My practice is guided by a simple conviction—that the environments we inhabit shape not just our comfort, but our consciousness. How we feel, how we react, the level of our focus and creativity, the quality of our relationships with ourselves and others, and how we experience beauty and meaning: All of this is intimately woven into the spaces we move through each day.

I work at the intersection of evidence and intuition, drawing on environmental psychology, biophilic design, and years of study into how built environments impact human wellbeing. I also trust what can't be measured—the felt sense of a space, the poetry that lives in light, shadow and proportion, the way a room can invite conversation or hold sacred silence, the intelligence of nature as teacher and collaborator.

My path to this work has been unconventional. Born in Damascus, I've lived across multiple countries and cultures, always fascinated by architecture, history, art, craft and people. After studying French literature and working in project management, I eventually trained in interior design—my first love and passion—in Canada. But my real education came through curiosity: independent study and research, night courses, hours spent in historical sites and museums, conversations with architects, artists, ecologists, psychologists, social workers… all guided by an enduring question about how spaces shape the experience of being alive.

In 2014, after time spent in the Amazon jungle—a night of the soul—I began questioning everything about my life and design practice. By 2016, after 11 years in architectural and interior design, I walked away from conventional work and began again, this time, I was guided by the question: What does it mean to design for the whole human being?

That inquiry opened me to holistic design—I obtained an advanced diploma with distinction from the UK—and drew me into environmental psychology and the study of what truly makes people happy. It led me to explore communal living and how we might create neighbourhoods and communities that connect rather than isolate. I researched eco-villages and co-housing, studied Eco-village Design in BC, and experienced living in community firsthand. I spent time at Tamera in Portugal, studying their Healing Biotope (a peace research community modelling a culture of peace, trust, and cooperation), learning about community building and various methods to address relational and existential challenges.

I learned to listen deeply through time in silence and meditation, sitting in nature—sometimes for days, sometimes sleeping under open skies and walking wilderness trails, and cultivating the capacity to hear what's hidden in everything and in every person: connection, relationship, and the beauty and yearning that wants to be expressed.

I dove deep into research on how nature, light, colour, pattern, and spatial rhythm affect our nervous systems, our creativity, and our capacity for connection and collaboration. I learned that designing for wellbeing isn't about adding plants or painting walls in happy colours. It's about thoughtful and comprehensive integration of the natural world. It’s about facilitating conversation between the built and natural environments, understanding patterns found in nature, and diving deeply into the complex world of colour layering and light. It’s about using technology to support diverse needs. It’s about carefully selecting the most potent elements that nurture intimacy and belonging, fostering productivity and creativity. It's about authenticity—seeing each project as unique, each space with its own story and potential. It's about collaboration with clients, builders, artists and tradespeople as co-creators, and with nature as the ultimate design intelligence to bring a vision to reality.

Each project begins with great curiosity and active listening—to people, to place, to what wants to emerge. I research, I sense, I draw from both science and soul. I design sometimes with bold colours and patterns, sometimes with quietness and simplicity, always with attention to how beauty serves as medicine and how space can hold us in sanctuary.

The projects that call to me most: homes that reflect the inhabitants' authentic selves, that support healthy living and meaningful relations. Co-housing and communal living spaces designed for genuine connection and community resilience. Retreat and gathering centers that hold space for transformation. Affordable housing conceived with dignity, beauty, and the recognition that everyone deserves environments that honour their humanity. Pilot projects willing to explore new paradigms.

The spaces we create shape the world we inhabit, and meaningful creation comes from collaboration—such is the way of nature. A seed carries its blueprint, but needs water, good soil, light, and the right conditions to become what it holds within. Design is no different. The most meaningful spaces come from conversation and collaboration: between vision and place, between those who imagine and those who build, between science and intuition, between human need and ecological wisdom. This is how I work—in conversation, in relationship, in co-creation.

This is a conversation I'm here for.

nora