Adriana is our lead Interior Designer and Nick is our Project Architect. Both are great designers who truly love the outdoors, and spend much of their free time hiking, camping, and exploring the natural world. Drew sat down with them to discuss their experiences with nature, how enveloping oneself in nature can carry over to architectural design, and if Americans will ever give up the comforts of air conditioning.
Drew: We are talking about the conversation between the outdoors - where the three of us and many like us have very little control - and the indoor, where we as designers have significant control. And I want to label those two spaces as the natural environment and the built environment. First, I wanted to ask how often the two of you are able to place yourself in that natural environment, and if you'd like to do that more than you are right now.
Adriana: This year, I haven't been outdoors much. I like to do excursions and visit new areas, so I’ll try to do a meaningful trip at least once a year. And that can be the snowboarding trip that my husband and I used to do once a year, or plan visits to natural monuments while out-of-state. This year, the only thing that we have been able to do is seeing the runestones, some Viking writing here in Oklahoma. We thought it was going to be an amazing hike and it was very short and easy. It wasn't really inspiring.
The reason I do nature walks is that I'm able to see how nature handles things like color integration. If I'm doing an interior space and I'm finding myself stuck with what textures to use or what colors to mix or how to pair them, I look at nature as an example.
Because if those colors work with nature, then I feel like I can make it work in an interior space. And that carries with vibrant hues. I look at marine life and the ocean because those are very vibrant colors, and the mixtures work very well. The same thing with rocks and the different types of creatures that grow on the rocks, all their colors and textures. Nature helps me wrap my head around things when I feel lost.
D: I'll return to that. But I want to hear Nick's response to that first question on if he gets out as much as he'd like to, or how often he does get out.
Nick: I don't get out half as much as I want to. Being a “new Coloradan”, I want to be outside all the time. But my wife and I do try, at least every other week, to go out on a camping trip, though Winter is coming. So that means trying new things like snowshoeing. Though, I am a huge believer in trying to find ways to work outside, like taking the laptop to work on the patio with fresh air and being able to have things going on around you.
That said, I find it's much easier when I'm at a campsite or in the middle of a lake on a stand-up paddleboard to not have my phone on me and truly detach and appreciate the moment for what it is. Which is great, because we live in a time right now where finding a moment to appreciate can be exceedingly difficult. It's really cool that Adriana uses it for inspiration because a lot about automation and why I believe automation can exist in architecture and the built environment is influenced by nature.
D: Has there been a project you’ve worked on where what you've seen out in the natural environment has directly influenced the design or the response to something in your built environment?
A: Sure, actually, the University Commons for Oklahoma State University, which were three buildings for their campus. They wanted to incorporate iconic items from around Stillwater as a concept for developing interior spaces of the building. The team I was on at the time picked three items: the fountain in front of the library, the Botanic Gardens, and the local boulder and clay. By dividing the three buildings into those elements, the interior design had a focus concerning colors, scheme, textures, and the accents that are provided throughout the space.
My building was a male residence that was to be the boulder building – the water concept applied to the female residence and the tree concept was for the mixed-used residence. When finding inspiration for the double volume space, I asked, “what does a person experience when they are in nature and they encounter a boulder - a lot of people wants to climb it, or they want to go around or over it and see what is beyond that point.”
I used different types of carpet textures and colors to create patterns on the ground, similar to walkways. When you see the pattern from the right angle, there is a clear line at the separation of the field carpet and the accent carpet. And that carries into the next area. When you walk in, you see the transition from the tile into the carpet and the lines follow through the space. It's like hiking trails.
Boulder climbing was the inspiration for the large, rocky fireplace. At the opposite wall, the light fixtures simulated the holds you’d find at climbing walls. And then the wall colors and textures were rough and had wrinkles, matching a rocky feeling. And then for the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, we use the different types of regions in Colorado to design the different venues of the dining hall.
D: Were you able to go and see the different regions of Colorado as research?
A: Unfortunately, I wasn't, but I am very good at doing research. I put together conceptual boards of the different types of vegetation and rivers in the Colorado area. I recall that the state is divided into four different regions, and that’s what we used for the dining venues. The rivers were intended for the three residential buildings.
The idea when telling this story to the client was that visitors were on a journey through the different regions in Colorado. That one wasn't as well interpreted into the design as the OSU Commons; when you walk into OSU, you can tell that there is inspiration from nature, but the only natural influence on Colorado Springs was on material selections. The carpet patterns are kind of wavy. Somebody that walks into Colorado Springs and doesn't know about the design won’t be able to appreciate the effort behind it. And that’s okay. Not all design inspiration needs to be as noticeable to the end user.
D: Nick, same question to you: any influence from the natural environment on a design you’ve been a part of?
N: The thing is understanding how much influence can be realized on a project. Having worked on many medical projects throughout my career, there's no shortage of understanding that integration with the environment around us is incredibly important. For example, there are studies that show that recovery times improve in patients if they have access to a window compared to others that do not.
There are conceptual projects where we’ve looked at a rooftop walking path so people could take a break from their office and go walk along the roof, get outside within the working environment. In Japan, it’s called shinrin-yoku or forest bathing, where you go and embrace nature for a little while, and it’s accepted.
But in talking about placemaking and how to create an environment, architecture firms miss that experience is driven by all of our senses - not just what we see and can feel tactically with our fingers - But what we smell and hear. I wouldn't encourage tasting many buildings, but that could have a play into it. If we can't get a window for that patient’s room, we can create still place something that resembles or connects to nature in som.
For example, I once had the challenge of designing a prayer room for an office space. The idea about a prayer room is to create a very quiet, thoughtful place to be in. An important part of meditation for me is being outside. But meditation is about limiting distraction. So, we actually took the nature away for this design. We built a screen in front of a window to allow light to enter the room and diffuse, rather than a direct connection with nature because that room was more about connecting with yourself than connecting with the world. We wanted to capture the importance of nature in our lives without letting it be the focal point. Integration is a cool idea because you're trying to find the right balance between how everything within the space starts to blend together to create an experience.
A: I wanted to comment that I really like that you took nature away to connect with yourself; I have never done that. I’m typically trying to bring nature in.
D: That makes me think of the times when buildings do open themselves quite a bit to nature. Talking of those prayer rooms, my mind goes to some Japanese architecture where the only division is the screen wall between the outdoor and indoor. Have you two visited architecture where that line between the built and natural environments is blurred?
N: One of the best examples where there's such a wonderfully curated blend between the built and natural - and none of it is really natural – is the New York City Skyline. There you can find a thoughtful take on the ecosystem through plants and material selection. When you're walking through it, every single detail was put there by a person and none of it is natural, and yet it feels like this human river that cuts into the city and there's something so amazingly organic about it. It’s unlike anywhere else in the world.
A: I have not been part of a project where that relationship has been well executed. One of the reasons I studied landscaping was to be able to create interior plant design - that has always been the goal, but it’s difficult. In the United States, and in Oklahoma, we deal with extreme exposure to the elements. When it gets too hot here, you’d design open spaces, but it’s also super windy and that limits the open space idea. Where I came from in Venezuela, the malls are completely open and there are interior gardens with fountains and sometimes even animals. Parakeets and creatures like that. It has been a dream of mine to design that kind of space, but I haven't been able to do that. Hopefully, when we’re working on a project not on this continent, we’ll be able to come up with designs that connect the interior and exterior.
N: It's funny that you called out to a different continent because after traveling you realize how much we in America rely on controlled space and our HVAC systems. We don’t allow for the open-air experience, whereas if you walk into historic Rome, there's no air conditioning in half those buildings and they all breathe and ventilate well.
I'm excited about movements like Passive House where we're thinking about how buildings breathe and how that ties with the quality of air in the space and what that means for our health. We're getting there.
But we've become accustomed to a controlled space; It's 69 degrees here and our AC is still running, because we didn’t think to turn it off. That’s a big cultural habit, being able to fine-tune and control our environments. Part of this natural exploration is losing control.
Whether it’s the designer’s role to consider people’s needs in a space or the people themselves letting go because they’re focused on reading a book in a hammock, we as a society need to understand that not having to control everything is something that can be appreciated. As we start to explore this connection with nature, architecture as an industry has to let go and allow nature to be nature. And we as people have to let go and realize that we don't need to control things within a single degree of temperature, we can allow things to vary and maybe carry a sweatshirt with us.
D: To reflect that, nature can serve as a great ego check, and we know that ego is strong in American culture. Nature can be something to test boundaries on how comfortable you are disconnecting. What is your preferred experience whenever you envelop yourself in nature, or, how disconnected can become while maintaining a comfort level of your day-to-day life?
N: I’m completely aligned with Thoreau. I like to completely remove myself, go live in the wilderness and check back at the local café for the newspaper on Sunday. If you're familiar with Walden’s Pond and Thoreau's writing, everything he focused on was this concept of getting back in touch with nature, tying ourselves to our roots. In practice, though, it's very interesting. I go camping with my wife who loves listening to music - that's a big part of what she does - and the speakers are playing the entire time.
For me, I want to listen to the nothing. There's a whole lot of nothing going on. We take our turns between music and nothing, but it's interesting to see how people cling to different levels of comfort. Being able to be outside of cell phone service gives me the freedom to truly reject the connection to society for that time that I'm out there and I appreciate it when I do get that chance.
D: What’s the preferred lodging? Is it staying in a built home, or sleeping in tents? Or is it a hammock hanging somewhere?
N: Typically, a tent and largely dispersed camping. For those who might be reading on the East Coast, dispersed camping is when you can park your car on the side of the road and camp close by. You can't do that in Jersey, my home state, and it’s one thing I really love about Colorado.
Traditionally I've stayed in lean-tos and tents - I've never gotten to the point of setting up a hammock in a rain fly. We recently made an investment to get a rooftop camper so we can start to drive more off-road and camp in obscure places, places that are still relatively untouched by people. And those places are sometimes more pretty than we as designers can envision.
D: There’s that ‘Create-Your-Own-Adventure’ color to it. But then the limitations become everything, like how much food can fit in the car and how far your mileage will take you. Adriana, Can I ask you the same questions?
A: I love connecting with everything, 100%. Before having a son, we would do dispersed camping, usually for the weekend. I don't care for cell phones, even now. You could say I hate them (laughter). I bring mine camping because of security reasons, but I don't use it, not for pictures or anything. That becomes Bryan's responsibility to capture the moment.
What I like about the disconnect is that Bryan and I can have conversations and interact with each other with only what we have, which is us and nature. At home, we talk about work and projects for the house and future ideas. But out in nature, it's like, “Hey, let’s explore where this river takes us.”
We do sketches too; we don't do that as often anymore and our skills have declined quite a bit. When we go out of state and it’s hard to camp, we’ll get a little cabin, but a minimalistic one. We want to spend more time outside than inside. We don't need much modern comfort.
We were also looking at investing in a tent like yours, Nick, but we won't be doing that for a while because my son is too little to come with us and spend the night out there. It's probably going to be a while before we really get back out there unless somebody can watch him. And then we can get back to the crazy hikes. But I love to disconnect 100% and reconnect with nature, by cooking over a fire that I made. I was a girl scout for a long time – and not the ones that sell cookies (laughter).
N: The simplicity of being outside is nice, your needs hierarchy is food and shelter, and that's about it. In my built environment, I walk into my living room and dang, I need to pick stuff up off the floor, I need to clear off the table and do this vacuuming. There's all this maintenance to the life that we build. Our lives are incredibly comfortable, but they come with all that investment. To be able to take a week or even a weekend and have three things that you need to worry about is a great way to reset your brain from all the stress and distraction.
A: I will be honest, I love that I don't have to care about whether I'm clean or not in nature. I'm camping, I'm in nature, I'm dirty and I love it. At the home, I wash my hands all the time and I don't like being barefoot or anything. I'm not saying that I'm barefoot in nature. I have my boots, you know, but I don't care if I am covered with ash or mud. I don't care. It's weird too. I feel like if you see me you don't think that about me.
D: I think you can judge by how much flannel someone owns how comfortable they can be in nature.
N: It's funny that if you were to be walking on the city street and you were to step in mud, versus how you'd react doing the same while camping, the amount of stress versus the amount of appreciation that you might experience based off of the place you’re in is incredible.
D: We’ve talked about lessons learned from going out into nature and our American dependence on air conditioning. Are there any other trends, locally or nationally, that our profession could pick up on if designers went outside more? Or be able to lessen negative trends that are currently plaguing us?
N: That’s a discussion at the intersection of technology and the built environment. I deleted my Facebook a month ago and I've had to reactivate it three times just to do one thing because it's behind the Facebook wall. I'm trying to make more active efforts to remove myself because as great as it is to be connected with 5000 people, that's a whole lot of data that's entering my brain every single day that doesn't need to get there.
Objectively, it doesn't mean I don't care about those people, I just want to not be on Facebook. When we realize we can truly detach, what is the balance of connectivity? As we start to transition to the world of the Internet of Things, enabled by 5G, there will be all sorts of predictive tech that will be able to place us in an automated life. There’s a balance to achieve and it seems we’re much more conscious of that as a society today, and while we’re still figuring out where those lines need to be. We may have technotopias in the cities and areas that are still rural. The smallness and connectedness are needed by different people in different amounts.
A: I have mixed feelings. The problem is now that every project has to be built in a very quick schedule, due to all these technological innovations speeding up our work. All those innovations go away from what nature offers. Nature has everything you need to build a sustainable environment that can withstand the ecosystem. Rammed earth, for example, is similar to concrete, but you use what you have locally. But it’s not the quickest way. I don’t think people are educated enough or care much including those aspects of nature into our built environment.
The easiest way is to create large windows or bring in interior plant designs, or pictures – things that remind us of nature and biophilia. But I think we can take a step back. That’s my internal struggle with interior design when we don’t keep in mind that connection to Nature. That’s why I studied horticulture and landscaping as well to better connect the interior and exterior. You need to know horticulture to do that responsibly. There’s not a lot of support for that step back.
N: When we look at the idea of sustainability – which isn’t a new idea – it’s there at the principles of modern architecture. Commodity is driven by picking local materials that are immediately accessible because back then you couldn’t ship stone from across the world. But the International Style hits, and you lose the sense of place. You can take one building and adapt it for different environments and it will work functionally. Now we’re getting to the user experience being the end all be all – if someone’s not having a good time, there is a problem with the design. Locality and sustainability should be about where the project is, what is unique about the location, and augmenting that. That makes a place a place.
A personal example of this is sushi. When I first learned about it, it was this special thing out of Japan, and it was so special because it was not of this place. So, if we take the sterilization approach in architecture – by not tying nature and locale to the design – then we’ll lose the sense of place. So how can we effectively establish what’s needed to define a sense of place? That leads to some stringent design guidelines; the material pallet could be defined by what can be shipped from 50 miles away, for example, in keeping with the materiality of the region. There’s an argument that we appreciate things like sushi less when they’re immediately available all of the time everywhere. Understanding that, regarding placemaking, is an important focus towards sustainability and locality that is irreplaceable. Or you could take it in the other direction and design something completely different from the locale, so it stands out as unique. Being half of one and half the other is blending normality and is not participating in the act of placemaking.
A: I 100% agree.
D: I didn’t expect Regionalism to come up during this conversation. There’s this idea, we’ve discussed with architecture and sushi, that not everything can be for everyone, it’s not sustainable that every experience should be obtainable. It’s an idea sold to the people, but the cost of actualizing the idea is expensive, such as shipping material from Italy for your project to Colorado with the mindset of, ‘we could do it so we did it.’ It can feel like the labor and environmental impact of fulfilling that design is often disregarded. I’m hoping that we as designers utilize localized design and less comfort-focused living styles as we try to tackle our bigger issues.
N: There was a phrase from a professor of mine: if you design for everybody, you design for nobody. To tie it back to experience, here in Colorado where I can go catch trout and river fish, we should have a seafood economy built around that experience and have it be a draw for the area. Sure, there will be commercialization where fish would be flown out, but the preferred experience would be in Colorado.
D: Final thoughts?
A: I love nature and I use it as a source of inspiration. And if inspiration doesn’t come, getting into nature still operates as a reset for my mind. We get locked up in this comfortable world and get upset when things don’t go our way. We need to be more flexible.
As COVID cases continue to rise throughout Oklahoma and the nation, the natural environment remains a safe means of escape from the turbulence of this year. Open-air environments with few other people are the ideal places to destress, exercise the body and absorb some vitamin D. We hope to see others (at a distance!) keeping active at our local parks and trails.