Our Approach
We design at the intersection of what can be measured and what can only be felt.
Our work is grounded in decades of research—environmental psychology, biophilic design, and wellbeing science—that shows us how profoundly our surroundings shape our health, creativity, and capacity for connection. And it's informed by something equally essential: the practice of deep listening, the wisdom that emerges in silence, the intelligence of place and soul.
This dual approach allows us to create spaces that serve the whole human being: functional and beautiful, evidence-based and soulful, honouring both practical needs and the mystery at the heart of what it means to be alive.
The foundation: Science & Evidence
Our work draws on rigorous, peer-reviewed research that demonstrates the measurable impact of design on human wellbeing. These fields provide the evidence base that informs every decision we make.
Environmental Psychology
The study of how our physical surroundings affect our thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and relationships. Research shows that elements like light, proportion, threshold design, and spatial organization directly influence our mental health, productivity, and sense of belonging. We use this science to create spaces that support rather than undermine the people within them.
Wellbeing Interior Design
An interdisciplinary approach that prioritizes the physical and psychological health of people and planet within the built environment. It goes beyond aesthetics and function to address how spaces affect our nervous systems, our immune response, our capacity for rest and creativity. Since we spend 90% of our time indoors, well-designed spaces are as essential as nutrition and movement.
Biophilic Design
The practice of bringing nature's patterns, materials, and living systems into built environments. Research confirms that connection to the natural world is essential for human health, reducing stress, enhancing cognitive function, and fostering resilience. We integrate biophilic principles to bring light, natural materials, living systems, the rhythms that ground us, and the mystery that intrigues and delights.
Beyond the measurable: Intuition & Deep Listening
Science tells us what works. But there's another kind of knowing—one that reveals itself when the mind quiets and stops filling every space with noise, when we get out of the way and welcome mystery as a companion to co-creation. As Rumi wrote,
"There is a way between voice and presence where information flows. In disciplined silence it opens."
This is a commitment to remaining receptive, to honouring what reveals itself slowly, to trusting that spaces—like people—have their own intelligence and will speak when we know how to listen. What follows are the teachers and practices that have shaped this way of attending to the immeasurable dimensions of place and design
Listening & Sensing
Before design, there is listening. To the people who will inhabit a space—what they long for, what they've forgotten they love, the authentic sense of beauty buried beneath years of trends and conditioning. To the place itself: its light, its conversation with street and sky, how sound and energy move through it. To the land, even in urban settings—what was here before, what the ground remembers, how this place speaks with water, wind, and the larger living system it's part of.
Every person carries an inner landscape. Every place holds memory and energy. We attend to what's present and what wants to emerge—sometimes through questions, sometimes through images that trigger what's been forgotten—allowing this sensing to shape everything that follows.
Beauty & Mystery
Spaces hold invisible architecture—the quality of welcome, the invitation to rest or to create, the feeling of being held or exposed. John O'Donohue reminds us: "The human soul is hungry for beauty; we seek it everywhere—in landscape, music, art, clothes, furniture, gardening, companionship, love, religion and in ourselves... We feel most alive in the presence of the beautiful, for it meets the needs of our soul." David Whyte's poetry echoes this understanding: beauty is a way of honoring the mystery at the heart of being alive. We design for this dimension, where meaning lives and where the heart dwells..
Soul as Guide
There is wisdom that emerges only when we create space for it—a knowing that comes not from analysis but from depths we cannot name. Bill Plotkin calls this soul work: asking what this place wants to become, what these people are called to create, what would serve their fullest becoming. Design becomes not problem-solving but attending to what wants to be born..
Deep Ecology
We are not separate from the living world but intimately woven into it. This understanding—articulated beautifully by Joanna Macy and others—asks us to design in ways that serve the whole, not just human convenience. This is why connection to nature is the source of our health and wellbeing. Every choice is an opportunity to practice reciprocity with the more-than-human world, to create spaces that enhance rather than diminish the web of life.
How we work together
Every project is a co-creation, bringing together the right constellation of people and perspectives to serve what wants to emerge.
We Begin With Listening: The first phase is always deep inquiry: understanding the vision, sensing the qualities of the place, attending to what both people and the space need to thrive.
We Gather the Right Team: Depending on the project's scale and nature, we assemble specialists—architects, draftspeople, landscape designers, permaculture experts, occupational therapists, community builders, artists—whose skills and values align with the work at hand.
We Integrate All the Elements: Drawing on both scientific research and insight, we weave together the measurable and the felt, the practical and the beautiful, creating spaces that serve function and soul.
We Stay in Conversation: Throughout the process, we maintain ongoing dialogue with all who are involved, with the emerging design, and with the place itself—remaining responsive, adaptive, and committed to what serves the whole.