Week 19

The Evolving Canvas: A Home's Future Story

This writing exercise encourages you to envision your home as a dynamic space of untapped potential. By crafting its future story, you'll uncover insights about your aspirations, needs, and the life you want to cultivate within its walls. This is where you can choose a timeframe that feels right—perhaps 1 year, 5 years, or even 10 years into the future. If you are working with an existing home, start by providing a well-crafted evaluation of your home as it stands today. What are its current uses, its strengths, and its limitations?

If you like, you can write in the present tense, as if you are experiencing this future now. 

Aspirations and Purpose: What are the subtle whispers of what you wish your home could be? Are there activities you dream of doing there? What is the overarching feeling or purpose your home embodies in this future? Is it a sanctuary, a vibrant hub, a creative studio, a quiet retreat, a place for growth? Give it a name or a guiding principle.

The "North Star" Vision

As you write your story, reflect on what is being revealed.

  • Emergent Themes: What recurring ideas or needs did you discover?

  • Values Reflected: How does this future home align with your core values? What does it say about what's truly important to you?

  • The "Why" Behind the "What": Why are these aspirations meaningful to you? What kind of life do they enable?

Unveiling the Potential

Week 20

Haiku Challenge

A Haiku can be a simple, profound way to focus attention on a project. Haiku is a traditional Japanese poetic form, consisting of three lines with a 5-7-5 syllable structure. Haiku generally do not rhyme. Here are two examples: the first is by the great Japanese poet, Issa, and the second is a lesser attempt by me.

"Everything I Touch"

  • Everything I touch (5 syllables) 

  • Turns into something beautiful. (7 syllables)

  • Even sadness. (5 syllables)

"Hand-Hewn" 

  • Hand-hewn wood welcomes (5 syllables)

  • Photographic memories (7 syllables)

  • Nourishing homestead. (5 syllables)

You probably noticed that Issa’s Haiku syllables don't strictly adhere to 5-7-5 due in part to the translation. A Haiku isn't necessarily easy to write, but it focuses the mind and remains open-ended. Try writing a Haiku for each room in your home.

Week 21

Symphony of Patterns using music as a metaphor

Here is a poetic example of the changes we pass through daily. Each person we are with or place we are in brings about a different pattern in our awareness and behavior:

We journey through a symphony of patterns every day, sometimes every moment. When we cross the threshold of our front door, we transition from one symphonic movement to another or simply from one change in tempo or mood. Then we step into our office, school, or factory, and everything changes and shifts as we drift along a corridor or breezeway. On our lunch break in the park, the mood softens, and the tempo slows. We sit on a bench next to a person who reminds us of our grandmother and starts up a conversation like birds on a wire. She flies away, leaving the cellist alone with a solo before the string section on wings joins in.

Week 22

N3

There are three guiding patterns I like to explore: Nature, Nurture, and Nourish. I like them because they begin with N, they are fun to play with, open-ended, and can be explored as deeply as needed.

NATURE: This focuses on the interconnectedness of people and place, emphasizing harmony with the natural environment and how people naturally inhabit spaces.

  • Exploring how to develop a reciprocity of growth between people and place.

  • Incorporating living patterns that acknowledge how people live in and move through spaces.

  • Designing a home in harmony with topography and natural elements: land, sun, water, wind, and views.

NURTURE: This underscores the home's role in understanding and meeting human needs, creating a welcoming, comforting sanctuary.

  • Designing a home that understands human needs and requirements.

  • Building a home that welcomes and comforts.

NOURISH: This highlights the home's ability to adapt, reward, and renew, suggesting a dynamic relationship that supports transformative change.

  • Designing a home that can constantly adapt to changing relationships.

  • Building a home that rewards and renews.

Whereas you might find these patterns useful to explore, other patterns you uncover may be more meaningful for you.

Week 23

Nourish Elucidated: Uncovering Patterns

My friend said he didn't like the word "nourish" or "nourishing." I said, "Don't use it; find some other words that resonate with you." This highlights an important point: the language we use to describe our homes should be as personal as the homes themselves.

To complement the book's narrative and encourage you to discover your own resonant vocabulary, let's explore seven synonyms for "nourish," along with unrestrained definitions, in the form of patterns:

  • Restore: Bringing Someone or Something back to a State of Equilibrium.

  • Feed: To Offer Nutrients that Encourage Growth.

  • Help: To Offer Resources and Direction.

  • Cultivate: Developing Culture and Presence.

  • Enrich: Improving Value and Experience.

  • Encourage: Providing Positive Feedback and Support.

  • Contribute: The Art of Adding to Someone or Something.

Week 24

Nurture and Nature Elucidated

Just as we explored the many facets of "nourish," let's delve deeper into the meanings and implications of nurture and nature in our homes. By considering words that resonate with you, you can uncover specific patterns that reflect the vision of your living space and the life it supports.

Exploring Synonyms for “Nurture”

  • Home: A Place to Find Comfort 

  • Tend: Take Care of Someone or Something

  • Cutivate: Bring to Life

  • Replenish: A Reciprocal Relationship between the home and the inhabitants

  • Rewild: A Place to Recover

  • Embrace: Safety and Support

  • Welcome: Keeping food in the pantry for a Friend or a Stranger 

  • Tenderness: Careful Consideration Shared

  • Atune: Time to Savor

Exploring synonyms for “Nature”

  • Characteristic: Unadorned Qualities that Identify Someone and Something

  • Essence: Mysterious Qualities that Identify Someone and Something

  • Mother Nature: Life Giver

  • Elemental: Inherent, Basic Components

  • Natural World: Everything beyond People-made

  • Countryside: Natural World Impacted by People

  • Wild Life: On the Other Side of the Front Door

  • Flora and Fauna: The Big Whole We Are Part Of

By considering words that resonate with you, you can uncover specific patterns that reflect the vision of your living space and the life it supports.

Week 25

Non-Nourish

This section is about why nothing is better than something.

I was invited to provide a color consultation, but we encountered a problem. The client had recently bought a costly custom leather sofa, but she didn’t like the color of it from the outset. Custom furniture like that is typically non-refundable. I sensed that the sofa was a once-in-a-lifetime splurge. If I had been consulted on the sofa purchase, it would not have happened for two reasons. The sofa color she chose was a difficult one for other colors to be in an uplifting relationship with, and in the context of the existing living room flooring and furniture, it fell short by a mile, and she knew it. How were we going to find wall colors that worked? I know what you're thinking: put a throw on the sofa. But from any perspective, this sofa in its current setting was not going to nourish.

In a well-designed building, an empty room with smooth, primed walls looks great on its own. That’s the cake before the icing. The icing is the flooring, furniture, accessories, and artwork. I have heard people discuss fixing an architectural design problem with the furnishings. Furnishing should be a delight, not a means to fix a problem.