A Case for Slow Design: why should you care?
Musings of an Interior Designer on the reason why adopting a simple, mindful and intentional life will help us create environments that allows us to thrive both professionally and personally.
An unexpected sharp turn in my life forced me to realize I had to stop the maddening speed at which I was going. Mind you, I had speed in my blood inherited from mom, lovingly nicknamed “Fangia,”^1 who inherited speed from her father, Yayo, who also had a passion for fast cars. I loved life with my Subaru WRX, zipping up and down idyllic Northeastern back roads meeting up with buddies for hikes, white water kayaking adventures, or on my own, searching for quaint small towns with no goals in mind. With my shaky finances, I had nothing more in mind than a desire to do good in the world with my Interior Design background. That is, until Lyme Disease introduced me to slow life.
I didn’t stumble on Slow Design in a magazine or through the internet. Amidst a deep economic recession, I was incredibly lucky to sell my one-bedroom apartment for a profit. I took the plunge and moved away from the city. And in that moment, “Slow Life Style” meant a quaint little town, a new home to design and my own Interior Design business on my terms. At the one-year mark, Lyme gave me my first true taste of what it meant to slow down, simplify, and more importantly, how to ask for help. Later, Rheumatoid Arthritis would seal my pact with a slower life.
Then the world made an “unexpected” sharp turn in 2020, forcing us all, like it or not, to slow down. The year upended work environments, homes and life as we knew it. Once-bustling downtowns, busy office buildings, and packed public transportation turned into eerily silent ghost towns. Lockdown forced millions of employees to work full time from home, and those homes turned into offices, schools, gyms, virtual meetings, restaurants and hair salons. Chaos, loneliness, hardships and stress found their way into family homes as well as single households, everyone grappling to make sense of it all. Along the way, other issues — previously hidden under the rush of modern life — exposed themselves: tired relationships, crowded homes, and excess stuff, among other issues.
Reports on mental health showed lockdown was harder than what could be seen on the surface, and mental health problems were on the rise. Some people, trying to cope with the uncontrollable situation, went on a spending frenzy, renovating kitchens or replacing furniture, creating chaos on the supply chain. City dwellers were coping with loneliness and the lack of outdoor time. The need for community, nature and simplicity was palpable. The quietness of lockdown forced us to adopt a slow-life approach.
I believe we should carry on living a slower life, integrating the lessons learned this past year into recreating our working environments, our homes and our lives to authentically express ourselves. Enter Slow Design, a non- dogmatic design movement that had been adopted by many before 2020.
What is Slow Design and why should you care?
Slow Design is a simple, mindful and intentional way of living. A design movement where people’s values, virtues and stories are used to design an environment not dictated by style rules. As Nathan Williams in his book, The Kinfolk Home, states, “Slow living is less of a style and more of a deeply personal mentality.”^2 Slow Design reflects both our physical spaces as well as our lives — Slow Design and Slow Lifestyle are one and the same.
- Simple living: simplifying everyday tasks, or letting go of meaningless excess (physical, mental, technological), or changing our relationship with multitasking.
- Mindful living: being fully aware of our thoughts, feelings and behaviors, taking a step back from automated life. Sharon Salzberg beautifully describes it like this: “It is not just about inhabiting our lives more fully — it’s about understanding our lives and having much sharper discernment about where we want our lives to go and what gives us meaning, what actually makes us happy.”^3
- Intentional living: closely examining what is important to us and making sound choices based on what fulfills us.
What I’m talking about is the messy yet beautiful lives we live, not the picture-perfect life shown on Social Media. Comparing ourselves to others, turning our backs on nature and living in excess is what brought us to an automated, full of excess and mindless multi-tasking life.
Slow Design meddles with our vulnerability and allows us to ask important questions: “What is our purpose, our role in life?” “Where are we in our journey, in our careers?” For some, these concepts are terrifying to confront, yet the current situation is begging us to re-evaluate how, why, and where we work and live.
Slow Life Style for All
The stillness of the lockdown reflected back on us our ailing relationship with community, nature and sustainability. For the past two centuries, the need to rush, rush, rush in all aspects of life has been the norm. Slow Life’s core teaching is honoring the importance of being in tune with ourselves, others and nature.
It Takes a Village — Community
The truth of the matter is that we as human beings are all interconnected. Our modern life steers us to be strong, independent and to not ask for help, yet this just takes us down a lonely path. As social creatures we need to gather to fulfill our sense of purpose. In order to thrive we need to give and receive physical and emotional support, which only the community can fulfill.
When we feel helpless it is important to be able to create new horizons for ourselves, and in the words of Joanne Roberts, “increasingly the social interaction created through communities is being recognized as a source of creativity”^4. Creativity, beyond making a more beautiful world, makes us better problem solvers in life and work. And after a global pandemic, where stagnation and doom was an everyday feeling, creative thinking can help us look beyond the current situation and find solutions beyond the box.
The Circle of Life — Nature
As we wrapped our minds around the tragedy of this pandemic, nature continued its course undeterred. Outside our windows, trees bloomed, leafed and lost their leaves. The simple act of being witness to this phenomenon is in itself healing. Science has shown us that exposure to nature is linked to lower stress, better mood and overall mental wellbeing. Nature comes in all shapes and sizes and we can expose ourselves to it even from the windows of our apartments.
Natural light is of utmost importance for mental and physical health. The sun is the best resource for Vitamin D, key in keeping our immune system healthy. Being exposed to the natural process of day and night helps regulate our circadian rhythm, the internal process by which the body regulates our sleep/wake cycle and is in charge of important functions in our bodies.
Borrowing from our Children — Sustainability
It is common knowledge how wasteful we are as a society — I myself am guilty of it too. Call it keeping up with the Joneses or being bored and wanting the latest toy. If there was one way I wish Slow Design could help our lives, it would be to make us aware of how much harm these habits cause to both ourselves and nature. This is where simplicity comes into play. Editing our lives of physical, mental and technological excess is important to be able to see the lives around us, to enjoy our communities and the nature around us. I’m not suggesting a complete wipe out of stuff, rather, a mindful edit of what doesn’t work. We need to learn to be intentional of how we dispose of physical items.
Equally important is to be mindful of a new item’s quality and the impact it has on the environment. Yes, there will be a cost associated with changes, but as my dad would say, “lo barato sale caro,” or in my lousy translation, “cheapness costs.” Quality trumps quantity. We need to sit with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s wisdom: “We don’t inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.”
In closing, as the world starts to reopen, our next steps will be crucial in determining not only our livelihoods but the local and global state of our communities, nature and the environment. That super-speedy modern life we were living pre pandemic did not feed our basic needs. If the physical spaces where we live and work are a reflection of our inner landscape, wouldn’t we be better off living a simpler, more mindful and intentional life?
Now, downshift to 3rd gear, release the gas pedal ever so slightly, and Slow Design — sharp turn ahead.
- In reference to Juan Manuel Fangio, Argentinean speed racer from the 1950's
- Williams, Nathan. “Kinfolk Home- Interiors for Slow Living”. p.12, Workman Publishing, 2015.
- Salzberg, Sharon, Boyce, Barry and Marturano, Janice. “The Key to a Mindful Work Life”, Mindful Movement, September 20,2018 *www.mindful.org.*
- Abstract for Roberts,Joanne, 2017. “Community, creativity and innovation,” Chapters, in: Harald Bathelt & Patrick Cohendet & Sebastian Henn & Laurent Simon (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Innovation and Knowledge Creation, Chapter 21, pages 342–359, Edward Elgar Publishing.
