Foundation 02— The Direction You Didn't Choose

When I first started my business, what I couldn’t stop talking about were mid-century modern homes in the Phoenix and Scottsdale area. I was so excited to get a chance to build a practice in an area with so much stunning mid-century architecture. These homes were a large part of what made me fall in love with decor, design, and architecture. To this day, it’s one of my favorite styles of architecture and design.

An adjacent passion of mine is historic revival homes. The craftsmanship, detail, and materials used are unparalleled in today’s construction practices.. While not perfect, they’re one of a kind in many ways and cannot be replicated. And for this very reason, they must be protected at all costs.

When getting started in your business, you take what you can get. And what I got was not a lot of mid-century and historic revival. Strange with how many of these homes exist around here? 

Not really. 

The Phoenix valley has experienced massive population booms in the last fifty years, and to be honest, we’ve been booming in waves since our inception. The result has forced us to build a vast inventory of  largely uninspired housing throughout the valley.

I kept holding out hope that more of what I initially set out for would show up, but it was fewer and farther between than I’d have liked.

Then, something peculiar happened. A luxury project arrived at my doorstep. I was in the right place at the right time, open and willing to take it on. Believe it or not, I actually questioned whether I wanted the job, because I could see the world I was stepping into. It's one that’s high stakes, high touch, and highly demanding. 

It was also a world of incredible portfolio pieces. And after all, opportunities like this don’t come around every day. So I bought the ticket and took the ride.

Before I knew it, more luxury projects came across my desk. And fewer and fewer mid-century and historic revival.

Pretty soon I was looking at my studio thinking, “Well, I guess this is what we’re doing now… Luxury it is.”

Let me put it plainly, I was thrilled about it. It’s an extremely exciting direction in which to head.

The budgets are larger, the scopes more expansive, and the creativity can be cranked up to 11.

It affords healthier fees and fewer projects per year, which also means fewer client relationships, fewer admin tasks, and an overall higher level of bandwidth available per calendar day.

So that’s the direction I shifted our marketing and positioning. Everything very clean, everything very luxurious.

Pretty quickly, I found the business was starting to be shaped by the opportunities that walk through the door. It was almost like the reins were taken from me and pretty soon, I ended up getting lost in the sauce of luxury land.

That said, luxury continues to be positively intriguing.

What I find really interesting is that by all accounts, this is all very positive. 

The business was growing, the project types were scaling, the work was interesting, and yet, something about it felt very off. It was hard to distinguish.

And it’s hard to turn luxury away because these are the types of projects that get published. These are the types of projects that lead to more projects like them. But is that actually what I want?

Then, after a couple of years of actively moving in this direction,  I met someone who reminded me of what I set out to do when I started.

This one conversation lit a fire under me that had dwindled to what felt like a pilot light.

While nothing we spoke about was news to me, it was everything that had long since gotten buried in the back rooms of my mind.

And now, newly brought to the forefront, I felt refreshed and renewed. 

Erasing history is not the answer (duh... But I’d stopped standing my ground hard enough to keep this a core tenet). Preserving the old and integrating the new cohesively is a non-negotiable.

Making sure that the home’s bones speak with the interior was still something I strove for in my design practice every day. But I hadn’t thought about or said it in such concrete terms in a while. 

I had set out to preserve the beautiful architecture that exists in this valley. 

The very same architecture that cannot be recreated. 

The same architecture that spans decades and centuries but which is being treated with complete irreverence by most builders, contractors, and designers today. 

The north star shone again.

Though impressive and beautiful, luxury just doesn’t feel quite as meaningful as preserving beautiful historic architecture. There isn’t the same satisfying feeling when allowing something to become greater than it once was, and to continue onward for another twenty, thirty, or fifty years.

So as I sit here this evening writing this, I’m resolved to bring more of what brought me to design back into our studio. 

I wouldn’t consider it a failure or regression because doing a 1962 ranch home in Phoenix doesn’t stop us from then turning around and stepping into a $10 million home. Each can be just as beautiful, thoughtful, and long-lasting as the next.

I think this is a universal experience whether you’re running a business or simply living life. Eventually, you just look up and you realize that you’ve been heading in a direction that you never consciously chose to go, and you must decide what to do about it. Do you course-correct? If so, how hard?