2026 06 19More and More with Less and LessWorking with materials, I often notice how time settles into their surfaces.
Even without adding or removing anything, traces remain.
They hold a quiet record of what has passed.
It’s a kind of memory that design can reveal rather than erase.

Lately I’ve been thinking about what it means to work with less.
The thought first came when I was reading Design for the Real World by Victor Papanek.
Buckminster Fuller wrote the introduction, and one line stayed with me:
“doing more with less.”

It didn’t give me an answer, but it opened a place to think from,
a way of looking at materials not only for what they can become
but for the time already held in their surfaces.

And when I return to my own work,
that phrase shifts how I see things.
It makes me wonder what design can hold,
not just in what is built but in what becomes visible when things are gone.

Designing a space might also be shaping how someone pays attention.
Materials fade.
Spaces get renewed.
But the experiences held inside them remain in a different way.
2025 11 03The Years Inside the DrawerThis morning, I took out an old laptop.
I brought it with me sixteen years ago when I moved to Wellington. 
It had been tucked away at the very back of  a drawer. 

When I opened the screen, the keyboard cought my eye.
The letters were worn, the surface faded.
I pressed one key without thinking.

I really used this, didn’t I.

My mother bought it in Japan and brought it to me in London, more than twenty years ago now. 
I can almost feel the desk and chair from that time. 

I must have written so many assignments on it. Did I still use it after I started working? 
I’m not sure anymore.

With a move to Melbourne ahead, I’ve finally begun sorting through things I’d avoided for years. 

I tried turning it on, but it wouldn’t start. 
Maybe this is goodbye. 

To the student days when it stayed by my side, and to the years it waited there in the dark. 
Thank you.
2025 09 17ProcessPerception can sometimes narrow what was truly involved, and in doing so, it can hide the richness of what we actually see. 

There are countless images and impressions around us, and I often find myself overlooking the stories that exist behind them. 

That’s why discovery feels so powerful.

Last night I went to a lecture by France Kéré. What a privilege. 

He shared his retrospective work and life story, tracing how his architectural journey began. 

His work is a direct response to place and people: what we have, how we connect, why we do it. These fundamentals came through his lived experiences of making, and the result was profoundly tangible. 

Everything he said carried a rare authenticity, illuminated by the light in his eyes.
2025 07 08Walking towards the giraffes.I went to the zoo with my children, and we wandered our way to the giraffes. 

They’ve always been my favourite. Waiting almost at the farthest corner of the grounds, as if saving their presence for the very end, a kind of highlight up on the hill. 

Their patterns stop me every time. 
There is something mesmerising about the way their long necks rise into the winter sky, those gentle, earthy glowing softly against the pale cold sky. 
2025 06 14The ThawAfter days of continuous rain, my mood felt like a bear preparing for hibernation.
All I wanted was to wrap myself in a blanket and stay still inside the house. “Mind over matter”, - that saying felt painfully true. It was a week that weighted on me mentally.

In the midst of that grey haze swirling inside me, I happen to meet three people for the first time this week. It was outdoors, in the dim cold that seeped into my bones. 

As we exchanged small, ordinary conversations, I began to notice something: their expressions. 

When a soft smile gently appeard on their faces, I felt as if the sharp, fragile shards of ice inside me were melting away.
2025 06 03Mauri Ora Tai PariI live in Aotearoa New Zealand, an island nation where the Māori are the Indigenous people.

Their worldview is shaped by the land and sea, and it feels quietly grounding, like a soft cleansing of the heart.

Take the shoreline.

Each of us carries mauri, a life force that shifts like the tide.

In te ao Māori, the movement of the sea reflects our kare-a-roto, - not just emotions, but dreams (moemoeā), intuition, and inner stirrings. The ocean doesn’t resist the pull. She follows her rhythm, offering space to whakawātea, - to clear, to rest.

Standing at the water’s edge, I’ve come to feel that rhythm.

A quiet reminder that it’s okay to be as I am.

To move with whatever I’m carrying.

And to find, in that rhythm, a little space to breathe again.
2025 05 30The Heart Shape“Mum, can we get a waffle maker?”

That was the first thing my son said when he came home from a sleepover at a friend’s house. He told me they had waffles for breakfast.

I’d always thought of those things as just another gadget that would end up collecting dust. I had no intention of buying one. But then I happened to come across a good secondhand one, and I couldn’t resist bringing it home.

The batter is runnier than for pancakes. Just pour it in, press, and in less than two minutes, the waffles are ready.

This is good. Easier than making pancakes in a frying pan.

My kids carefully place their knives along the waffle’s cut lines. It’s perfect practice for using a knife and fork.

The little heart-shaped piece they cut out seemed to hold so much. The ease of the waffle maker. The joy of that first bite. Small signs of growing up. And the little happiness of a slow Sunday morning.
2025 05 25Soliloquy begins.
The truth is, we’re always surrounded by beauty.

But somewhere along the way, each day started to feel like a stack of tasks. “Living” began to seem more like something to get through than something to truly feel.

Before I knew it, years had slipped by, swept along by the noise and rush of everything around me.

Lately, I’ve found myself wanting to cherish the small, fleeting moments. The quiet shifts in season. The unexpected encounters. The subtle feelings or thoughts that rise up and might otherwise slip away unnoticed.

I hope to gather those moments in words and images, and leave a little trace of them behind.

I don’t know how often I’ll be able to keep it up. But for now, I’m starting here for myself, more than anything.