Hey friends,

Objects, places & rituals bring us back to rhythm and help soften the heat of this scorching summer.

The past newsletter, we reflected on small the things and their simple gestures. Soft design. The kind of extraordinarity that this objects embrace only in this special time.

This week, we want to expand the scale and move from small to big, or rather, from objects to spaces. Where do we feel we belong?

So as Summer, is full of movement, cities empty out and small towns bloom.

People return to places they haven’t seen in a year, or maybe in a lifetime.

To a bar where no one asks questions. A square that still smells like the bread of their childhood. A coast that calls them by name. It feels more than just tradition.

It’s a quiet search for space. Not just physical, but emotional.

A space that holds you, your rhythm, your silence, your mess.

And maybe, in a time where everything is built to scale, they remind us what it means to build to size.

Villages, real or metaphorical, teach us something profound:

• That proximity is powerful

• That presence is enough

• That belonging isn’t something you earn, it’s something you feel.

These are the kinds of spaces we want to design. Not perfect. But human.

So, here’s our invitation:

This summer, tell us about a space where you feel you belong.

It could be a shop, a home, a bench, or a stretch of street.

We’re collecting these stories, to map them, learn from them, and maybe even design from them.

In a time when everything is built to move fast, spaces of slowness, of presence, of belonging are radical.

Let’s build more of them.

With care,

Carol + Ernest