New-Old - re: beginnings // be still

About a week before our family decided to social distance, this beautiful headshot was taken*. I was on the verge of a new/old re-launch and re-invention of the old/new me. The idea was to restart after I had decided to take time off from office design work, so I could finish dreaming up my own home. After 10 years of almost exclusive office design, going back into the fold of residential design work was a huge learning curve. For starters the pace, which is slow and marathon like, unlike commercial work which is like an explosion of so many moving parts under the strain of tight budgets and time restrictions. Office design for me is a playground of pure joy and fun. These are moments where I shine and enjoy the collaborative work. Moments I felt like what I did had meaning and impact. Whereas residential work at times felt decadent and almost futile. Commercial and office design “happened” to me after the great crisis of 2008, no one was building homes, and certainly a designer was last in line to get any meaningful job. Now, my launch pad has been swept under me, I don’t feel like designing the new post Covid-19 workplace, it is all too sad for me to handle. 

I’m angry, sad and feel wronged. My hopes and dreams of being able to finally arrive at my moment will be for now just that. I buckle at sayings of “well, you know you could...” - They work me up in ways that I can’t express. I’m remorseful after that, not many people know the true path I had taken. I had worked so hard. I’ve been a designer for 20 years now. With 7 years of relentless 60-80 hour school and studio work, time spent of truly thinking how to make a better world for all. I have learned to convert from the metric system to the imperial one. I have seen the rise of the quick 30 minute fixer up home TV shows,  the every person is a designer trend. When I immigrated I had lost my design community, no one willing to support and reach out when I had 3 children, or when things crashed in 2008. Yet I always rose up to the occasion, knowing that as a designer constraints are my happy zone, where true creativity becomes a wonderful reality. 

But this time feels different. Like I have lost my super power, my optimism dissipating. I’m lost. Some of the lost seeds were sown ahead of Covid-19, but now they have mushroomed into a full blown abyss of lack of ability to pick up the pieces and glue any part of shattered hopes and dreams together. It seems decadent, at times futile to even write about this, does it really matter when people are dying? When there is no cure? But these questions were always there even before Covid-19, I’m a daughter of 2 doctors, I know when thigns really matter. Or do I? 

For now I chose to acknowledge. Acknowledge the pain, the hurt, the sadness, the loss. I choose to be still, to look into the eyes of the person that was photographed a mere week before it all changed, and try to figure it out with her. Design requires a deep and meaningful process, and unlike the 30 minute cooking your home shows, there is no easy fix. For now I need to go back to basics, be still and perhaps maybe start to observe. 

*photo credit:http://www.dianalevine.com/

We all need to Lobby-up

California Academy of Science in San Francisco, CA

Museums are a place of refuge, and possess an almost spiritual pause for me. From the swish of the huge glass doors, to sounds being hushed at the lobby, to the excitement of what journey my brain, mind and soul are to embark on. 

The sheer volume of people seen in museums (art, science, children), made me wonder what is it about the quality of these spaces that make us want to go into them, and maybe even sometimes see a decent exhibition. To further that question, I want to learn if it all it would be possible, to create these types, of seemingly straightforward functional spaces of interaction, and wayfinding, work in their shunned away cousin - the office building lobby -I mean we don't all run and feel happy in offices lobbies, break spaces, or their indoor courtyard cafes (as nice and as clean as they get). 

I have recently been to both big art museums and huge office lobbies and the difference in atmosphere and vibe was so striking to me. Yes you can claim that going to a museum is a mind set of sorts, a mini break from the realities of the world -- though some exhibitions could not bring you any more closer to reality The location of big museums is carefully selected, but this is also true to some downtown office buildings, and even in office parks outside the cities. 

Could it be the intention of why you walk into any of these spaces that makes the difference? 

Hudson Yard's Lobby New York City 

But as a visitor to both these spaces, the grounds for me going to any of them can be similarly exciting // functional -- meeting a new client, creating new connections, building a new space. All (in my view) happy productive things. Where is in museums I try to get inspired while stuck in a creative process (one could claim this might create heavier expectations from that space). And yet these office lobbies depress me to the core and weigh heavy on me. Something is not "right" in them. Most of them borrow from the large 12th century cathedral ceilings, that intend to make you feel small and meaningless. Even if there is a cafe it's a very dire soulless functional one, which only makes matters worse because the lobby area smells of old coffee and stale pastries. Usually the lighting and furniture picked out for these spaces are so "inoffensive" they lack any personaly, grace or function (who wants to sit in a smelly, cold uninviting space). So many more people walk into these office lobby spaces, than to museums. I can't even imagine how they feel going in and out of these places day in and day out of their work week. 

It's not just about the reason or intention you walk with into these spaces, it is the intention (or lack of) whoever built these buildings. An office lobby is just a museum lobby without soul -- and that is the key difference. People want to feel connected, they want to feel someone has put some attention to their wellbeing. It all starts with a meaningful design process that is not just function driven. Yes it means digging deeper, but the effort will pay off in happier more content people in the work space -- and there are more people working in offices than going into museums.