Volume 06 — On Designing for a Stranger
Lots of interesting questions arise in the early part of the design process. Each type of residential interior has different guide rails.
When we’re designing for spec homes, there’s a set of questions we’re constantly asking ourselves. And they all revolve around a person we’ve never met.
Because how could we? They don’t exist yet… at least not in front of us.
Questions like who wakes up here?
Who cooks here?
Who hides from the world here?
Who spends an hour making and drinking tea before the day begins?
Who spends time with their children here, and how?
What’s their immediate routine when coming through the door from work?
It might sound silly, designing for a stranger, but that’s exactly what we do.
Personally, I never liked the term avatar. It feels clinical and marketing-driven. More than that, it feels static.
An avatar can be a CEO who drives a Porsche.
But Pif. is designing for people. And people leave their coffee cups on the left side of the sink, and read in bed until midnight. People hate when cold air from the air vent hits them while they’re brushing their teeth.
In luxury residential, we often have the gift of designing for one. And there’s such beauty in that.
We truly believe that there’s a person out there who will fall in love with this home because it deeply speaks to them.
Now, you may be thinking, “Yo. That’s literally an avatar.”
Yes. You’re not wrong.
But I’m choosing to reject that and pretend we’re doing something different here.
Because in practice, it does feel quite different.
Instead of avatars, we imagine a life.
Because finishes don’t exist in a vacuum.
They exist downstream from ritual.
Once we’ve imagined the person and the life, everything else begins to reveal itself naturally.
Maybe they adore cooking and need a chef’s kitchen
Maybe they need a scullery.
Maybe they’re obsessed with recovery and biohacking.
Maybe they collect records.
Maybe they never cook at all. And as a result, they hire chefs for gatherings. Which means they may need both a chef’s kitchen and a solid scullery nearby.
It’s the life that determines the rooms, not the other way around.
Imagine we’re designing a high end luxury residential spec home, and we’ve already created a retreat space inside the primary suite.
One where we’ve roughed in water because we imagined someone wanting a coffee station.
Months later, the buyer materializes. Now we’re no longer imagining.
We learn that every morning they prepare matcha, meditate, and journal.
Now that rough-in transforms into a matcha station.
Maybe it gets a pot filler for their tea kettle, or maybe it turns into an instant-hot faucet with a variable temperature option so they don’t burn their tea (yes that’s a real thing).
And the part a lot of people don’t see, is that the luxury isn’t in the fixture itself, it’s in the foresight of it.
Recently, in a home listed for nearly 15 million dollars, I had a run-in with some beautiful sconces, which they repeated throughout the home.
The sconce in question was an organic, sculptural thing. Almost conch-shaped, with a reveal in one of the inward curving faces.
From straight on, the reveal let light escape in a beautiful way. But step 45 degrees to the right, and the LED diodes stare back at you. No amount of dimming or reduction of kelvins can right that wrong.
At that moment, the illusion broke.
So many other countless details kept our illusion together. Everything interacting together in a beautiful symphony until this moment.
Luxury doesn’t have to mean expensive objects. But it does have to understand that it’s maintained by refusing to break with the story.
As I hope you’re coming to realize during this read, we ask a lot of questions at Pif.
It’s one thing from childhood I never grew out of. And that’s the way I choose to lead our studio.
The same thing happened again just a couple of days ago, in a six million dollar spec home.
It had everything you’d expect.
Grand spaces.
Great Location
Fine finishes
And also something else.
Schluter trim in the shower.
For those who aren’t aware, Schluter is the metal trim often installed at the edge of tile. It’s a cost effective way to transition from one surface to another.
Technically it's fine. There’s nothing wrong with using schluter in a shower to finish corners and edges.
But emotionally, it’s so wrong. It screams lazy and careless.
Someone who’s worked hard enough in life to seriously consider purchasing a six million dollar home (which likely isn’t even their primary residence) should hope to never see another piece of schluter in their homes.
You’d think in a six million dollar home, you’d have elevated beyond that.
Every decision we make, asks something like the following:
What kind of Tuesday morning happens here?
What kind of evening?
What kind of ritual?
What kind of gathering?
Many think we’re designing for “the wealthy.”
However, our work is in imagining the humanity inside wealth.
Perhaps luxury isn’t about imported stone, as nice as it may be. Or pot fillers, or twenty car garages.
Perhaps luxury is all about reducing friction before someone even knows it exists.
Perhaps luxury is believing in the inner life of a perfect stranger strongly enough to design for it.
Essay 07— Rooms With Purpose
As I approach the home I notice the chosen exterior color. It’s earthy, restrained, and on the darker side. It’s a solid choice.
Upon entering, I walk through a few bedrooms towards the front of the home, and a bathroom or two. All nicely done. The rooms are modest, but that’s to be expected on a plot in this part of town. Prices are steep.
Walking through the narrow hallway, I enter the living area and the space unfolds.
Truth be told it was a pretty good exercise in compression and expansion.
It's the kitchen, it’s the living, it’s the dining... it’s everything.
The back wall is a large glass multi-slide that opens you up to the neat but compact back yard. The grand fireplace fascia extends down from the ceiling and below it, a low slung hearth transforms into a low bench that terminates into the wall fifteen feet away. The wall is composed of concrete blocks, bringing texture into the space.
I like the choice.
The smoothness of fire with the roughness of concrete. A great pairing.
A dining table sits adjacent to the kitchen, tucked away in another bay of windows.
The kitchen sits at the back, overlooking everything like a parent that’s never quite impressed enough with their child.
An interesting chord struck in me.
It wasn't a disappointment per se, but it was closer to a, “...this is it?” feeling.
I was expecting to feel something. I expected to be moved.
Instead, I just experienced a really big room.
And please, hear me out, this isn’t an attack on open concept homes.
They absolutely have their place, and are often a smart design direction.
As with everything in life, there’s an ebb and a flow. Architecture is no different. One generation walls everything off, the next opens it all up.
It’s a rebellion against the forces which ruled our early lives. Against the way we were taught how to do things.
Neither is wrong, they’re just reacting to their lived experiences. But perhaps we’ve swung a touch too far.
I’ve started noticing that when every room is for everything, how do we expect it to really do anything?
The kitchen is the office, the office is the dining room, the living room is the media room. The dining room barely exists.
The result feels like having 20 tabs open in your brain at once.
One messy countertop suddenly creates three messy spaces.
It feels like homes have ballooned in scale throughout our lifetimes, but they haven’t necessarily gotten any more functional. How is it that a home can be 6,500 square feet and still feel like it only has one real room?
Over the last few decades, we’ve lost rooms with purpose.
A music room. Now that is a room. What a luxury it is to have a single space dedicated to enjoying your music. A place to bring you back to some long-lost memory.
How about a library? A beautifully designed room for all your favorite bits of information and fantastical stories that shaped who you are. It’s a testament to your personality. To how you got here.
And a morning room? A place to start your day, get some vitamin D, sip your coffee, and start slowly.
I recently heard a story about a young man whose roommate moved out. He had a brilliant idea for his newfound empty room.
The Cheetah Room.
It now boasts a painting of a cheetah on the wall, and a singular chair facing the art piece.
He’s also attached rules to the space. So much so, that it’s become a special event at parties.
One person at a time. No phones. No pictures.
And the list of rules is growing.
This is not an extravagant living space. It's a small apartment.
What makes places like these special is the intention. They know what they’re asking of you. Each room calls you to do one specific thing. Whether that’s to listen, to disappear, to learn, or to unwind.
We talk a lot about rituals at Pif. This is related, of course. These types of rooms contain them. They also encourage them. They protect them.
On occasion, a space can even create them.
We’ve all experienced moments in life where it feels as though we just need the extra nudge of permission to do something we’ve been wanting to do for a long time. These rooms can be that for us.
Ultimately, it’s really about asking what kind of life this home is trying to support. Design should remove friction, not create it.
Sometimes that means opening spaces. And at other times, it means defining them.
Personally, I've grown tired of rooms asking me to be everywhere all at once.
Essay 06 — Three Feet Off the Ground
On a recent trip to New England, I dragged my husband to one of my favorite places on the planet from childhood:
the Boston Museum of Science.
I was born in Boston, and lived my early years in the area. He and I had never been to the city together, and he’s never been to Boston at all.
On any trip, one of our favorite activities is simply wandering through the city together, racking up tens of thousands of steps daily.
Because the weather outside was terrible, we spent the greater part of the afternoon wandering through the museum, from exhibit to exhibit. The whole time, I was pointing out things he should come see, and telling him to “look at it from this angle.”
Later on, during our trek home, as we were recounting our adventures, he mentioned to me that I seemed to really love reliving my childhood.
Initially, I was really taken aback by this. Borderline offended.
But then I remembered that he’d never intentionally do or say anything to hurt me. So I checked myself before wrecking myself, and realized, of course that’s the lens he sees it through.
I’d think the same if I were him.
Only, the experience I was having was entirely different.
I was experiencing it for the first time as a designer.
So many things made me stop and ask myself how much time someone spent on this.
I felt this the most while at the Egyptian pyramid exhibit.
As we approached, I remembered it from childhood. I remembered loving this one a lot.
It’s an oversized diorama, maybe about fouir feet wide by two feet deep, and three feet tall. It was installed at a comfortable viewing level with the bottom edge about three feet off the ground.
The big pyramids growing out of the ground. The tiny human figures scattered on the floor of the scene, performing different tasks to get this pyramid built. Little micro-moments stationed throughout. A vendor selling something over here, figures moving blocks closer to the pyramid over there.
Viewing it this time felt different. But why?
Because I was looking at it from above. I was looking at it as an adult might. I was getting the “parents’” perspective.
And it’s not as good.
The diorama looked a bit more sparse than I remembered. I could see the personal space bubble around each person. I could see the top of the unfinished pyramid. I could get an aerial view of the scene at large.
A placard below poses a question. It asks the youngsters to find something specific in the diorama. From my vantage point I’m able to spot it fairly easily. Still a bit difficult, but not terribly.
Finally, curiosity gets the better of me and I kneel down on the level of a child. Suddenly, everything shifts.
It becomes so deep. So lively.
I no longer see the top of the pyramid. I don’t see the space between the people. What I see instead is a sprawling epicenter filled with hundreds upon hundreds of people, putting in work.
The perspective shift offered a much more interesting narrative. At this level, the placard’s answer becomes much more difficult. Had I not already found where it was, I might have spent ten minutes trying to find it.
I imagined a tired parent sitting on the nearby bench as their kid follows the dioramas around the room, stopping at each one, looking, answering the questions, taking their time to search each one.
Even the questions are well designed here, I thought.
They’re informational but the information isn’t necessarily in the question, it’s in the search. And then you flip the placard over once you found what they asked you to, in order to learn more about what you found.
They’ve designed it to be an incredible way to spend ten minutes…
over, and over again.
The museum features a massive spiral staircase that leads you either up to the second level, or down to the bottom level. And an immense vertical plant installation flanks the nearby left wall.
The museum’s designers did such a good job that one exhibit had me fighting every urge in my body to get down and crawl around on my hands and knees.
As you descend down the stairs, you come upon one of my favorite exhibits. They’ve made a clever use of space by housing it under the spiral staircase on the bottom level.
From the exterior of this display, you can see a plexiglass viewing window at knee height. Inside is the view of a rat’s nest in the city’s infrastructure. Walk around the display a bit further, and you’ll see a large tank showing the kinds of fish and turtles found in the Charles River environment. And between all of that, you’ll find two mousehole-style entrances. Only they’re not for mice, they’re for children, of course.
This exhibit begs you to get on your hands and knees, and crawl inside to learn more.
What’s in there? An exhibit detailing what it’s like inside the city’s infrastructure.
This exhibit pulls me in for so many reasons, most of them revolving around tactility, intrigue, and whimsy. This exhibit is informative and fun, and asks the kids to lean in, literally. I knelt down at the entrance and peeked in, but it took everything in me not to crawl inside.
The local wildlife exhibit features life-size dioramas of taxidermied animals from around the region.
I was most impressed by all the attention to detail. The early spring marshland was filled with real local grasses. I could see dead logs and tons of critters coexisting in the scene. The background was intricately painted and continued up in a half-dome to meet the display wall, so you didn't ever see a right angle. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was real mud in there too.
Throughout the entire visit, I kept crouching down, getting on my knees, and leaning down. Looking at things from a different perspective.
Legitimately, the museum just looked better from there.
Why? Because it was designed to be. Every exhibit improved. Not slightly, but significantly.
It became so obvious. All these exhibits were designed from three feet off the ground.
Speaking as an occasional cynic, and an always critic, the world has a way of beating us into the shape it wants. Instead of discovering, we now find ourselves evaluating against prior experiences, against our own preconceived notions, and against any other matter of thought or memory.
I began to realize that the thing that drew me in the most this time was the design.
Someone designed these exhibits from a viewpoint they no longer typically occupy.
While that’s an extraordinary thing, it’s also just simply the job.
And maybe the reason this aspect spoke to me is that it’s exactly the type of thing I’m always trying to find and to build into each home. I’m always looking for those moments.
Every home should contain wonder, which is not to be confused with spectacle.
It’s a moment that reveals itself only if you pay close enough attention. A second layer. Something discovered.
So it’s not that the museum had me feeling nostalgic, though at points, I absolutely was feeling that.
It’s that it made me grateful and impressed.
Grateful and impressed that somewhere there was once a group of designers who cared enough to get on the ground.
To see the world through someone else’s eyes.
To imagine what it would be like to be small and seeing this for the first time.
To be curious.
All of this is exactly why you can often find me performing a plank in a client’s home to check out a funky air register that’s hiding in an awfully inconvenient spot.
Turns out, the best designers are willing to get on the ground.
Volume 05 — Objects
Objects surround us.
In this consumerist, capitalist world we live in, one could say they rule us.
But that's viewing it from a cynical lens.
I prefer to lean on the side where objects serve us and our rituals, big or small.
For me, one of the objects which comes to mind first is a pair of old tweezers my mom gave me. They were hers when she was around, and they're not just any tweezers. They're a special pair shaped more like a pair of bent scissors, with two loops you put your fingers through that end, and a tweezer tip. I'd never seen another pair like them in the wild. I have no idea where she got them. I like to think she came across them in one of the countries she traveled wile part of the USSR national team. Maybe in Japan.
But they're my favorite pair.
They're incredibly precise. You can't oversqueeze and cause the tips to open back up, even microscopically, like some traditional tweezers.
They're the ULTIMATE in my eyes.
It's no secret that these tweezers are an incredibly ordinary object, but they support me weekly. With them, it's about function, and boy are they incredibly functional. And to anyone else, they're completely unremarkable. Most people, if they saw them, would probably fail to even recognize them as tweezers.
What's interesting is that I don't necessarily believe objects arrive in our lives with meaning attached to them.
Oftentimes, they have to earn it.
Through repetition, through good design, or through consistently showing up over and over again until one day, you realize you can't imagine your routine without them.
Some objects we encounter in life become far more valuable to us than they may initially let on.
The way I see it, there are two worlds of objects in our lives. Those we own, and those which become part of us.
For example, I have a pair of gold-framed, pink-lensed Ray-Ban aviators. I purchased my first pair a little over ten years ago. Since then I've gone through three or four pairs, and I just keep rebuying the same glasses.
For me it isn't about the original pair.
It's the way the world looks through rose-colored lenses.
I refuse to see the world any other way.
Any chance I get, I have other people try them on.
Their response is typically, "Wow. I feel like I can see in HD through these."
Yep.
It's that feeling that made me fall in love with them.
I have a journal, well, a rotation of several journals, in which I write almost daily. They have lined pages and a ribbon bookmark. I have several around the house. One almost always travels with me. Anywhere I go, one is bound to accompany me.
There's also this black-and-gold A24 mug from which I drink my coffee. It's a newer addition to the collection, but it brings me great joy. Simple form. Simple design. Well executed.
It accompanies me to my morning coffee hang where I play some brain games, do some studying, and slowly boot up for the day.
It's no secret that our homes slowly absorb the objects which survive multiple chapters of life.
My favorite mug.
The old journal.
The leather sofa.
The camera that's been around forever.
The linen sheets that somehow get softer every year.
The weird pair of tweezers that have outlived a dozen beauty trends.
Eventually they stop feeling like our possessions, and rather, start feeling more like inhabitants.
The objects themselves don't need to be expensive or special.
They only need to serve you and your routines well.
Though these specific objects are important to me, there are others which lean more sacred or sentimental. I classify the two as different things.
Sentimental is one that has some heartstrings attached.
Sacred almost feels like it has a touch of the irrational attached.
An object can be both, or one or the other.
The sentimental ones are tied to a memory. Perhaps a person or a place. My little tweezers definitely fall partly into this category.
Whereas sacred objects feel almost beyond explanation. Their significance may not be entirely rational. If one were to disappear, it would come with a whole host of woes attached.
And it's perfectly okay to have objects across all areas of that spectrum.
Personally, I can think of a couple objects I find sacred.
One is a particular piece of Olympic memorabilia I've come into over the course of my life. It's closely tied to family, in fact it was gifted by family, and even though we don't currently have it on prominent display, I can't imagine life without it. It's made its way across the country with me, through countless moves, over several decades.
Much more valuable items have been discarded or left behind.
But this one continues on.
But not every sacred object is sentimental.
Sometimes it's just something incredibly cool that speaks to your soul on a level that feels tied to your existential self.
We may stumble across something in an antique shop that perfectly encompasses a certain aspect of our personality better than words or actions ever feel like they could.
That object becomes a quick explanation of all the Venn diagrams that make up our complicated personalities and backstories.
Then there are the objects that simply make everyday life better.
Linen sheets are one of those for me.
The more they age, the softer they become. They're wonderful at keeping you cool in summer and warm in winter, same with a good down duvet, and they're made from a natural material, which I find incredibly important to our wellbeing.
Some objects become meaningful because of memory.
Others become meaningful because they subconsciously improve your life every single day.
All of these items become quiet witnesses to a person's life.
Let’s agree that a well-lived home isn't necessarily one filled with beautiful things... Perhaps instead, it's one where a handful of ordinary objects have stayed long enough to become extraordinary.
To support you in ways others can't or simply haven't had the chance to.
Because in the end, we rarely remember what something cost.
Instead, we remember how it supported us.
How it made our life easier.
How it fit perfectly into a ritual.
How it became part of our routine until we couldn't imagine life without it.
We remember the feeling it helped foster.
And we remember the life we lived around it.
And somewhere along the way, without ever intending to, those ordinary objects quietly become part of us.
Essay 05 — Permission to Slow Down
Every morning starts roughly the same way for me.
I wake up to my sunlight alarm clock, brush my teeth, make a coffee (a ritual in itself thanks to the espresso machine), and sit down on the bench in my coffee nook to play some brain games and study for about fifteen minutes. Usually that fifteen minutes stretches into an hour. Sometimes I'm inside. Sometimes I'm in the backyard when it isn't too hot.
Then I get ready for the day.
In the evenings, I have a pretty systematic wind-down ritual as well.
The daily rituals vary a bit here and there. One day I may decide I want maté. Another day it might be a London Fog or a dirty chai. The specifics change.
The ritual remains.
We all have rituals whether we realize it or not.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently while designing a steam shower for a client.
We're placing a large window inside the steam shower. The room overlooks a mountain and you feel like you're on top of the world when you're there. Why not capitalize on the view?
The northern light allows for a large window without turning the glass shower into a heat bubble. We would be foolish not to take advantage of it.
We're placing a large bench directly beneath the window. Not because the client needs somewhere to sit (well, that too...), but because the space is asking for it. The view is asking for it. The steam is asking for it.
The entire room is designed to beckon you to sit down, relax, and enjoy the solitude.
The design we're creating is one that gives permission.
Permission to linger.
Permission to look outside.
Permission to relax.
Permission to spend an extra five minutes.
And the more I've thought about it, the more I've realized that good design supports our rituals. I've always known it, but it's fun when a new puzzle (project) enters the picture and we're reminded all over again.
Good design invites and gives permission to partake in these little rituals. It may even create them.
The funny thing is that most people don't recognize their rituals because they're moving too fast.
From one thing to the next.
Not to mention all the scrolling.
Our attention spans are moving a mile a minute and we often do more than one thing at once. How are we even expected to notice the rituals we perform every day?
Or maybe people know they always do things a certain way, but they've never stopped to consider that those patterns are something you can design around.
Something you can make easier, and something you can optimize.
For most people, you can't simply ask:
"What are your daily rituals?"
They'll look at you with a blank stare.
Of course they have them.
But in that moment they've all disappeared from memory.
You almost have to ask differently.
What happens between waking up and leaving the house?
What happens before bed?
Where do you drink your coffee?
Where do you take your vitamins?
Where do you sit when you need a moment alone?
The answers are usually hidden inside ordinary routines.
The same thing happens with objects.
The objects people value most are often the ones they use most frequently.
Not because they're expensive or rare. But because they're woven into a ritual.
Some of my favorite objects are an A24 mug, my espresso machine, the bench I sit on every morning, a cheap compact mirror I use to apply mascara, and my gua sha tool.
The mirror is important because it saves me from bending across the counter while getting ready.
The gua sha serves a very specific purpose. I have pretty intense TMJ issues and it helps keep it at bay. Passes across my neck, jawline, cheekbones, temples, and eyebrows are part of my daily routine.
None of these objects are important because they're objects.
They're important because they participate in a ritual.
And rituals keep us sane.
They bring joy to small moments.
But many people spend a lot of time chasing happiness through purchases.
I think the purchase isn't actually what they're after.
Maybe they're seeking comfort.
Grounding.
Rhythm.
Routine.
Stability.
These are all things rituals naturally provide.
We used to spend more time gathering ingredients, cooking meals, cleaning up afterward, building fires, and sitting together in conversation.
Now there are shortcuts for almost everything.
Convenience is wonderful. I'm not arguing against it.
But I do wonder if we've accidentally erased some important rituals along the way.
And perhaps when those rituals disappear, we go searching for something else to replace them.
Good design has the ability to support rituals that already exist.
It can also create new ones.
Clients often tell us about the frustrations they have with their homes without ever describing their rituals directly.
But hidden inside those frustrations are clues.
A towel hook that's too far from the shower.
A coffee station that lives on the opposite side of the house.
No place to sit and read.
No place to gather.
No place to downshift.
Personally, I hate having a gust of cold air blowing directly on me while I'm brushing my teeth. It's too loud of a sensory experience.
If I'm soaking in a bathtub, I shouldn't have a cold air vent aimed directly at me either.
And for the love of everything that is good and pure in this world, if you have the opportunity to put a laundry room on an exterior wall, please do it.
And if the laundry room is on an exterior wall, give it a window.
Laundry is already a chore. Why must we make it depressing too?
All of these tiny decisions matter.
They either create friction or remove friction.
They either support a ritual or interrupt it.
People often travel to less wealthy nations and come home saying:
"They have so little but seem so happy."
Why is that?
Maybe because richness and ritual are not the same thing as wealth.
A modest home with strong rituals can feel incredibly rich.
A beautiful home with no rituals can still feel empty.
The best objects aren't valuable because they're beautiful.
They're valuable because they make moving through life a little easier.
A little gentler.
A little slower.
A good home supports your rituals.
A good home allows for your rituals.
A good home gives us permission to slow down.
Essay 04 — Why Every Room Shouldn’t Be Visible
There was an interesting conversation on a recent home tour.
One of the real estate agents walking the property felt very strongly that the kitchen should be pushed farther forward into the home and opened up more directly to the formal dining space near the entry. Bigger openness. Bigger “great room” energy. More immediate visibility.
And to be fair, I understood exactly what he meant.
Those are the buzzwords everybody talks about now. Open concept. Kitchen-living-entertaining. Great room. Sight lines. It is a natural progression of things. Homes used to be heavily segmented and compartmentalized, and then over time spaces opened up more and more and more. Like everything else in design, it moves in ebbs and flows. The pendulum swings.
But what struck me was how strongly he felt about it.
Because as I was walking the house, I was experiencing it completely differently.
I was looking at the details. The materiality. The plaster finishes. The warm stone. The way the portals framed the rooms. The sequence of movement. Meanwhile, he was looking at the broader lifestyle functionality of the house itself, which, to be fair, is exactly what he should be doing.
But the more I thought about it afterward, the more I realized I actually thought the house was already solving the assignment perfectly.
Not every home needs to immediately reveal itself.
And not every guest needs access to the deepest parts of your home.
This particular house was fascinating because it felt designed almost entirely around entertaining. You approached through a courtyard anchored by a massive monolithic fireplace structure with cannonballs inside. You curved around it and entered through a large glass front door into a cathedral-like stone foyer with full views straight through the back glass wall toward the pool, guest house, and outdoor seating areas.
The house immediately beckoned you outward.
But just off to the left was an even stronger pull: a beautiful bar area paired with a formal dining space that could just as easily function as another sitting room or lounge.
It created this perfect self-contained entertaining zone.
Almost like the house was quietly saying:
Stay here. This is your space. Pay no attention to the rest.
And just beyond a thick portal clad in warm wood was the deeper part of the home. The kitchen. The more intimate living spaces. The quieter zones. The primary suite wing.
That separation mattered.
Because kitchens are strange spaces emotionally. Even beautifully designed kitchens are windows into how someone actually lives. Maybe the appliances are out. Maybe there is clutter. Maybe the storage does not perfectly fit the owner’s habits. Maybe they simply do not want to think about tidying every visible surface before guests arrive.
And honestly, I think there is something comforting about that layer of privacy.
Especially in homes belonging to people who entertain frequently.
Particularly second or third homes.
At this level of luxury, there is a good chance the people gathering there are a mixture of close friends, business colleagues, acquaintances, and social circles that overlap only loosely. The home almost begins functioning like a hospitality environment. And in hospitality design, containment matters.
There is a reason restaurants, hotels, and clubs carefully choreograph where guests move and where they do not.
Homes are no different.
Older homes often understood this surprisingly well. Long hallways. Wings. Transitional rooms. Libraries. Vestibules. Sitting rooms. Places to pause before entering the next zone.
Today, many homes have become instantly readable. You walk through the front door and understand the entire layout within seconds.
There is certainly beauty in openness. Lofts can be wonderful. Large open gathering spaces can feel incredible. But there is also something deeply pleasurable about gradual reveal.
About architecture unfolding itself slowly.
A home guiding you through light, proportion, compression, release, and sequence.
It creates mystery. Wonder. Anticipation.
It makes a house feel like a journey rather than a diagram.
And psychologically, I think humans respond to that more than we realize. Smaller contained spaces often make us feel safer and calmer. People with anxious tendencies or obsessive tendencies may even feel overwhelmed when too many rooms are visually exposed at once.
Open space is wonderful.
But endless openness can sometimes come at the cost of intimacy.
I would love to see a resurgence of homes that understand layering again. Homes with entertaining zones. Homes with thresholds. Homes with singular-purpose rooms. Homes that allow certain spaces to remain protected.
Because ultimately, good architecture is not just about visibility.
It is about understanding the assignment.
And I think the architects and designers of this house understood it perfectly.
Volume 04 — Tailored Living
On spaces that understand the people inside them
When something fits you perfectly, it takes a step back.
There’s nowhere that’s pulling, nowhere that’s too tight. Nothing is fighting against you. It all sits just right, and suddenly you feel like you’ve got room to breathe.
We understand this instinctively in clothing. We tailor things to our bodies. We adjust hems, take things in, let things out. We expect that level of fit.
And yet, when it comes to our homes, we accept something entirely different.
Most people live in spaces that don’t quite fit them.
Spaces that look good, spaces that function (technically). But spaces that create a quiet, persistent friction in daily life.
You hear it in the way people talk about their homes.
They hate the layout.
There’s never enough room in the kitchen.
The kids don’t have anywhere to do homework.
They can’t have people over the way they want to.
It’s rarely framed as a design problem.
It’s just… life.
But that friction adds up, little by little.
It shows up in the small moments like reaching into the back of a cabinet you dread opening. Or avoiding a pantry because you know it’s a mess. Or even never quite finishing your laundry because the closet makes the process harder than it should be.
Moving back and forth between spaces, wasting time, switching tasks, adjusting yourself to something that never adjusted to you.
Many of us know this loop.
Most homes ask the person to adapt.
Very few homes adapt to the person, and that’s a shame.
A home that is designed can look beautiful.
A home that is understood, is built around the way someone actually lives.
Not the version of themselves they imagine, not the version they think they should be.
But the one that shows up every day.
To tailor one’s home to their life is a process in uncovering.
It requires paying attention to patterns like where someone sits, or where they drop their things. Maybe its the places they gravitate toward, and the places they quietly avoid.
It’s not always obvious.
Sometimes personality shows up most in the hidden spaces. Perhaps a bedroom, a corner, a chair that gets used more than anything else in the house. Other times it reveals itself in shared spaces, depending on the person.
But it’s always there.
And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
There’s a space in my home that we’ve turned into a morning room. It gets eastern light. I sit there with my coffee, play a few brain games on my phone, and ease into the day.
Most homes don’t have a space dedicated to something that specific.
A place designed just for sitting with your coffee in the morning light.
But that small ritual changes the way the day begins.
Routine is not something separate from design.
Instead, it’s what design should be built around.
When a home ignores someone’s natural rhythm, it creates resistance.
You feel it immediately, even if you can’t articulate it. The day starts with small frustrations. Movements feel inefficient, tasks feel heavier than they should.
You find yourself working against your own space.
And over time, that resistance becomes normal.
But it doesn’t have to be.
A tailored home begins to anticipate you.
It knows where things belong because they already belong there in your life. It allows for the way you actually use your things, not the way they are supposed to be used.
It understands, for instance, that you may need a dedicated space for “lay-flat to dry” items flat in a laundry room. Or that your toiletries need to live somewhere very specific. That your coffee machine is part of a ritual, not just an appliance.
It understands your body, too.
I once worked with a client who was particularly tall, and the kitchen he came to me with had been designed at a standard height. He had decided a few years ago that he wanted to learn to cook. But every time he cooked, he had to hunch over.
He started experiencing strong aches and pains, and after a while, dropped the cooking altogether. Not because he didn’t want to continue learning, but because the space worked against him.
Once you see those things, they’re hard to ignore.
And clearly the issue wasn’t the client, it was the space.
We often talk about tailoring as a luxury.
But it’s not about excess at all in many cases. It’s all about attention.
It’s about recognizing that people are different, and that their habits, rhythms, and bodies are different. And once more, that their homes should reflect that!
A tailored sanctuary is not a perfectly styled home.
It’s a home where someone can fully exist.
Where they don’t feel the need to adjust, perform, or correct themselves throughout the day.
Where the space is not asking anything of them.
When a home truly fits you, something shifts, and suddenly you’re able to move fluidly throughout the day.
You no longer feel the tension.
And for the first time, the space takes a step back,
and you’re finally able to step forward.
Essay 03 — Against the White Box
It has been a while since I have seen wallpaper and fabric-clad walls used heavily in homes.
One of the first times I remember seeing padded, fabric-clad walls was in Russia. My aunt had them in her primary bedroom and I thought it was just fabulous. Luxurious, cozy, and slightly old world in the best possible way.
Recently, I’ve started noticing them again, or perhaps just paying closer attention.
A home I visited recently had padded, fabric-calad walls in every bathroom. Another had wallpaper tucked into the interior of built-in bookshelves, wrapping the back and side walls behind the shelving itself. Neither idea was especially novel, but both felt memorable simply because they have become so rare.
Wallpaper, fabric walls, grasscloth, mural papers, textured wallcoverings… all of these things add something that paint often struggles to.
Depth.
Character.
Texture.
Paint can be beautiful, but it can also feel flat. Even when the color is lovely, it can still leave a room feeling one-dimensional. Wallpaper has the ability to make a room feel layered, lived in, and specific.
I think wallpaper still suffers from a bit of a bad reputation because so many people associate it with the floral prints, borders, and heavily themed rooms of the 80s and 90s. But there are so many beautiful, understated, elegant wallcoverings now that I get excited whenever I have the opportunity to use one.
I especially love quieter applications.
Like wallpaper inside a bookshelf, wallpaper in a powder bath, or some nice grasscloth in an office. Maybe a mural in a hallway alcove, or a ceiling treatment in a small room.
Just because a space is small or transitory does not mean it has to be boring.
In fact, those spaces are often where wallpaper works best.
Let’s bring back wild guest bathrooms. Let’s bring back hallways that surprise you a little.
Let’s bring back rooms that feel like someone actually made decisions in them.
Because for a while, homes became too flat, too white, and too drywall-heavy.
We became so afraid of committing to things in our homes.
It is interesting to me that people will commit to a countertop slab or a cabinet finish without much hesitation, but wallpaper still feels scary to them. Perhaps because it feels more personal. More specific. Potentially harder to undo.
But that is also exactly what makes it good.
Wallpaper can make a room feel intimate in a way paint rarely can. Fabric walls do this even more. They soften a space visually, but they also soften it acoustically. They absorb sound. They dampen echo. In a dry climate like Arizona, fabric walls can even help a room hold a touch of humidity.
I do think there are places where wallpaper should be used carefully. Very large spaces can quickly become overwhelming. Kid-heavy zones may not be the best fit for delicate materials down low. Humidity, moisture, and practical wear all matter.
Although in Arizona, we can get away with using wallpaper and fabric in typically high humidity zones far easier than people in wetter climates. The padded fabric bathrooms I saw recently felt smart, warm, and luxurious.
Wallpaper and fabric walls make a home feel collected, considered, and layered.
And perhaps that is really what this is about.
Not wallpaper itself, but the return of personal flair.
The return of rooms that feel like someone cared enough to make them specific.
I love seeing wallpaper in homes and I wish it happened more.
I wish people put more of their budgets toward materials like wallpaper, because few things make a home feel more lived in, more real, or more memorable.
Essay 02 — What a Walk-In Freezer Says About Modern Luxury
The first time I saw one in a house, my immediate reaction was, “No way this is happening in this house right now.”
I was thrilled to see it.
There is something deeply appealing about a commercial walk-in in a residential space. It feels smart. Slightly absurd. Very old money. A true piece of quiet luxury.
Over the past month, I have seen them in three different homes. Interestingly, all of them were older houses, generally built in the early to mid-2000s, with decorating that reflected the same era. I haven’t seen a single one in a newer build or a modern home. Maybe it has something to do with the housing bubble that was ballooning while these homes were being built
These walk-ins are usually tucked off the kitchen, often near a prep kitchen or secondary pantry space. They aren’t really meant to be seen. In that sense, they feel very different from the more obvious displays of wealth we often associate with luxury homes.
There is definitely something luxurious about the sheer presence of them, but even more than that, there is something luxurious about the fact that they are not meant for homes at all. These are commercial-grade items. They require significant planning, significant square footage, and a level of commitment to how a family actually lives.
Even a relatively modest unit, perhaps with an interior size of roughly 8' x 5', requires a much larger footprint than you experience when simply opening the door. There is mechanical planning, air circulation, and maintenance access to consider. There is a strong commitment to carving out that much of a home for storage and preparation.
That, perhaps, is what makes them so appealing.
A walk-in freezer says something very different about a person than an indoor hot tub, a home theater, or a bowling alley. Those things are designed to impress. A walk-in cooler is designed to make life easier.
It is there for the family who shops in bulk.
For the people who entertain often.
For the household that hosts holidays.
For the family that invites a chef over when guests are in town.
For the person who likes to be prepared.
It is a luxury almost entirely for the people who live in the house,
rather than the people visiting it.
And perhaps that is why it feels so luxurious.
In the last decade, we have become increasingly homebound. More people work from home. More people entertain at home. More people want their house to function as a one-stop sanctuary where they can live, work, host, retreat, and prepare.
The walk-in cooler reflects that shift.
It reminds me of the same appeal that good integrated lighting has in a home. Neither is flashy in the traditional sense, but both require a deep level of forethought. They account for the real humans living in the home. They anticipate how someone might move, work, and entertain in a space.
To dedicate that much square footage to cold storage is, in a way, to commit to the people living there.
You are saying, “We will always have space for you to store, to prepare, and to entertain”
There is also something undeniably funny about them. Turning a corner in a residential home and being greeted with the large commercial-style door of a walk-in cooler always gives me a little bit of a giggle. It is always a little unexpected and slightly bizarre. But I am almost always happy to see it.
In many ways, these spaces feel more like old money than new money. I do not see them in newer homes (yet). Perhaps today’s luxury is more interested in being seen. Perhaps it is focused on flashier moments. But I would love to see these spaces return.
Because aside from good lighting, features like this feel like luxury at its finest.
Not because they impress people, but because they understand and provide for them.
Volume 03 — Materials
Pif. Archives | Studio Journal
March, 2026
I do not know exactly when I first started noticing materials.
I know that as a child I noticed them constantly.
I remember being very young and walking through houses with my parents in Massachusetts when they were looking for their first home purchase. There was one house in particular with a large central staircase leading up to a second-story primary suite. The stairs were carpeted. At the top of the staircase sat a freestanding tub, and the carpet wrapped all the way around it.
Even then, I remember noticing it.
I remember wondering why someone would do that. Why they would bring carpeting so close to water. Why it felt wrong.
I also spent a lot of time on airplanes as a child. We went back to Russia every summer until I was around ten years old. I usually sat in the window seat, and I remember looking at the walls of the plane. I would trace the repeating texture with my eyes and wonder why they chose that particular finish. Why that pattern. Why that material.
I remember bowling alleys too. Those laminated tables that would look one way under normal light and another way when the blacklights came on. I remember noticing how strange and exciting that felt.
And then there was Russia.
The churches, the museums, the theaters, the stone streets, the worn steps.
My grandmother lived in a five-story walk-up on the outskirts of Moscow, and I remember paying attention to the stairs in that building. The worn edges of the steps. The way the stone had softened over time. The way thousands of footsteps had left evidence behind.
I think that is part of what I still respond to most strongly now.
Evidence.
Proof that something is real.
The materials that make me feel calm, grounded, and emotionally safe are almost always rooted in the natural world. Concrete with visible aggregate. Real wood with grain you can actually see and feel. Stone with variation and movement. Linen. Wool. Limewash. Brass.
When I see and touch these materials, there is a sense that they are telling the truth.
They are not pretending to be something else.
That matters more than people realize.
Any time I am in a home and I notice that the flooring is not actually what it is pretending to be, something in my body immediately goes on alert. Luxury vinyl plank that is trying to impersonate wood. Laminate that is trying to impersonate stone. Polyester that is trying to impersonate linen.
You know it is fake even if you cannot explain why.
Luxury vinyl plank may visually resemble wood from a distance, but it does not sound like wood when you walk across it. It does not feel like wood underfoot. It does not age like wood. It does not respond to light like wood. It does not smell like wood.
Your body knows that.
People do not have to be especially tuned in or design-conscious to feel that something is off. Most people just have not been taught to trust that feeling.
The same thing happens with polyester.
There have been so many times I have stayed in a hotel, an Airbnb, or a friend’s house and ended up under one of those polyester-filled comforters. They are always strangely thin, but somehow unbearably hot. You wake up sweating without even realizing you were overheating in the first place.
Then the second you throw the blanket off, the rest of the air hits your skin and you realize your body was uncomfortable the entire night.
A down comforter would not do that.
Linen would not do that.
Natural materials breathe. They regulate. They respond.
Synthetic materials often trap.
That is why real materials matter emotionally.
Because we interact with them every single day.
We touch them. Walk on them. Sleep in them. Lean against them. Open them. Hold them.
People have become more aware of plastics in food packaging and water bottles, but far fewer people are paying attention to the materials they are living inside of.
They should.
The materials in a home shape the way that home feels.
A material can be beautiful without being good to live with.
There are plenty of beautiful materials that are static, flat, and emotionally empty. A material that feels good to live with has stages. It changes. It softens. It patinas. It collects wear in a way that makes it feel more alive.
Nothing in life stays perfectly constant, and materials should not either.
The best materials age with us.
Wood becomes softer around the edges. Brass loses its shine. Stone develops wear patterns. Leather darkens. Linen wrinkles.
Those changes are not flaws.
They are evidence of life.
That’s why I am so drawn to real stone, real wood, real wallpaper made from natural fibers, limewash, plaster, linen, wool.
They all have texture.
Texture is one of the most important parts of how we experience a space.
Texture gives the eye somewhere to land.
It gives the brain something to process.
For neurodivergent people especially, there can be something very calming about seeing the grain pattern in wood or the variation in stone. It gives your mind something understandable to anchor onto.
That is very different from glossy drywall, plastic laminate, or perfectly smooth synthetic surfaces.
Those materials often feel blank. Or worse, performative.
There are so many homes now that are filled with materials pretending to be something else. Part of that is budget. Part of that is manufacturing. Part of that is capitalism and the pressure to keep up appearances.
And not every manufactured material is bad.
There are products I like. There are products that make sense. There are products that perform well.
But natural materials are still my first choice whenever possible.
Because when a material is fake, something gets lost.
There is a truth that disappears.
There is an honesty that disappears.
And there is often friction.
That friction shows up in small ways.
It shows up when a glossy tile floor reflects every strip of LED lighting throughout the room.
It shows up when sunlight bounces harshly off a polished surface.
It shows up when two materials meet awkwardly and your eye gets stuck at the transition.
It shows up when you walk through a luxury home full of expensive finishes and somehow it still feels hollow.
The homes are often beautiful in theory. The materials are expensive. The details are impressive.
But they are not resonant.
Yet again, they are designed from concept boards and spec sheets instead of from the perspective of the person living there.
There are too many transitions. Too many moments where materials crash into one another. Too many surfaces screaming for attention.
Nothing settles.
The body never relaxes.
That is why quiet luxury is often less about the visual and more about the feeling.
Real brass door hardware is quiet luxury.
You feel the weight of it in your hand when you open the door.
A real wood floor is quiet luxury.
Linen curtains moving with the breeze are quiet luxury.
Stone worn smooth by years of use is quiet luxury.
Wood-look tile is not quiet luxury.
It is performative.
Imperfect materials make spaces feel more human.
Humans are not perfect.
We dent. We scratch. We soften. We age.
Our homes should be allowed to do the same.
The materials we surround ourselves with should feel honest.
They should feel tactile, and they should tell the truth.
Because the body knows when something is real.
And it knows when something is pretending.
Essay 01 — Luxury That Isn’t
The house that forgot about people
The first thing this house was trying to impress us with was its location.
That much was clear. And they knew it. They were absolutely leaning on the location of this home to carry them. A crutch, I presume.
While I was making my way to the entry, I was having a pleasant enough time. The yard, while overly perfect with its pristine turf and harsh right angles everywhere you looked, was unquestionably a proper choice given the home’s exterior. Everything was smooth and level all the way up the walk.
Until I saw the threshold.
As I approached the door, I found myself getting caught up in trying to time my steps so I could step over this monstrosity.
There was an elevated slab, ultra wide, maybe twelve inches or so, jutting up from the flat surroundings. On top of that sat the door’s own personal threshold. A layering of thresholds, so to speak.
Together they totaled roughly two inches of height.
An awkward height and width to make your way over, no doubt.
I was no longer enjoying the experience of approaching this beautiful home. I was instead considering how I should space my steps, and whether I should try to step clear over the whole thing or step directly on the threshold.
Stepping on it felt wrong in its own way.
Stepping over it felt juvenile.
No correct answers here.
Then I imagined someone’s grandparents coming over for dinner, and the issue this step would give a person with mobility challenges.
Who would do this to us? I thought.
A front door should welcome you into the house, not make you question every move you make.
Good design anticipates the body before it even reaches the front door.
We make it inside.
I still can’t actually tell you what the front doors look like.
The space is grand. The fireplace, with its wide and almost infinitely tall level-five drywall face, is flanked on either side by walnut-toned built-in shelves.
With not an integrated LED in sight.
A sin against all sins in a house like this.
In a home that will likely sell for somewhere between eight and ten million dollars, leaving out something as simple as shelf lighting is baffling.
Bookshelves are not just storage. They’re a stage. A place where people display pieces of their lives. Books they love, artifacts from their travels, small objects that carry stories.
Lighting those objects gives them presence.
It adds warmth and depth to a room. It creates atmosphere when friends are gathered in the evening and the overhead lights are dimmed. It casts shadows. It brings out the texture of the wood.
Without lighting, the shelves felt hollow. Decorative space waiting to be filled, but not actually designed to hold meaning.
Then I walked into the primary bedroom.
I took a right-hand turn to view the wall opposite the bed and it felt like I got thumped on the head.
They had copied and pasted the exact same fireplace wall and shelving composition from the living room directly into the bedroom.
If I stood in the right place, I could actually see both bookcases through the doorway of the primary suite.
It was so blatant that I did a double take.
Bedrooms are meant to feel different from living spaces.
One is public.
One is private.
One is where you host and entertain.
The other is where you retreat and turn the world off.
Repeating the exact same architectural gesture in both spaces erases that distinction.
Now the homeowner has to work twice as hard to make those rooms feel emotionally different. They have to decorate their way out of a design decision that never should have been made in the first place.
In any home, the design should set the homeowner up for success.
This one simply didn’t.
The lighting issues continued in the primary bathroom.
The vanity had LED kick lighting underneath it, which could have been a beautiful touch. But the floor tile was incredibly reflective. And the overhead lighting was closer to 5000K than 3000K, which made the entire room feel like an attack on the eyes.
As soon as I stepped inside, I noticed a bright strip of light reflecting directly across the floor.
You could see the entire LED extrusion line glowing back at you.
Good lighting should be indirect. Subtle. Ideally almost forgotten.
When lighting is done well, instead of noticing the fixture, you notice how the space feels.
Here, the lighting jumped right into your face.
The issue wasn’t complicated. Reflective tile and exposed lighting strips simply don’t belong together. Anyone thinking about glare control or material reflectivity would have caught it.
Instead, the room became another example of two design decisions colliding with each other because no one stopped to consider how they would interact.
And that seems to be the deeper issue with this house.
It’s clear that in the building of this home, it was believed that luxury meant scale.
Large rooms. Tall ceilings. Oversized gestures. A few shiny materials.
But real luxury is not scale.
Real luxury is anticipation.
Anticipating how someone steps into a home.
Anticipating how light interacts with materials.
Anticipating how people move through a space and how rooms should feel different from one another.
A well-designed home anticipates the human experience.
This house didn’t do that.
It was designed from spec sheets and concepts instead of bodies.
And the strange thing is that it will absolutely sell.
The location alone might guarantee it.
Someone will walk into that home and think it’s fabulous.
But I can almost guarantee that whoever moves in will slowly start renovating pieces of it.
They’ll add lighting everywhere first.
They’ll fix the entry.
They’ll redo the bathroom floor.
They may never be able to articulate what feels wrong, but they’ll sense it. Because the underlying issue isn’t just missing LEDs or a bad tile choice.
The underlying issue is that no one anticipated how the home would actually be lived in.
Real luxury requires anticipation.
Volume 02 — Light
Pif. Archives | Studio Journal
February, 2026
Opening Reflection
I feel as though I grew up in warm light.
A certain yellow you really only see in summer. Long evenings where the day refused to end and the air stayed warm even after sunset. Outside we lived in it. Inside, we didn’t turn on the big lights very often. We used lamps.
A lot of them.
The ceilings were tall, but the house never felt large. The light gathered in small places: a chair in a corner, a table where someone was sitting, a soft circle on the floor. Each one became its own little world. The rooms felt calm and enveloping, like a blanket.
I didn’t have words for it then, but I always preferred lamp light. Soft, indirect light felt like imagination. Like secrets whispered between friends.
Later in life I noticed I would walk into certain rooms and immediately relax, and into others (offices, stores, waiting rooms) and feel tense without knowing why.
At night something changes for me. When the sky darkens and the outside world disappears, my mind quiets.
The visual noise falls away. Then it all expands.
The same space feels different, almost larger. It’s particularly impactful outdoors.
We could be anywhere.
My body likes to wake with the sun, but my creativity livens after dark. It loves a late night. This sometimes creates trouble for my body clock.
Years later, while starting my studio, I realized I wasn’t just arranging rooms. I was shaping environments people would sleep in, think in, recover in, and live their ordinary days inside.
That’s a big responsibility.
Many places ignore the hour they are experienced in. Bright white light late at night. Dim artificial light during the day. People adapt to it, but they rarely feel settled. They call it stress, or fatigue, or a bad mood, without connecting it to where they spend their time.
Some expensive homes still feel strangely empty. Everything is new and carefully chosen, but nothing shifts as the day moves forward. The brightness stays the same no matter the hour.
It isn’t simply that we live in buildings.
We live inside changing light.
Studio Note
What I Notice in Homes
A room can be beautifully furnished and still feel unsettled.
I rarely notice lighting directly. I notice behavior. Some homes make people linger at the table. In others everyone drifts apart. In certain kitchens people stand close together without realizing it. In others they finish what they need and leave.
Overhead lights tend to flatten everything. Corners disappear. Faces look tired. Every surface asks for attention at once.
People assume lights are meant to be bright. Bright feels complete. But most of life isn’t lived at full intensity.
Layered light changes how a room holds you. A lamp beside you, light along a wall, shadows allowed to exist. The room stops presenting itself and starts to feel occupied.
Restaurants understand this instinctively. The light lowers and conversation stretches. You stay longer than you meant to.
Homes often receive the opposite — the place we spend the most time is lit the least intentionally.
Curation
Small Anchors of Light
During the day I’ll use overhead lighting if it supports daylight. By evening, I switch almost entirely to lamps.
I warm my devices at night and feel the difference immediately. My eyes relax before I consciously notice why.
For years I thought I was just looking at beautiful architectural photographs. Eventually I realized I was studying atmosphere — where brightness gathered, where shadow was allowed, what parts of a room were left quiet.
When my mind feels crowded, I go outside at dusk. The light softens and the edges of things blur. The day releases its hold a little.
Dusk is my favorite time of day.
Night is close behind.
Ritual
The Body and the Sun
I wake naturally with the sun when I can. Coffee, journaling, and quiet time set the tone for the day. If I stay indoors too long, I feel it by evening.
Warm light feels familiar. Bright white light late at night feels lonely in a way that’s hard to explain but easy to recognize.
People still light candles even though we don’t need to. Fire gathers attention differently. It draws faces toward each other and slows conversation.
One of my favorite childhood memories is driving back roads at night, music playing, trees lining the horizon. The moon is out and lighting the wispy clouds just so. Beyond the windshield the world could be anywhere. The darkness removed the details and left only possibility.
We change as light changes, whether we notice it or not.
Volume 01 – Notes on Living
Pif. Archives | Studio Journal
January, 2026
Volume 01
Against Distortion
Notes on Structural Integrity
The longer I run a studio, the more I realize my real job is simple: I work against distortion.
Opening Reflection
I started with a frustration — and a desire to unleash my creative energy on the world.
I wanted to do something that mattered — to me, and to those around me. From the start, I knew I wanted to create design that stood the test of time. I wanted to design at the level of the greats — Frank Lloyd Wright, Peter Zumthor, and the lineage they belong to. I wanted my work to be referenced decades from now, with people saying, “Oh, that’s a Pif. home. It must be preserved and revered.”
Reverence was always the benchmark. A tall task. A high demand. Not unattainable — but deliberately out of reach.
I’ll have to get my ladder out. But I’ll get there.
In 2023, my new studio felt like a baby bird. Vision blurry. Mouths open. Improvising. Reactive. Hungry.
In 2026, it feels more like a panther. Power, grace, structure. Something that can move through the world intact. Not necessarily completely figured out — but vastly more developed in its systems, now with the ability to run.
Somewhere along the way, I became more myself. Because for a while there, I had really lost who I was and how I operate. Too much reacting. Too little form.
Distortion.
One downside of being a tactile learner is that lessons are hard-earned. I understand the ideas. I understand the reasoning. But I still want to see how things play out.
I’ve learned that form gets warped under pressure — easily and quietly, without you even noticing at first.
What changed internally was structure. It’s one thing to have ideas of structure in your head. It’s another thing entirely to externalize it — to put it on paper and make it visible.
Especially to those outside your studio. They’re the real test.
Internally, I know that no one is going to protect me other than myself. Not through any fault of their own. It’s simply that everyone is on their own journey, trying to protect their own form.
And distortion is always looking for a way in.
As a former professional athlete — and a lifetime creative — I’ve learned that I actually perform best inside strong structure and meaningful pressure. Routine is the backbone. Structure sets me free.
If I were to externalize my studio as a single image right now, it would be a building under construction, wrapped in scaffolding. On the whole, it’s complete — walls, ceilings, floors, windows. But there’s still work happening. And the scaffolding is there to make sure it happens without the whole thing collapsing.
Studio Note
Structure as Self-Respect
In my head, the studio is ethereal, with the occasional brutalist edge. When I imagine working inside it now, I feel expansive. Able.
The difference between my studio in 2023 and now is clarity — not just mental or emotional clarity, but vision and mission clarity too. There’s a stronger sense of where this is going, and how it’s meant to feel to exist inside of it.
Before, my days felt like constant motion without direction. Always putting out fires. Always in fight or flight. Communication felt impossible to keep up with. Everything felt urgent, even when it wasn’t.
Now, my days feel slower — but more deliberate. Communication feels like a steady stream that’s easy to navigate. I’m intentionally reconnecting with my peace without sacrificing output. In fact, it’s having the opposite effect. The quality of my output is better.
In my body, working this way feels like respect. Like connection. Like sanity. Running my studio used to feel like chaos — burning the wick at both ends.
Now it feels more like a gallery. Quiet, intentional, designed for looking instead of reacting.
I’ve learned that boundaries aren’t restriction — they’re design. They create the conditions for focus, for pace, for play. They’re what make the work livable.
I want this to be a place where good ideas can arise from anywhere. Where people are encouraged to live their lives.
Here’s a novel concept: a person’s life shouldn’t revolve around work. Personal lives enrich the working life. Rest is not the opposite of productivity — it’s where creativity regenerates. And we are a creative studio. A place people come to create spaces they once thought only existed in their imagination.
Distortion used to sneak in through saying yes to be nice. Through overextension. Through that underlying edge of tension that comes from doing things you’re not fully aligned with.
Working against distortion now looks like checking in with my themes and goals for the day — and not letting anything interfere with that. When distortion is removed from a system, everything feels smooth, like velvet.
Structure isn’t rigid. It’s freedom — because it’s how I stay intact.
Curation
Small things that are quietly working against distortion.
The thing I touch the most every day is my notepad. It lets me offload the constant stream of thoughts in my head — everything I need to remember, track, or return to. I also keep a small calculator on my desk. It does one thing very well.
Lately, the same themes show up in what I’m reading. Right now I’m rotating between Ikigai*, and E²**.
Ikigai because it’s about finding the intersection between what you love, what serves the world, what you’re good at, and what makes you money. It’s validating to read when you feel like you’ve found your life’s work.
E² because after a decade of disengaging, I’m returning to intuition and observation. The idea that the universe provides — ask, and you shall receive — keeps looping in my head.
Time blocking has reduced the most friction in my life. As much as I rebel against authority, I also know that without structure, I operate poorly. Moving studio communication exclusively to email and Slack created a surprising amount of calm. Daily movement — Pilates, skating, walking — quietly saves my energy.
Spaces that soften my nervous system include float tanks, saunas, and the Phoenix Art Museum. And when I need to think clearly, I’ll go to a good coffee shop — sometimes bright, sometimes dark and moody. I’ve also always had a strong connection to my car. There’s something about that small cabin space that feels grounding.
And then there’s scent and sound — the quieter anchors. Hinoki. Creosote. The soft sweetness of acacia. Birds chirping, wind chimes, and lately, a little Amy Winehouse radio. Breathwork and movement shift my internal state faster than anything.
All of these things have one thing in common: they support coherence through repetition, not novelty. They protect me from noise. They help me stay intact.
Ritual
Notes on Living
When my life feels distorted, my body tells the truth. Jaw clenched. Neck tight. Traps on fire. When I’m regulated, everything softens.
My mornings are simple: I make my bed, wash my face, meditate, and have my coffee. Journaling helps me slow down enough to notice what I’m actually feeling. I write three things I’m grateful for every day.
Letting distortion in looks like overextending. Overcommitting. It’s abandoning my own structure in favor of external demand. Enough is staying inside the container I built.
I’m strong in my creative brain. I’m learning softness in how I talk to myself. I place very high expectations on myself. I need boundaries because I can let work consume everything. I need gentleness in reminding myself that I am already doing enough.
Slowing down allows me to notice the world moving around me. Natural rhythms. Nuance. Beauty in small things. Slowness is a form of design — beauty needs room to breathe. Creativity needs space.
Working against distortion isn’t just a studio principle. It’s a daily practice in my body.
* Ikigai authored by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles
**E² authored by Pam Grout.