IN PURSUIT OF PURSPACES:

Creating what we refer to as pure environments - spaces in which we live and work that are crafted from sustainably produced materials, tangible stuff that's nice to be lived in, sat upon, looked at, touched, and put in your mouth - that's where we feel good design starts and stops, again and again, as a cycle.

INVITING THE IN-THE-CLOSET DESIGNER IN YOU OUT

Something is amiss in this ever-rising tide of designer-architects and pret-a-porte living solutions. These often simply necromanced or re-packaged designs and manufacturers of style ply and vie for our taste and nesting sensibilities through a media market, surprise surprise, often controlled by their sensibility. Consider the grande difference between this mass-trend of instant-design and the artists who really live and cultivate their craft. You already know this difference, and it's no secret where good design starts. It starts in us. After you have an inkling of what you want, and the big sweaty will to do it, should these ideas be cultivated, shaped, manifested, collaborated upon over a lot of good coffee, maybe a drink or a smoke and, finally built, borrowed or bought until you are exstatically happy with your new creations. As-purchased or built-by-yourself at 11 pm weeknights with your spouse holding the drill and your neighbors wondering... same-same pure happiness, simply different means.

Regardless of who enjoys the credit or the end products, design sense really does starts and ends in each of us. Like musicality or the ability to give and feel love, it's there no matter what you think. None of the above should never be lost, abdicated or dismissed, only challenged and cultivates, and that can render some collaborations and design/build projects of any scale into huge, satisfying and successful opuses of self expression, affirmation and joy.

Good design, like art, is first personal then, naturally, collective. Unless, that is, you choose to live for a year or two at sea, alone in a sailboat with nothing and no one else. (I did that. Really cleans the palate back to basics). The Pure energy of healthy design is what you feel when you walk into a space, look at an object, touch it and sense "this is right, this is beautiful, this is healthy" way before you can say it. Sometimes less is more for you/your space, sometimes not. Sometimes design is unrestrained Rococo. Sometimes red feels like your new black. Sometimes it's still black. Again. It's up to you to sit with it, feel it and know it's right.

PURE DESIGN AND WHAT IT MEANS TO TRY TO PRACTICE IT

One note holds clear in any creative symphony of pure design: like any music or art, it delivers on expectation. Over time there is that enduring sense of delight, function and of healthful, useful satisfaction. Pure design organically, simultaneously appeals to and fulfills human aesthetics and functional performance, without a foreboding fear that the design-police will come knocking on your door in a few years to collect the yellow resin tables and bean bag chairs. Cultivate, challenge and defend your taste as a dynamic, tensioned process. The designer's task is to keep it rigorous, structured, honest and with most egos-in-check. Especially their own. In the end it's about you liking the way it looks, the way it feels to live in, to sit on, to touch and put into your mouth. Over and over again.

EMBRACE THE PROCESS, THE CHANGE, THE LEARN AND THE YOU IN THE PROCESS

Since the way people perceive and interact with space changes over time, from the atomic / ecological level to the aesthetic / ergonomic, so should design, and with it our willingness and confidence to get brains warm and hands dirty in the evolutionary process. This is utterly regardless of training, experience and perceived abilities. Great architects and designers are indeed often great, brilliant, studied and creative folks. So am I, and so are you. Like any sense of style and taste innate in us all, design is very much something in need of (re) awakening, constant cultivation, ever-changing with the interactive evolution of you and me and everything else - the grande rest of it all for one night's party or the apartment you believe you will own forever.

AN ORGANIC RE-EVOLUTION

Imagine living in a space that, if cooked long enough, you could eat. I've been in such homes and workspaces, mostly in California and Europe. They are not so different from yours and mine, not much more expensive (cheaper over time, actually, if you factor in human health, joy and productivity), yet knowing you could "eat" it, lick the floors and walls, chew on the carpet, snack on the shelving, makes living in them something exceptional. Claim it as your right. It is.

Since our emotions and needs evolve, morph and adapt over time, a designer's mission-critical role is to constantly (re) evaluate, interpret, explain then create via design not words, but healthy house, a chair a skyscraper or a spoon, a user-appropriate "product" of design, mediums and functionality. The discipline is to stay mindful of omnipresent faux-simplified agents of de-evolution of habitus and lifestyle. It is our right and choice to refuse temptation at any discount, no matter how little time and money we think we have, and submit to the sacrificial sub-standardization of what we accept as "living place" or "work place", nor the utterly unnecessary, unacceptable toxification of materials into our ecosystems and bodies.

Choose to be informed, to go forward, or back again to what the old alchemists called the first stuffs of shelter and craft - natural woods, oils, stains and sealers, grown & sustainably harvested in diverse, living forests, made into materials to live in by people unharmed and bettered by the process. Live around elegant rawness. Woods, natural fabrics, base metals of copper, carbon steel, brass and bronze, the stuff in our very blood and brains. Top surfaces with organic paints and sealers which have no by-products except the warm colour and Zero Karma feeling that you made the right choice, you love it, and your family and others are fine in the produce-use-change cycle of current urban living.

DO IT. DO IT YOURSELF. MAYBE DO IT AGAIN, YOURSELF. MAYBE NOT. BUT DO IT.

All this to say that it's not only possible, it's critical to make wherever and whatever you call home as healthy and comfy as you can when it's right for you. The NYC-based modern day interior designer and apartment therapist Maxwell Gingham-Ryan says "nothing you ever do for your home is ever wasted". Who can disagree with that? The point is just do it. Wrong directions, i.e. a lamp that, once home and installed, makes you (and possibly your mate, friends or your kids) wonder if you were on acid when you purchased it, is as important a learn to experience as finding the perfect chair or sink for your space - the one that you love for ten years, struggle over giving up, only to find it gives your friends or kids or parents the same joy for yet another decade.

Changing or creating or simplifying a space (same-same) can be daunting, and not many folks thrive in an environment of discomfort, construction or constant change. Simply put, methods, materials and designs that "worked" - i.e. were in vogue and built, sold - in the past may not be relevant, appropriate or even legal anymore. This doesn't mean it is necessary to create change or new methodologies just for the sake of doing so, but one must be aware of the timing for change, continually tracking the effectiveness of what you've created, what you build from and whom you've build for. Your life experience already provides you with the critical tools to intuitively know how to do this. Almost everyone, admit it or nigh, is at some level innately connected, if not fascinated, by the dynamics of design and how to achieved comfort, purity and balance in the interplay between human, form and habitus.

BE REALISTIC AND BE DONE WITH IT. AND LIVE HAPPILY, AND HEALTHILY.

Be a realistic optimist. You will despise the process and the people you work with a times. And you will grow. You will disagree, change your mind, and be unable to decide. And you will evolve. What we call the law of Charles (from the great philosopher/electrician/dancer extrordinaire Charles Malloy) - is that you understand openly, in advance of the process of design/build, that you are going to get your toes stepped on in this dance by multiple partners. All you can hope to do is adjust the frequency and intensity of the crunches, and maybe ask for a partner change every so often. You will go over budget, over schedule, fire the contractor, finish some jobs yourself at 11pm on Thursday before your in-laws arrive for new baby preparations. You will hear your partner curse like a young sailor as s/he, packing for a precious weekend away, finds the third wave of little sand dunes of drywall dust in your paper files and clothes when, weeks after you've wrapped, cleaned and re-claimed your routine, they emerge like post-plasterer poltergeists. The you remember that there are many cultures in which a man is not called a man by his mate or family until he builds his first a good house, and a woman a woman until she gets it the way she wants it to keep herself and family safe and comfortable. Not very long ago, this was us.

DO IT. AND DEAL WITH IT, MAYBE DO IT AGAIN, THEN FINISH, ADD BREATH, ENJOY.

Most folks, cash strapped and time crunched, just want a nice space to live in that does not make them broke, sneezy, unable to find comfort/concentration/relaxation or let them sleep well. My experience is that most people feel a growing tide of design cognitive dissonance. They feel awash in a global crisis of utter mass-design mediocrity but know not the truths and choices available. Many folks I work with just feel that design malaise, uncomfortable in their space but limited in their perceived options. And though hate it we do, we often give in to the almighty dollar or time crisis, missing the possibility to internalize once and forever the personal power and myriad choices within any budget for healthy expression of a space, be it a new renovation or design/build, the simple change of windows & dressing, the addition of a loft, or the redesign of a bath and bedroom. Any way you can, try it, change it, eco-modernize it and thrive. Find a good crew with whom to dream, learn, fail, fight, configure, solve, triumph and finish. See how happy you are with your space and yourself when you do. Don't forget to send us a before and after picture and the green learning you collected along the way.

Towards Pure Spaces - perfect place to rest, work and play

Jeffrey-