Making Stairs Work Better: What I’ve Learned About Bringing Nature Indoors
You know, after thirty-eight years in the same house, I’ve given a lot of thought to stairs. Not just because mine are getting harder to climb – though there’s that…
Making Your Kitchen Work Better: What I’ve Learned About Bringing Nature Indoors
After spending the last few years modifying our house for my wife’s health needs, I’ve learned a lot about how much our environment affects our daily wellbeing. The kitchen, especially,…
What I’ve Learned About Bringing Nature Back Into Our Living Spaces After 38 Years in the Same House
After eight years of modifying our home and yard to better support my wife’s health needs following her stroke, I’ve come to understand something that should have been obvious all…
Hotel Lobby Goals: What I Learned About Biophilic Design from Actually Staying Places (Not Just Instagram)
Okay, so I’m not exactly staying at five-star hotels on the regular – my travel budget is more “find the cheapest thing on Booking.com that doesn’t look like a horror…
What I’ve Learned About Bringing Nature Into Workspaces (And Why It Matters More Than I Expected)
I’ve been reading about something that really caught my attention – how companies are redesigning offices to connect workers with nature. It’s called biophilic design, and after spending most of…
How Nature-Focused Spaces Changed How I Think About Kids’ Learning (And Why Museums Are Missing the Point)
I never used to pay much attention to how museum spaces were designed until I started taking my kids to them regularly. Before parenthood, I’d walk through exhibits focused mainly…
What I’ve Learned About Wellness Centers That Actually Connect You to Nature
My wife and I have visited our share of wellness centers over the past few years, partly for her physical therapy needs after her stroke, partly because we’re both interested…
How Cities Are Bringing Nature Back – What I’ve Learned from Visiting Biophilic Cities with My Kids
When I first heard the term “biophilic city,” I had no idea what it meant. But after watching my kids respond so differently to various environments – thriving in some…
Making Tiny Urban Spaces Feel Less Soul-Crushing: What I’ve Learned About Bringing Nature Into the City
Okay, so I’ve been thinking a lot about fabrics lately, which is honestly not something I expected to care about when I first moved to this tiny studio. But after…
Actually Measuring What Works: My Journey Testing Biophilic Workspaces (With Real Data)
Look, I’ll be honest – when I first started getting obsessed with workspace optimization and biophilic design elements, I had no idea how to actually measure whether any of this…
Biophilic Design for Tiny Apartments: What I Learned From Desperate Pandemic Plant Parenting
So here’s the thing – I used to think “biophilic design” was just fancy Instagram speak for “having a lot of plants.” Like, cool, you’ve got money for fiddle leaf…
I Accidentally Fell in Love with Nature’s Secret Design Algorithms (And You Should Too)
So this is going to sound weird, but I spent last Saturday morning lying on my stomach in a community garden watching ants. Not because I’ve completely lost it (though…
What I’ve Learned About Making Homes Work Better for Grandkids on the Autism Spectrum
A couple years ago, our youngest daughter asked if she could bring her eight-year-old son over for dinner more often. He’d been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder the year before,…
Why Plants and Natural Light Actually Matter for Kids’ Mental Health (From Someone Who Learned This the Hard Way)
Okay, so I’m not a therapist or anything, but I’ve been going down this rabbit hole about how plants and natural light actually affect mental health, especially for kids and…
What I Learned About Making My Tiny Apartment Work for Whatever Climate Change Throws at Us
Okay so this is going to sound dramatic but bear with me – last February when that polar vortex hit Chicago and knocked out power for three days, I had…