At EBA we explore adjacent worlds. These explorations might include forays into writing, fashion, photography or illustration. You might find us studying the service details of a fine dining restaurant or borrowing strategies from advertising. Slice of life writing, street style photography and urban sketching are three tools, borrowed from adjacent worlds that we explore to convey story and style, look and feeling. Slice of life writing can be a tool to help you tell me your brief. Street style photography is a concept we’re all familiar with that captures the feelings and stories we tell through our clothes. As an architect, urban sketching is a tool I use to see the real story, to slow down and see beyond.
What do you need for your home to contribute to your wellbeing? Beyond the Pinterest and Instagram images that you’ve been saving for the last year, what do you want to feel? What do you need to foster your inner life, your memories and your dreams? For me, I need my home to have a place to sit in the sun. I want privacy from the street but opportunities for neighbourly interactions. I want a home that provokes my curiosity, that changes with the seasons. I want to sit inside and feel the breeze. For you, you might need a place for your prized coffee machine, a bath with a window into the garden, a place of respite from the kids.
What are the everyday, tiny moments that that you want more of? At EBA, we’re big on feelings. We are well versed in creating beautiful spaces but we’re not just about the beautiful pictures, we care about how you want to feel. That’s why we say, ‘it’s not just a look, it’s a feeling’.
One way of capturing feelings is through a slice of life writing style. This is the style that I write in. When I catch the sunlight reaching all the way down the hallway of my home on a day in June, I write about it.
You may have noticed that slice of life writing is featured in some of the content that EBArchitects has shared so far.
I need to wind down the first moment when I arrive home
The main thing is, we're always really busy and need to move fast
Will all my furniture fit?
I want to see the sky
What does it mean to say “it’s not just a look, it’s a feeling”? Why these words?
This is how I want you to brief me. Sure, I also want you to tell me the number of rooms, the size of the wardrobes and cubic meters of storage that you need to fit. But what I’m really interested in is how you want to feel. How do you want to feel in the morning, in the evening, in the moments after dinner? In all the moments in between. How do you want your family to feel? How do you want your guests and extended family to feel?
You might tell me things like:
Precedent images and references are an effective way of conveying the architectural style that you like. Often those images are conveying a feeling that you’re chasing. Our briefing stage is a way of drawing out those feelings that lie within the images. Because it’s not just a look, it’s a feeling and these feelings will help you write the story. How do you want to feel? What is your story?
