MY STORY

I stumbled into design as a broke 20-year-old sculpture student, living in a warehouse set for demolition with a bunch of other art students. The landlord—a madman of sorts—gave us free rein: “Do what you want, just don’t burn the place down.”

Over five feverish years, we transformed that crumbling building into a surreal labyrinth of imagined worlds, cobbled together from scavenged parts, “borrowed” tools, and sheer, terrifying improvisation.

We each turned out to be oddly good at something—earning us nicknames worthy of a crime family. I was dubbed 'The Spatialist', the go-to when someone wanted a particularly absurd idea brought to life.

Need a pirate ship shaped office suspended from the ceiling? I got you. Want your bedroom to feel like a human-sized cat tree? Easy peasy. I had learned to turn their ideas their ideas inside out, letting others walk around in their imaginations... it felt like a superpower, and I was hooked.

When the warehouse was finally torn down, I grabbed a backpack and set out to explore the world—chasing hands-on, waist-deep learning. I lived in remote, off-grid communities learning to build homes in traditional methods , no powertools. This wasn’t theoretical architecture—I had to live in my own designs where my failures weren’t abstract—they leaked. It was an exploration of home at its most elemental, and fundamentally rewired my approach to design.

Eventually, I returned to the States—tempering the terrifying improvisation of my early years with a hard-won understading of building codes and structural realities.

Thirty years in, the work still grabs me the same way it did back in that warehouse—only now, my designs don't call for duct tape, glitter, and furniture suspended from the ceiling.

Usually.