My earliest memories are vivid with design. I spent countless hours of my childhood creating with Legos. My first memory involved Legos, a lamp… and smoke. Four years old, Legos spread over the green 70’s carpet as I focused intently on designing a house. Walls?... check. Doors, windows, people?... check, check, check. But something was missing… in a brilliant stroke I surveyed my available resources and spotted my Raggedy Ann and Andy lamp. After removing the shade and laying it down… Let there be light! Minutes later my parents rushed in at the smell of burning nylon carpet. The black, bulb-shaped hole revealed a fatal design-flaw – no floor. My current clients will be happy to know that all of my projects are guaranteed to have floors!

With the nurturing guidance of mentors during my high school years, I began to pursue a life in design. My High School Art teacher, Ms. Bylander, invited me to enter a poster design competition held in support of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. My poster was selected to represent Missouri and went on to win the national competition. It depicted a handicapped parking space with an “Employees Only” sign above. My family was flown to Dallas for a gala and signing ceremony where we met President George HW Bush, Bob Dole, and other important people. The award confirmed my future in design. And is also the story of how I got my first suit and first dance with a girl!

Design with a Higher Calling

As I finished High School, faith became central to my life and still powers my passion for creativity and connection with people. I believe in the value and effectiveness of fostering human connections through well-designed human-centric environments. This ethos is embedded in every project we undertake at Vessel, where we are devoted to creating spaces that amplify human flourishing, regardless of the building type.

You can see how that unfolds into Vessel’s mission to “Create Places Where People Flourish”. Our objective is clear - to create environments that cater to all facets of the human experience: living, working, and playing. Through methodical attention to human-centered design, we aim to enhance wellbeing and nurture the human spirit.

Our latest design journey at Vessel has been in pursuit of design that is both modern AND timeless. A proud testament to this is the Encino project, which is at once trend-setting modern and a timeless classic. We have come to learn that if our design work is not impressing ourselves, our clients won’t like it. But if we’re excited about a design, our clients invariably love it.

We’re on a Mission Together

The foundation of our firm is our shared ownership of Vessel’s mission. Every single one of us strives to create environments where everyone can thrive. We love being on this mission together. We have had clients cry, breathless, as they experience their vision come to life in design. No kidding, it has happened often enough that making our clients cry or be rendered speechless has become our metric for success.

Collaboration is core to how we work together. It is embedded in our ethos. The relationships we nurture – at Vessel, with our clients who become friends, and the entire project team, are foundational to the success of our projects. Our people embody teamwork. In order for this to work, we have to work with people we like and like the people we work with. So we have learned to prioritize friendship and camaraderie in client and team selection. As an extension of our mission, we work hard to create flourishing teams because that drives project success. And its more fun!

The Path Ahead

As we stand on the cusp of a new era in technology and understanding of human biology, I am particularly excited about Artificial Intelligence and Biophilic Design. These fields are already redefining how we deliver value for our clients.

We are already harnessing AI for visual brainstorming and early vision casting. This enables us to get early visual-preference feedback from clients that makes choosing a design direction faster and earlier in the process. Somewhat unexpectedly, AI is playing a passive role in reminding us of our core values. For instance, I was drafting an email last week and CoPilot helpfully pointed out that I had not expressed gratitude appropriate to the context of the message. I was ‘grateful’ for the reminder! If an AI system can help me be truer to my values, sign me up! And there’s so much more to come!

Biophilic design, grounded in scientific evidence and research, resonates profoundly with our approach at Vessel. It serves as a lens to understand, interpret, and then shape our innate human responses to our surroundings. Scientific research in this field empowers us to create spaces that evoke a spectrum of emotions, fostering well-being. The nuanced understanding of how color, texture, temperature, light, and sound can influence our physical responses gives us a new toolkit for enhancing human flourishing.

Our mission to Create Places Where People Flourish is clear. And our vision of accomplishing that mission together, with the tools we now have is clear. Our designs will be more impactful, more modern, and more classic than ever. And we’ll make more clients lose their breath… and cry tears of delight!