Mindful Act of Kindness

When my soon to be 10 year old girl was about 4, she was brushing her long golden hair. She looked up at me and asked 'why do I need to brush my hair each and every morning?' My response was 'because by doing so you respect yourself, and respect your friends and teachers'. 

I was never a fan of Feng Shui, or to be precise, its watered down western interpretation of it; Closing the toilet seat to prevent your money escaping your wallet, never have a staircase facing the front door, never put a chair with its back to the door - are some of the highlights I can off handedly suggest. 

But a few years ago I had this small epiphany of why it mattered in our world. Why habits like making sure you don't squeeze the toothpaste in the middle mattered, why making your bed every morning matters, why putting a fork and knife in the right order matters -why these seemingly mundane tedious, and routine things matter. They create order, they create balance, and for control freak megalomanic designers (hey we are paid to build 'worlds') are a code and key to understanding human interaction and behavior within different environments and spaces. 

These random daily routine acts are mindfully observed and broken down frame by frame to create a narrative for a space. These 'mindless' acts being thought of mindfully are the difference between getting furniture straight out of catalog, only to discover these don't make your house feel like a home. 

It's attention to details in ways that are not obvious to the user of the space, but they make the user feel good happy and safe. They make people feel like they are cared for, and not taken for granted, that even though you can't exactly pinpoint what it is that makes you feel connected, you know you are. That yes, even brushing your hair in the morning, matters. It's a small act of kindness to yourself signaling that you will also make sure to be kind to others. 

Attention to Intention

Many a times the approach to design is almost haphazard. I can't even begin to count the frantic phone calls I get from people who "just" need someone to pick their color, or help the contractor with the tiles. I usually reject these projects. Not that I think it's a bad thing to do - but like everything in life, timing is everything.

Same as you don't expect the musician to go on stage and "just" wing it with a complex musical piece, or eat at your kids "just" opened restaurant. You can't expect a designer to "just" figure it out on the spot, or fix it of for you. Design is a thoughtful and interact process. Yes is seems easy on HGTV, but have no illusion these are highly professional designers that have worked endless hours hunched over studio tables .The fact that the final results (though not always my taste) looks so easy, is all the more to their credit.

Elegant and simple solutions call for a backing of education, thoughts, ideas, experience, and a lot of listening, they don't just get pulled out of a hat. When starting the work of design a lot of effort goes into listening, and my main question would be - what's the intention? Not in a programatic practical way of - this is the entry way to the office. But in the deeper sense of what does this space mean to you and your company? Is it the place where you dump your coats in the morning, or is it the 'welcome' wagon for new employees, potential clients? Figuring out what the intention is sometimes like breaking a code of sorts. Yes there is the functionality of a space but how it reads to the people who engage in it, that is a whole other story. As a designer you need to articulate a client's intentions and many projects are lost, or become frustrating to both parties when these intentions are not made clear enough, or when there is no time to figure them out.

No corner was left unturned. Photo credit Emily Neumann 

A few years ago I worked with a super particular client who demanded a lot of attention to the seemingly minuet detail of "is it easy to clean?". It drove me crazy (and trust me I like my granite polished like a mirror all hours of the day). I mean here was a person that could certainly afford some help in cleaning. But the more I got to think about it, the more sense it made to me in a Feng-Shui kind of way. 

Her words were a call for Attention to Intention - yes getting the next glamours tile is awesome, but if it can't be cleaned properly it will look dull and tacky. Every corner of that project had to be throughly thought out, you couldn't just place a plant to hide a dust filled corner. And with a historical building in Boston, figuring out how to round the corners and make the floor level, made for an extremely intense project. Turned out to be a successful project, mainly because the intention was always communicated and thought about clearly and thoroughly.