives, personal drive, financial and relational strain, not to mention cultural freedoms. Often, we don't feel the effects until we slow down. Like when you finally take a break from work or school and you get sick on day one, or when you don't realize the discomfort in your gut from your favorite food until you stop eating it. It is the stillness that allows us to see or feel what's really happening in our mind, body, and soul. In yoga we talk about being in your body, where we are aware of our thoughts, feelings and sensations without rushing past them.
I have always seen design as a way to help guide us toward the present moment, toward awareness. To bring us back into our body. It doesn't mean we don't have times we forget or are moving so fast we don't notice, it's that we use design as a tool for our daily life.
Last year at our studio retreat we invited our team to reflect on a joyful childhood memory, to think about what made it joyful, what elements were sensory, what were the physical elements they remembered, and then asked them to share with the group.
The responses were vast, some recalled a moment with a loved one where the environment was less prominent in their memory, others recalled moments of solitude in nature with details about sounds, smells, and the feeling of elements on the skin, and still others were about design features that created a sense of both beauty and security.
This simple engagement helped us each begin to recognize the importance of place, the engagement of our senses and that our environments shape how we feel.
As you read this, I invite you to pause for a moment and think of one place that has stayed with you. A room, a porch, a garden, a grandparent's kitchen, or a favorite trail. Don't think about what it looked like first. Instead, remember how it made you feel. What did you hear? What did you smell? What did your body experience there? More often than not, it isn't the objects we remember, it is the feeling a place gave us.
While there is a portion of the architecture and design world rooted in this knowledge it is highly forgotten, especially in the complexity of budget, material maintenance, and speed of construction.
Designing spaces that invite pause, to notice the beauty of the light that streams through the pattern on the window or the shimmer of sofa fabric that invites you to stroke its softness is where we begin to design in stillness and presence. It's where design goes beyond function and into feeling. It asks us to be in our body, to feel the moment, and ask How am I? What do I need? and What do I want my life to look like going forward? Questions we need to ask ourselves in order to feel fulfilled and nurtured in our lives.
