The One Design Tip I Left Out

It didn't fit in last week's design story, but then I realized it deserved its own newsletter.

Happy summer trails everyone. A (tiny) amuse bouche before we get into it...

• I recently discovered the work of interdisciplinary artist and weaver Sarah Rosalena (Wixárika), and am captivated by how she seamlessly merges ancient hand/craft work (she was “born from multi-generations of women weavers”) with technological mediums like pixelating and a digital Jacquard loom. Her art/sculptures are mesmerizing.

• A reminder from the Farmer’s Almanac July report that summer is “silly season.”

• I keep playing this song “Das Rheingold” by Richard Wagner + Sir Georg Solti + Wiener Philharmoniker on repeat while I write/clean/run the bath. It’s builds so beautifully and is deliciously hypnotizing as you go about your day…

• I found this rug from Quince last week in my research, and one size is already sold out so wanted to drop it here before its gone since its so lovely for the price. The blue version is terrific, too.

• Also, I love this folding chair I spotted recently in a Tourists Welcome post. After a google image search, I discovered it’s the Ny Chair, designed in 1970 by Takeshi Nii. Here’s a vintage version if you want the real deal. ❤️

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Last week I shared a story about easy/simple design ideas I’d been collecting that could spark some meaningful style/vibe upgrades with very little effort (reference photo from Casa Lana in Milan below). For some reason, the newsletter was getting long, and I hesitated about including the last point (#10) and decided to leave it out.

But then…I kept thinking about it. Maybe even more so in the midst of all the Prime Day promotions being pumped into our in-boxes like oxygen at a damn casino! It’s been too much. So, I went back to that last point and decided THIS was the week to share it. Here it is—The last tip on my list that didn’t make it into last week’s design story.

See u in the void…xxCb

10. Try nothing.

I’ve been wanting a new sofa. For a while now. (And we know how I feel about searching for a sofa.) A high-quality sofa. A comfortable sofa. With a style and frame/fabrication that won’t date or break down (too easily). Maybe even a flexible sofa with pieces that move or adapt. If you, too, have been hunting around for a new sofa, you probably feel a little miffed by how trendy everything feels these days. Or, if you live in a smaller place like we do, how gigantic everything seems, too.

As I started a folder of things that I liked or intrigued me (I’ll share what I’ve been collecting sometime soon), I felt something else—this tug or maybe even this bodily longing…to have nothing.

I went back to photos of our apartment from a decade ago, before we started renovating. Before the family we bought the apartment from came to collect their mint-green shelves. Before I even considered what kind of sofa I might like to sit or nap or hang out on one day. It made me feel lighter, just looking at that empty spot and remembering what that felt like, being at the beginning of that adventure, process, project. And having all this room to DREAM about what might come next.

I started thinking about how we design our spaces/places over time, and that, especially in this stimulation-overload matrix we operate within, it can be a challenge to sit with an empty spot. A blank wall. A gap in our appliances or even a missing core piece of furniture, something like a coffee table or a dresser we’ve been raised to believe is absolutely ESSENTIAL to our very livelihood…or our sense of stability or “success.” Sitting with that empty space simply because we haven’t found what we want. And maybe, we aren’t even sure what that is anymore. That spot can feel like an absence. Something languishing on our To Do list.

BUT…it can also feel like a sigh. A pause. A BREATH. A chance to dwell in that delicious emptiness, a commodity we seem to have so little of lately.

A shortage of…Nothing.

But nothing is all around us. Waiting for us to notice its there. To feed us. To bring us back to a new feeling, a curiosity, like shifting our bodyweight, our gaze…which has a funny way of seeming to SHIFT everything else. And of course, a spot of nothing presents opportunities, too. A fresh little zone for ideas to move in, for fantasizing to happen, for DREAMING to occur.

“And many times, I stopped walking. I “did nothing.” Personal marks/highlights in my copy of one of my most favorite books, Jenny Odell’s Inhabiting the Negative Space.

Staring down a blank page or a blank canvas or a blank corner of our living room can be daunting. But do not forget—there are alluring links between anxiety and exhilaration…an empty space or room can spark heightened sensory awareness, and according to some studies, it can influence alertness, arousal, and decision-making, too.

So, maybe sitting with that empty space—that NOTHING before we do ANYTHING— can be its own kind of design move. Pausing on the doing or the fixing or the tweaking and just sitting + getting comfortable with the void. To see what visual cues or inspiration might now have a chance to exist because nothing was there first…because there’s now room for it.

And that’s it. Not much of a tip at all, really. Just allowing an empty space to tell us what it wants. To show us the way. To not just buy what happens next, but to feel it into being.

The great Japanese architect Tadao Ando said, “If you give people nothingness, they can ponder what can be achieved from that nothingness.” ✨

I may or may not have the courage to ditch my sofa without another to replace it. But I am tempted to try. To throw some pillows on the floor and watch movies like kids at a sleepover. It’s appealing. And also scary…but that nothing is calling to me. And for the moment, I’m listening.✨