2023 Retrospective, ‘My 2 Cents On…’ Open Your Mind

To navigate the complexities of life it’s crucial to stay informed, be open to new ideas and perspectives, and keep an open mind . We can never really expand our knowledge mindset if we aren’t challenging our own beliefs and views. Ask the big questions, explore a different point of views, and never stop learning….

A Wicked Kind Of Review

The complexity of art, especially the multilayered world of theatre, lies in the weaving of its tools to deliver the message. Audiences tend to focus on the acting and the words and think of sets as background. This play says as much through its set as it does through the plot. Gershwin theatre is one…

Beyond skin wellbeing, health, and the wheel of life

How did Wellbeing and Wellness come about? Without proper understanding of their beginnings and awareness of their evolutionary path, they will only last as much as a frog’s breath between its hibernation cycles. Here is a short but relevant timeline of what wellbeing was, is and will be, forever. Health was simply a part of…

Input-process-output theory of metamorphosis – how creativity transforms you into something new, part 2

What we absorb through activities of the everyday is, in great measure, conducive to what we produce as human beings. Be that work, or conversations, or expressions of various emotions, or artistic endeavours. All these “things” represent our contribution to the world around us, and their perceived quality has a tremendous impact on our well-being….

Land of Dochia Magazine Issue #5 Showcase

The key concept I chose to apply here is the sympathetic design. Bedrooms are the most private rooms of our homes. They are our most intimate space or rest, recharge, joy and pleasure. They are the rooms where we carefully put ourselves together for the world to see and get to know us. Here, for…

Welcome to the mental health age, we’re all in this together, Part 1

Designed based on roman principles, it contributed to the emerging dialogue on passive house models and got recognized as such. Four residential units are placed around a central courtyard that acted as a well of light and rainwater collection. A small reservoir at the bottom recirculated the collected water to washrooms and kitchens, each equipped…

Input-process-output theory of metamorphosis – how creativity transforms you into something new, part 1

Sometimes I feel unidentifiable. Everything I want to say has already been said. What I imagine and want to design has already been designed. What I think has been thought before. They all come with a small pang of sadness and disillusion. Luckily – I think because of my training in a creative field –…

Welcome to the mental health age, we’re all in this together

Pompeii in the 7th century B.C. had residential wells collecting rainwater for domestic use, distribution systems via terracotta piping and street sewage management. Their buildings not only reflected a wonderful example of sanitation, but displayed a subtle and positive connection of living with nature. The highly developed and completely passive architectural construction relied, among others,…

Lessons from design: mental health in condos

Globally we find ourselves in what is now called the cognitive revolution where the recognition that self-fulfilment, social health and the fight against loneliness are at the core of chasing personal wellbeing. Their importance is as high if not higher than nutrition, exercise, and amassing sufficient wealth to ensure a comfortable life. While all of…

Land of Dochia magazine Issue #1 Showcase

To integrate the antiques and traditional pieces, the design team employed a museum-like approach where the items are treated like artifacts, and the interiors are tailored to enhance their presence. Since this is a home and not a museum, careful attention was given to introducing texture and enough finishes in each room designed to maintain…

On reinvention and true innovation

When Stephen King wrote, “Sooner or later, everything old is new again,” he captured one of the most useful starting points of creative thinking: the past. To the general public, reinvention and novelty are tricky because true originality is seldom welcomed. Although most of us long for something new, we tend to associate an idealized…

A beautiful walkway

Canadian designers often face the challenges of merging heirlooms and artifacts with a contemporary aesthetic, as many families have a link to one old world or another. This is such a home where the interiors have been shaped at the intersection of a distant past with the contemporary architecture of the present and a new…