or by making a contribution.

Tell Me about Home Archive:

Chapter 1: Twenty Blocks of Playground

Chapter 2: Playroom for Two

Chapter 3: The Double-Edged Perch

Chapter 4: We Always Sat in Circles

Chapter 5: Room to Breathe

Chapter 5: Room to Breathe

_{Laura grew up in a solar house designed by her father. She has dedicated much time to studying how people learn as an observant educator. She left the teaching practice in 2021 due to a bout with Lyme Arthritis, but she still wants to support children through their stages of growth. She has recently established a small business, Blue Butterfly Studio, llc to actively engage in projects that support her love of music, art and literature. The conceptual studio is dedicated to promoting lyrical and literal creations. Working as a production editor, artist agent and musical productions director to help people get their stories out is how she intends to fill the next chapter. Today, she’s working to launch a body of work around sustainability as a nod to the lessons in design and sustainability passed on by her father.}

“In this ethereal space, I started having strange dreams about the house.”

Laura lost her brother over thirty years ago. When he died, something in her went silent. His music faded. It wasn’t until five years ago when Lyme disease froze her in bed that she began writing poetry and found herself dreaming of their childhood home that held their time together. In that charged stillness, her suppressed creative identity awakened. She started scatter-writing—poems, lyrics, prose—which allowed her to experience a dreamlike reunion with her brother, their home—a work of art designed by her father and curated by her mother—and most prominently, who she was when she was in that space. “It has been a psychological transcendence for me; the house is so elemental in my personal design. It was an expression of love and light, and there’s so much about it that is the reason I was able to accept this lurking identity in me that wants to make art.”

The house had a warm rust orange (very 70’s) shag carpet all throughout, but only her and her brother’s rooms had green ones.

Growing up, Laura witnessed her father’s passion for his work, watching him leave early and return late as a practicing architect. He’d often travel to meet potential clients, but she explained how she grew to know him best by living inside his design. They moved there when she was four. At the time, she didn’t want to leave their previous home, but she distinctly remembers how delicately her father animated the unfamiliar new space for her, with love: “But look at your floor, it’s green just like the forest floor.” Not only did he so carefully position the house within the forest landscape, he also brought the forest inside for her and her brother: “I remember thinking that he did this for me, and afterwards, I was sold on the house. That was my first big transition in life.” He rarely made a design decision without a purpose behind it, and he loved sharing those stories with her.

“Upstairs, the floor plan was all about equality,” but Laura took liberty to turn her bedroom into her own private vocal booth, and the playroom into her theater studio.

She and her brother had two of everything, starting with two identical bedrooms. They opened on opposite sides of their playroom where they had two identical desks on one wall and two identical large windows on the other. The sunshine poured into the playroom every morning. Above the desks, they had a child-sized loft with two identical ladders, and three navy battleship portholes—they were a nautical family and the portholes added an element of irony to the design since houses on hilltops certainly don’t sail. So, after school, during what her mother called “Quiet Contemplation” time, Laura’s brother would retreat to his bedroom and blast his music on his stereo. She would drift from bedroom to playroom to loft, always listening to music, singing, climbing up the ladder, opening and closing the portholes, and acting out to records, feeling as boundless as the forest framed around her. “The house would even expel me out there sometimes. When I needed more extraordinary comfort, I would sit in the forest. It is interesting that I married a forester.”

The whole house would also be in motion, pulsating like a “happy cacophony” all the way to the conversation-pit-turned-performance-hall downstairs.

“My parents believed that there’s knowledge coming through music.” While Laura’s Folk, Classic Psychedelic Rock and Broadway music filled the upper floor, her parents’ Opera, Classical and Baroque music filled the bottom floor, and from her brother’s room came out a wild eclectic mix. He would also bring his music to the conversation pit downstairs and share his Rock and Punk with them all. He had his drum kit there as well. Laura claimed that space too. With her friends, she would write plays around mythology and perform them there—crawling, jumping and running all over the sunken round sofa as if it were a stage. Her mother would set up the play dates, bring them costumes and so joyfully watch them perform. Somehow, it all co-existed: the drums, the stories, the voices, the music. An invisible architecture within an architecture. It was such an “inspired, soul-liberating home with freedom of thought and endless potential” in a world that shuts down creative exploration.

The biggest exploration of all? They were collaborators in her father’s “science experiment”, the house on the hill that looks like a ship.

“My father’s motivation was energy conservationism and explorations in nature; to figure out how to make art that is useful and habitable. We had this gift of intellectual organization in accordance with the sun.” He hoped that they could live without using oil for energy, and although solar technology was not readily available in the 70’s, that did not stop him. He tried to build his own solar heating system. He designed the house in a U-shape that pointed East and then mounted its two long South facades with solar collectors. The panels collected the energy from the sun, the heat, and it was sent down to the basement for storage. Large gravel in the basement would store the heat, and a system of fans would then blow it upwards into the house. It turned out to be less efficient than expected, so he quickly went from active to passive solar, and the sun house was aided by the Kachelofen in the open kitchen-dining area. That’s where the family stayed most of the time.

It became their primary heat and the heart of the house; a beautiful green tiled stove embedded in the wall and framed by a Sitzbank. The scent of her mother’s bread baking led everyone straight to it.

While Laura’s mother held things together with her steady rituals of making them her “experimenter’s breads that would fall apart in sandwiches”, her father kept the Kachelofen fire going, season-round. “Only one match each winter”, the builder had admonished him in his thick Austrian accent. So, every morning, her father would uncover the ashes from the day before, find just the right time when it would start burning again to add tiny, dry pieces of wood, and adjust the grate to let through just enough air to finally bury the coal with ashes. The heat then travelled through little passages across the stove, and the masonry stored it all day. “Our house was well known in the community as a solar house, but to truly experience it, you would need to visit us, sit in our space and press your back against that stove and feel its heat.” Her father treated this ritual so meticulously that he even built solar wood dryers outside to make sure the wood dried perfectly. It had to be bone dry, because any moisture from the green wood risked cracking the tiles.

Her father’s sensibility to design, her mother’s devotion for play, and her brother’s passion for music; Laura grew up in synergy with her family through space, creation, and rhythm.

However, for years now, in a world that leaves little room to breathe, her drum set sits untouched, tucked away in the damp corners of her own house: first the basement, then the attic, then the basement again. It’s the only way she gets to express the angst inside of her, yet, she has instead prioritized building a controlled, acoustically engineered space: a place to record and produce music. Only now has she started to see how she’s been confined by grief, “I’ve recognized that I need two spaces, not just one. One for technical work and one for spiritual play.” The kind of unrestrained, imaginative play she and her brother knew. “So much of the poetry and music I am making these days is a tribute to his passion”. So, she has started moving things around; moving her drum set front and center, into the office space she’s always had but never properly used.

Her parents recently sold the house and moved to retirement housing, but as she reclaims her lost artist identity and returns to herself as a poet and musician, she wants to preserve and rekindle her father’s sense of wonder, where it all began.

She recently asked him to design a dreamhouse for her and her husband. He was instantly back at the drafting table: “This is where the sun will be on the solstice, when you’re sitting at your hearth.” He’s made an incredible design that she hopes to get to build one day, but for now, it exists in her mind. “I think architects who design artfully are larger artists. It’s a wonderful gift to be a dreamer that way. My father has infused me with this wonder of how space can transform an experience. Thoughtfulness in space making is what it’s all about.”

In her poetry today, Laura borrows her father’s gift of arranging space, to carefully place one word beside the other and shape meaning in the charged space between them. Her guiding principle remains art and play in service of sustainability, the same one her father built their home and childhood around.

If a space from your own life is still holding something you haven’t fully returned to, I’d love to guide you through it. Please message me to sign up for the experience.

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Stay tuned for Chapter 6!

Warmly,
Sabine

More on Space and Identity from the Archive:

Spatio-emotional thresholds: Migration of selves between spaces

Perception of space: What are your perception and association tendencies?

Thinking is spatial: Where do you think best?

Emotional layers of space: From physical space, to a sense of space

Memory of childhood spaces: The rituals performed and traditions built in them

In all my “Tell Me about Home” interviews so far, both published and unpublished, one childhood memory kept surfacing for everyone.

It came through in different formats, but maintained the same core:

Liberty to Play.

One way or another, every child finds their playground. Most of the time, it’s not even the one that was officially assigned to them. And that’s what so many people seem to grow up cherishing, seeking, and quietly aspiring to keep finding: those glimpses of genuine creativity—the free and unforced kind.

I don’t yet know what this says about the world we live in, but it has drawn my attention to a dystopic modern phenomenon I’ve started calling “Kreativity”: vain Creativity.

It’s the kind that pretends, and stems from arrogance, fear, and ego. It’s basically noise wearing a dress.

I’ve noticed this especially in areas that are supposed to be the most creative:

Design is now all about trends

Fashion has to be fast to keep up with the times

Food is mostly manufactured

Friendships can only be transactional

And Home is temporary

Whatever happened to building a house over generations?

Making memories as a daily collective ritual?

Sitting down for a meal that takes time and care?

I am fatigued with how things seem to be, and I find myself longing for alternatives, even if I have no clear picture of what they might look like yet, but that search itself feels like the journey I need to be on right now.

If you’re moving through similar reflections or emotions and want a space to talk, I’m here. Among all the skills I’ve been taught, the one I cherish most is the one I was simply born with: my ability to listen deeply and ask the right questions.

Until next time,

Sabine

or by making a contribution.

Tell Me about Home Archive:

Chapter 1: Twenty Blocks of Playground

Chapter 2: Playroom for Two

Chapter 3: The Double-Edged Perch

Chapter 4: We Always Sat in Circles

Chapter 5: Room to Breathe

Connie is a world traveler born near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. For three years now, she’s led a nomadic lifestyle with her husband and two daughters. With a professional background in sustainable business supply chains, as well as co-founding a non-profit incubation program & co-working space for sustainable startups in Switzerland, she is now setting up her online business to guide parents achieve a life of flow.

Connie

10/23/2025

New Jersey

I grew up moving through homes. I can’t picture the walls or the floors, but I remember how they were all full of people, voices, and movement.

The very first one that comes to mind is the one my grandfather built in northern Malaysia. It was the gathering point for our entire extended family; In Asian culture, we live with generations, so my grandmother, my aunts, and my uncles all lived under that same roof. Each family had a room and we all shared the kitchen, living room, dining room, bathroom, garage, and backyard. There was a steady flow of familiar faces, and shared routines; always chatter, laughter and amazing aromas from our kitchen.

I didn’t grow up with my parents, but I remember Home as being held in the warmth of someone’s arms–as a way of gathering.

Meals were never just meals; they were a reason to come together; cards and games like mahjong as well. My family and friends gathered around round tables so we could all see each other as we ate or played. Even if there were no tables, we always sat in circles, whether at food courts, basketball courts, or under apartment blocks. The shape of the circle is a flow of energy* and it amplifies the sense of being at home with others.

As my grandmother, uncle and I started moving from one apartment to another, and my family spread out across the world, my relationship to home stretched into all the places we landed.

I recently realized how many circles I had been a part of growing up when I went through boxes of old letters and photos my mom had saved from my childhood. I am no longer in touch with these people, but these traces of connection felt precious. I grew up supported by multiple networks of family and friends, so much so that living alone as an adult felt foreign, and I always searched for apartments with roommates.

Today, I carry this fluid communal energy into my nomadic lifestyle with my husband and two daughters. Home now simply means the four of us together as members of different social circles around the world.

For over three years now, we have been traveling, creating home around different communities. People think we “go on trips”, but the last 3 years have been one continuous trip and one continuous home stretching across the world. We don’t travel for sightseeing or to stay in beautiful houses, but to meet other traveling families with children, to be around places where the kids can gather and play, and to be with our own extended family. That’s why we’re in New Jersey now. My mom and stepfather are here. Wherever we go, we discover our surroundings, work and form routines just like anyone settled in a permanent place.

I do, though, long for longevity; to re-experience the rooted feeling of a core community held together by a single place, the way it was in my grandfather’s house in Malaysia.

I recently revisited, and while it still looks the same, the silence felt unfamiliar. The home I knew there existed in its people, but they are no longer there. Myself included. Only my uncle and grandmother are still there. Neighbors are no longer familiar either.

I may never again experience daily life with my extended family in a single place given we are all scattered around the world, but I believe I can still find its rhythm in a trusted, constant circle of friends anchored around one lasting home. For now, we meet families who are always on the move, just like us, and the beauty is, we often cross paths again. However, as our children grow older into their teens, we want them to experience being grounded in shared routines with familiar faces–to be able to simply run out the door and straight into a best friend’s home.

That’s why I picture a home base one day; a place to travel from and return to.

A space that evolves with us, and fills with sentimental objects: framed photos from the past, a garden that needs tending, a private room where I can read, meditate and do yoga. And our own dining table! After years of eating on the ground, in camper vans, tents, ferry cabins, and yurts, I didn’t think it mattered. But when we moved into our current makeshift apartment and all we had was a coffee table, I asked for a dining table. When it arrived, something in me settled. Meals have always been anchoring for me, and sitting around a table seems to solidify the ritual.

Connie

*According to Feng Shui, a circle symbolizes wholeness and harmony. Feng Shui (in English: the life-giving natural elements “wind” and “water”) is a thousand-year-old art of Chinese origin that aims to harmonize the environmental energy of a space to promote the well-being of its occupants.

*Audio by Monk, Meredith, and Een, Robert. Hocket, Facing North, 1992

If a space from your own life is still holding something you haven’t fully returned to, I’d love to guide you through it. Please message me to sign up for the experience.

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Stay tuned for Chapter 5!

Warmly,
Sabine

More on Space and Identity from the Archive:

Spatio-emotional thresholds: Migration of selves between spaces

Perception of space: What are your perception and association tendencies?

Thinking is spatial: Where do you think best?

Emotional layers of space: From physical space, to a sense of space

Memory of childhood spaces: The rituals performed and traditions built in them

or by making a contribution.

Tell Me About Home Archive:

Chapter 1: Twenty Blocks of Playground

Chapter 2: Playroom for Two

Chapter 3: The Double-Edged Perch

Chapter 4: We Always Sat in Circles

Chapter 5: Room to Breathe

Georgine grew up in Lahaina, on the island of Maui, Hawaii. She’s a Professor of Communication Studies in the Fall, and a writer in Puerto Rico in the Spring. She is currently writing a memoir titled Crypto Island: A Midlife Relocation to Puerto Rico in the Age of Bitcoin. Look for it on book store shelves in September, 2026.

Georgine

10/03/2025

California

Our house was built into the side of a hill, and it had a carport which the previous owners had turned into an outdoor living space. My brother and I would always lay there with friends.

As a kid, I thought of it as a perch because I could see so much from up there.

We would look up into the expansive night sky, and down into this bird’s eye view of the coast line. I could see up and down my street and over houses all the way to the ocean. It was just fantastic. We would even sleep there, and because the weather is very warm on a tropical island, being cold was never a problem. Sometimes it was too warm and humid to stay in our sleeping bags, so we would just lay on blankets and sleep in the moist night air!

I felt so imaginative there. It was such a space of openness and magic.

There was a freedom to sleeping and playing under the vast sky that really opened the door to creativity for me as a child. I loved it. It wasn’t just the beautiful stars, or getting to be outside, but also the way the perch sometimes smelled. We lived close to a sugarcane mill and there were certain times of the year when they would make sugarcane. You’d expect it to smell sweet, and although it was, it was also grotesque. It had a stickiness to it. If there’s a smell for ‘too sweet’, this is what a sugarcane mill smells like!

Little did I know that what could come in and out of my field could also be disruptive, until I saw something one day that was very adult and certainly not intended for my eyes.

I was nine, and I was on the perch with my friend, when I saw my father drive up, down below. He was not quite in front of our house but close enough that I could watch, without being seen. I remember getting really excited seeing him come home, until I thought: ‘oh no’. There and then, the perch turned into a dangerous space with immense power to change everything. I saw my father with a woman. He was having an affair. My parents ended up getting a divorce and my life turned chaotic. My understanding of what it means to have such expansive access to visual freedom changed. It really blew the lid off my childhood, and that was the end of utilizing the perch.

I think that fear has softened into a sense of awe today, into an awareness of the power of an expansive view. It can both expose and expand you.

A spectacular view is humbling. It blows your mind. It reminds you that you’re this tiny little spec on the planet, and that the universe is unfathomable. It’s fantastic. That’s why outdoor living remains a personal favorite. There’s something about living by water and looking out across the Atlantic Ocean that activates my creativity and helps my mind explore. I haven’t been to Hawaii or that perch in years, but I’ve chosen Puerto Rico, yet another island, to do my writing on.

Georgine

*Audio by Pärt, Arvo. Silentium

If a space from your own life is still holding something you haven’t fully returned to, I’d love to guide you through it. Please message me to sign up for the experience.

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Stay tuned for Chapter 4!

Warmly,
Sabine

More on Space and Identity from the Archive:

Spatio-emotional thresholds: Migration of selves between spaces

Perception of space: What are your perception and association tendencies?

Thinking is spatial: Where do you think best?

Emotional layers of space: From physical space, to a sense of space

Memory of childhood spaces: The rituals performed and traditions built in them

or by making a contribution.

Tell Me About Home Archive:

Chapter 1: Twenty Blocks of Playground

Chapter 2: Playroom for Two

Chapter 3: The Double-Edged Perch

Chapter 4: We Always Sat in Circles

Chapter 5: Room to Breathe

J. is a writer of microfictions from Central Pennsylvania, USA, currently making her way into the world of editing in New York City.

J.

09/30/2025

New York City

We called it our Playroom. It’s a crafts room essentially where my sister and I made things together everyday. We moved from one thing to another, but always together; drawing, painting, building legos, microcrocheting. We eventually stopped finishing projects as we would be too eager to move to the next.

It smelled like a bookstore in a way because I had quite the collection of books.

We weren’t allowed to have toys, so we had books lined on one wall, cotton yarn balls stacked along the second, and a huge chalk board stretched all over the third. The chalkboard would collect so much chalk dust on the bottom, so our mom would make us move to another activity while she vacuumed it up. We got to keep whatever we had on the chalkboard for a week and only redo it then. So, we added a white board on the fourth wall.

As twins, we always saw each other as part of the same bigger person, and our shared identity was rooted in the Playroom. It was simply curated for us.

All of our memories are of us creating things together all the time, but only in that room and nowhere else in the house. We weren’t allowed to anyway. At one point my mom tried to migrate our craft area into a shed my dad built outside. We would play there, but we always brought the crafts back into the Playroom. My sister and I grew up differently in a lot of ways, but that room was our whimsical common ground.

I discovered I wanted to be an artist in the Playroom, with my sister, but I had to build my own to find my voice and grow into that identity.

As I explore the boundaries of creative writing as an adult, I dare to relocate the process of making beyond the Playroom, and beyond home; into the park, into a conversation or the local pastry shop. I don’t write in a designated space; writing is immensely experiential for me. While I still like having a place to create, the more I curate it the less it serves me. Thinking back, I realize I never wrote in the Playroom. Perhaps I was restricted by its physical boundaries, rules, and its shared function.

It’s my sister’s home office now.

We hang out there during her work hours when I’m visiting home, each doing her own thing. But the yarn is still there. The books are still there. The chalkboard still has calligraphy we made when we were 12, and although all my old notebooks are stored there, I still don’t write there.

J.

*Audio by Glass, Philip. Etude No. 2

If a space from your own life is still holding something you haven’t fully returned to, I’d love to guide you through it. Please message me to sign up for the experience.

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Stay tuned for Chapter 3!

Warmly,
Sabine

More on Space and Identity from the Archive:

Spatio-emotional thresholds: Migration of selves between spaces

Perception of space: What are your perception and association tendencies?

Thinking is spatial: Where do you think best?

Emotional layers of space: From physical space, to a sense of space

Memory of childhood spaces: The rituals performed and traditions built in them

or by making a contribution.

Tell Me About Home Archive:

Chapter 1: Twenty Blocks of Playground

Chapter 2: Playroom for Two

Chapter 3: The Double-Edged Perch

Chapter 4: We Always Sat in Circles

Chapter 5: Room to Breathe

G. is a composer and Arts professor from a border town in South Texas, currently living and working in New York City.

G.

09/16/2025

New York City

When I think back to the spaces I grew up in, I think of the town itself and my adventures walking its streets with my brothers: the stretch of twenty blocks along our home. Ten blocks one way led downtown to school, and ten blocks the other way led to my father’s grocery store and coffee shop.

It seems like a limited space, but adventure was everywhere. It’s a feeling, more than an accurate remembrance.

My brothers and I would always walk to school on our own, but by 3rd grade, when my father opened the store, we started exploring the other direction on our way to go help. We could play all the way there, though my parents were not happy that we’d be late. We’d play on the swings, or even go into the same store everyday because we’d see new things. It could be a little thing, but it was just as exciting to see, even a new notebook or a new pencil.

I was free as a kid to walk anywhere.

Of course my parents were always aware of where I was, but it was a safe environment. Nobody had to worry about me walking, enjoying physical space. I could walk and never be thinking about anything other than enjoying myself through these spaces. These twenty blocks allowed me to see the world. They were my world. Even though it was a small world, it was a very, very curious one.

Today, I still move around spaces with curiosity, more importantly, I feel comfortable exploring and being curious.

The neighborhood was home to both the federal courts and the working people, and because I was exposed to both, I grew to be very comfortable anywhere, and very open to anyone. I used to shine shoes at the bar, so I never thought I should not come close to a poor person or that I could not talk to a rich person. Everyone is human. Some did jobs that seemed rough, some had wealth, some lived on the margins, but the greatest people could be anywhere.

I always like to visit the neighborhood when I go back, but it has really died and turned into a sad place. People have relocated and dynamics have shifted.

The neighborhood is a border town, near the bridge that crosses into Mexico. It used to be very vivid and alive, but it slowed down after the Mexican Peso broke, then NAFTA happened, tariffs were eliminated, and trade didn't need to happen through people anymore. So, Mexicans didn't have to cross as much. The ones who did were rich, so they moved to the North of Texas, and the poor people stayed in the South, by the bridge. Downtown is now in the North and all main attractions like shopping centers are there. There’s efforts to create some kind of Disney Land—It’s a simulacrum.

We worked very hard, but we were always playing, always having fun. I’m still working very hard but always playing and always having fun.

G.

*Audio by Martin, Peter. Bend, performed by Third Coast Percussion, 2017

If a space from your own life is still holding something you haven’t fully returned to, I’d love to guide you through it. Please message me to sign up for the experience.

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Stay tuned for Chapter 2!

Warmly,
Sabine

More on Space and Identity from the Archive:

Spatio-emotional thresholds: Migration of selves between spaces

Perception of space: What are your perception and association tendencies?

Thinking is spatial: Where do you think best?

Emotional layers of space: From physical space, to a sense of space

Memory of childhood spaces: The rituals performed and traditions built in them

Our memory stores the blueprint to our present identity. The choices we make today are informed by the core experiences of yesterday; we choose to either conform to them or diverge from them. For example, the memory of the passing of a loved one formulates our current understanding and practice of love: we may choose to love deeply, embracing the inevitability of loss, or shy away from love and connection in fear of loss.

Similarly, the memory of childhood spaces (backyard, bedroom, classroom, neighborhood playground, etc.), the rituals performed and traditions built in them, formulate our understanding of self through space, i.e. what type of spaces we feel most ‘at home’ in and how we choose to create our personal spaces.

In other words, we are narratives; a network of memories (and dreams) woven into present perceptions. We are constantly reforming who we are and how we inhabit the world.

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There’s a world of meaning in unpacking our memory of spaces we grew up in.

The spaces that matter never leave us, even after we leave them, or after they cease to exist. One of those spaces that has never left me is my grandmother’s home. After her passing, I wrote to her:

These aren’t just passing memories, they actively shape who I am. For instance, I still associate:

• corridors with play; their length an invitation to run and laugh.

• volume with respect for neighbors; shared walls and floors demand shared care.

• seasonal cleaning with attunement to nature’s cycles; a human nod to the cosmos.

• carpets with sound absorption; warmth too.

• storage with renewal; a hibernation rather than a disposal in disguise.

• service rituals with love; care expressed through giving.

• the color blue with generosity and welcome; a translucent blue to be exact.

• caring for the home with caring for family; the two always intertwined.

• silence with being away from family; planning the next gathering awaits.

The corridor, the carpets, the blue glass container… they all still exist within me. They taught me what home feels like, and how to build it therefore. Our past spaces are as alive as our present ones!

Tell Me About Home

This is why I’m starting a new biographical series, Tell Me About Home, where I share people’s memories of places they grew up in and how they continue to find them today. Together, these stories will form a collective home, a living tapestry of our most intimate and formative childhood spaces and present identities. I hope this work evokes a sense of community and compassion, reconnecting us to what makes us human: our capacity to experience, process, and build.

If you’re interested in being part of Tell Me About Home, I’d be thrilled to hear from you!

Tell Me about Home Archive:

Chapter 1: Twenty Blocks of Playground

Chapter 2: Playroom for Two

Chapter 3: The Double-Edged Perch

Chapter 4: We Always Sat in Circles

Warmly,
Sabine

I remember the blanket snug at my sides, after being tucked in bed by my mom—my little cocoon of safety, holding me steady through the night.

I remember the blanket lifting and swooping her back into bed next to me, as she tried and failed to wake me up the next morning—my mischievous gesture, pulling her into my fortress of dreams.

I remember the blanket rolled tight around me, while I played burrito with my sister—layers of skin, laughter and eventually heat.

I remember the blanket draped loose over me, as I curled into a ball beneath it—my quiet cave of solitude, where I could just be.

I remember the blanket lifted in the air, floating down slow, smelling faintly of detergent, of sunlight—of home.

I remember one blanket and so many spaces within.

I left home a while ago and began building my own.

I no longer have that same blanket,

but I keep finding these spaces in every blanket I’ve owned.

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Phenomenologist Gaston Bachelard describes the childhood home as not just a physical structure but a vessel for our inner worlds and dreams. He explains that intimate spaces, in places like home, invite reverie through their internal complexity. Even the most ordinary corners, objects, and gestures become charged with meaning; A single blanket can hold entire worlds: safety, play, solitude, love. These micro-worlds contain and activate our feelings and then our imaginations.

As children, we instinctively interacted with space in all sorts of way. We were playful and curious and sought to access these micro-worlds of vastness and adventure. Our world, so disproportionate to our size, was a Pandora’s box of self-discovery:

• spinning in circles just to feel the floor tilt beneath us,

• crawling into a dishwasher claiming it as our fortress,

• or measuring ourselves against walls as we grow taller, perhaps one day we’d reach the ceiling.

Later, in architecture school, I noticed that what stayed with me most vividly after leaving a space was how I felt in it, more than its form or function:

• how a pillow made my neck itch,

• how the piano seat made a warm dent after I played for hours,

• how I would wake up to the smell of breakfast from the kitchen,

• how the neighbors’ footsteps echoed into our conversations.

It seemed like the lived emotional experience blended with the physical. Just as a poem lends itself to the imagination, allowing for the production of a world beyond itself, physical space can be an open-ended framework open for interpretation and transformation too. That’s how space turns into a sense of space:

• a sense of spatial stasis is experienced while jumping off a cliff to dive into the sea,

• a sense of metric warp is experienced while sitting under a small table,

• a sense of physical dissolution is experienced when releasing from a loved one’s hug at the airport,

• and a sense of temporal multiplicity is experienced during a déjà vu, when past, present and future converge.

I think these moments are about being alive in space; how the world presses into us, and how we press back into it.

Growing up, my parents often found me either hiding in a nook or investigating a cranny. I’d squeeze to nap behind the couch, or crack open toys to understand how they moved or made sounds. That same curiosity eventually grew into my approach to architecture and design, and now into Nooks and Crannies. I write about the emotional layers of space that contain the essence of being alive.

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From experience to method

Before I started this Substack, I asked myself a few questions:

• How can these sensorial micro-worlds be accessed by everyone?

• How can I bring awareness to their existence?

• How can I design spaces that prioritize them?

I decided to write sensorial exercises, inviting you to play, hoping to open your eyes to the micro-worlds that activate your drive and passion, particularly at a time when the universe seems to be racing and the settings of our lives are losing their meaning.

My work begins with curiosity. I don’t approach space as fixed or purely functional; I like to approach it as alive, as a container of emotions and memories. People are different, and their spaces should reflect that. That’s why when designing spaces, I would start with exploring the memories, feelings, and experiences that matter most to them—essentially, uncovering the stories they want their spaces to tell!

That’s it for today! Stay tuned for the next newsletter for more about physical space and identity. I’ll also be starting a new project soon and I can’t wait to share it with you all.

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Warmly,

Sabine

Personally, deep thinking doesn’t happen forcefully at a desk in silence nor in spaces where I’m “supposed to think” such as libraries or offices. While I do value such spatial typologies as focus settings, they do not serve my ideation process. Silence and stillness may help me execute an idea, but they rarely help me generate one. My ideas need motion, stories, and sensory input to come alive.

My most productive thinking recently happened at the mall, unexpectedly. Walking through colors, textures and materials awakened my mind; I passively browsed clothes while my conceptual lens wove ideas about a design project I’m working on. I ended up staying longer than I usually would, and trying on more outfits than I usually would.

This dual engagement of thinking while interacting with my environment helped stimulate and structure my thoughts. Without it, they’d get muffled and jumbled. My point is that our “office” does not have to be fixed to a seat, a desk, or a designated area. In fact it shouldn’t be, and that’s primarily because thinking happens as a function of our settings!

Thinking is spatial.

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How is thinking spatial?

We think best in spaces that mirror what stimulates our minds: my own perception is conceptual— I detect stories, and I therefore fuel my imagination through them. Silent, cold spaces lack this layer and offer barely any narrative-based stimuli to bounce my thoughts against.

Ideas aren’t born in a vacuum. They stem from:

1. The sensory input we are subjected to

2. How we absorb those stimuli through our most active senses

3. The narratives we weave when processing them

What we naturally detect becomes the raw material for meaning and therefore ideation. So if perception drives ideas, why are we expected to think in spaces that typically mute our senses? While modern co-working spaces aim to break out of the rigid boundaries of a “productive space”, mainstream workspaces prioritize uniformity over stimulation: white walls, fluorescent lights, separation, and minimal distractions.

Redesigning your “thinking space”

What would shift if you reimagined your office as a thinking space? Your best thinking space is probably not a desk (although it might be!).

Ask yourself:

1. What are my most active senses? (you can read last week’s newsletter on perceptual differences to help answer this question).

2. Therefore, what about my environments activates my imagination?

• Food? Maybe your thinking space is that hole in the wall that serves your favorite noodles. Bring a small notebook next time you go.

• Rest? Try your bathtub, filled with hot water or piled with pillows. You could hang a whiteboard on the wall.

• Odors? Consider the outdoor seat at the café right next to the flower shop, or grow a lot of herbs in your favorite corner at home (I recommend basil!)

• Stories? Consider a public staircase by the bus stop. You might want to claim the same spot every time.

• Movement? Clip a voice recorder to your keychain and take it on your next walk. Or keep notebooks around your house to jot down ideas as you tidy your space on a Saturday morning.

• Music? Pull your piano away from the wall and turn its top into a writing station, with its own chair.

• Textures/colors? Let’s go shopping together!

The list goes on!

How inspiring would it be if you deployed offices in unlabeled places that work for you! Your office space should be a reflection of YOU, not your to-do list.

I’d LOVE to hear from you! Share a space that sparks your ideas below, how you’d want to redesign your office space, or if you’d like support redesigning it!

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Stay tuned for more on physical spaces and identity!

Warmly,

Sabine

Walking by the veggie stand is one of our daily routines. It takes almost 15 seconds to have fully walked through, sometimes stopping for a minute to buy something, other times not. Every single time, he shocks me with an observation along these lines:

• “they replaced the rectangular box of 6 tomatoes with a square box of 8”.

• “the strawberries must be fresh, they’re double their usual price today”

I always wonder: how could he have absorbed this type of information in just 15 seconds? So the other day I paused and asked myself: What am I detecting? Yes, I see fruits and vegetables, but, what do I really “see”, especially when I’m passively passing by.

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So what happens at the veggie stand?

I weave a sense of place and connection

• colors, colors and more colors

• how many buyers there are and how they’re forming a line at the small register

• who the vendor is that day, and which language they’re speaking while talking on the phone

• the heat and whether I can perhaps walk under the shade of the tent even if for a second

• I would also be thinking of our walk’s final destination

He scans for opportunities to meet needs

• checks for quality

• checks for availability

• compares prices from memory

What do the differences reveal?

Simply put, I’m conceptual, he’s analytical, and that’s a very accurate description of who we are outside the vegetable stand context! So yes, perception is not neutral. Although it's subconscious, it’s personal and patterned! And that’s how we end up experiencing the exact same space differently.

What about perception?

Last week I wrote about noticing our habits to grow in control of who we are and how we show up in the world. This week, I am focusing on understanding where our habits come from and how they formulate. It boils down to how we process stimuli or sensory input (sight, sound, touch, smell, taste), i.e. what we detect at the veggie stand, and what narratives we weave there, or elsewhere.

I like to put it this way: Perception is the meeting point between the world and ourselves. It’s where we process sensory input into meaning. Observe your meanings, they quietly shape your reality.

Meanings are subconsciously assigned, but we can grow aware of them if we try. As we move through space and environments, as we cross spatio-emotional thresholds, we are absorbing, decoding, reacting.

What about you?

What do you notice at the veggie stand, at a boutique store, or in a friend’s new apartment? Conversations? Numbers? Odors? Textures? Moods? Or the voices in your own mind? Do you lean conceptual, analytical, aesthetic, emotional, introspective…? I’d love to know!

Keep in mind that it is through comparison that my awareness of my own perception patterns became more evident. You can try exploring with a partner, friend or family member.

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By becoming aware of what you naturally detect, you can understand what can ultimately make your personal spaces feel like you! It’s the first step towards making design decisions that feel right and personal. For example:

• If you tend to associate sensory cues to personal memories, perhaps you should consider reviving that corner of your living room with the textures of your hometown.

• If laughter is the main element you absorb at family/friend gatherings, perhaps you should consider designing your dining room to cater for big parties.

Just like at the veggie stand, no two people experience a room the same way. That’s why design isn’t about following trends, but about uncovering your unique perception patterns and translating them into space!

Stay tuned for the next newsletter for more about physical space and identity, and don’t hesitate to reach out with your design questions!

Warmly,

Sabine

One familiar ritual I want to identify and explore in today’s newsletter is that of ‘arriving home’, to ask: Can we harness the familiar comfort of home—its rituals, scents, and bodily cues—to intentionally shape how we show up in less familiar/less comforting situations? But first, how do we bring our attention to what feels like home and what does not?

Before you keep reading, I want to acknowledge that ‘home’ is a different place for each one of us. Mine is my apartment, which I write about next. As you reflect on this piece, please identify your own home as the space that contains you tenderly—it can be a park bench, a cozy café corner, someone’s hug, etc.

So what happens when I’m arriving home?

Every time, like clockwork;

- I fish my keys from my bag, make the last 3 to 4 steps as I pick out the key from a bundle of other keys, push the key into the key hole, rotate my wrist clockwise to unlock the door, simultaneously push the door forward to open it, and take a couple steps inwards, through the door’s threshold.

- I inhale the rush of scents of my space: faint traces of coffee mixed with a woody scent of furniture.

- I place my keys on the key holder, my bag on the jacket-holder, take off my shoes and place them on the shoe rack.

And now, I’m home. I’m at peace. I run to sit on the couch and take a deep breath.

Now let’s reverse this; I’m leaving home

- I put my shoes on, reach for my bag off the jacket rack and my keys off the key holder (they go into my bag), push the door knob downwards, pull the door open, and take a couple steps outwards, through the door’s threshold.

- I inhale the rush of scents of my hallway: carpet detergent mixed with neighbors’ cooking.

- I close the door, try to open the door to make sure it’s locked, turn around, and start walking to the elevator

And now, I’m out in the world: alert, purposeful, sometimes longing to return, other times charged for what's ahead.

What of that threshold?

What fascinates me is the subtle emotional pivot at the door—the threshold where we reset. It's not just physical; it's a gateway between selves. We arrive at a place, and leave another; step out of a place, into another. We do this constantly: stepping from bed to kitchen in the morning, stepping out of a car with family members to arrive at the airport, arriving at a friend's party, leaving a meeting room to walk to our favorite lunch spot, or ending a call and joining another. These spatio-emotional thresholds mark shifts in how we feel and act. By tuning into them, we no longer merely react to change but choose how we want to meet it.

Gaining Agency

Here's a simple practice I apply when I notice an internal shift. I pause and ask: "Where am I right now, and what kind of change just happened in my environment?"

• If I love it (such as the calm of arriving home), I mentally bookmark the sensory cues—like that scent rush—for later recall.

• If I don't (such as anxiety spiking in a meeting room), I also take note of it and then attempt to "migrate" a preferred self from another space. For instance, I channel my "home self"—deep breaths, grounded posture—into the meeting room, softening the edge.

What about you?

Share a striking spatio-emotional transition you've noticed, I'd love to hear from you and discuss!

Stay tuned for the next newsletter for more about physical space and identity!

Warmly,

Sabine