CREATIVE SPACES
“Don’t tell me what you want, tell me who you are, how you wish to live …”
Out of conversation, a project is born, a structure starts to rise, home to the best vision of your life, the practical implementing, and what you can’t quite yet see …. because it’s wonderful, mysterious, and yet to be revealed. Built in, designed precisely, unimpeded potential.
Creative spaces are crucibles for art. Whatever yours is. They are meant to gather and potentize every creative spark and simultaneously harmonize and remove any obstacle …. All through inspired design and listening … to you, to the land, to the materials and to the possibilities that arise in the fusion of our process.
Creative spaces are where it’s happening, literally, just by walking in the door. You have entered the circle of your creativity. Limitation ceases.
RECORDING STUDIOS
In recent years, I have designed several recording studios for artists who are looking to make and record their music in a space specifically created for free flowing expression, state of the art acoustics, and above all, enhanced creativity. These recording studios are first and foremost, creative spaces. They are designed and built to inspire and enable the musician to create on entirely new levels. The fact they also are places to record is actually secondary in the experience. Primary is and must always be, the creative act.
By working with an artist directly, in intensive dialogue, I come to understand their music and their process. This is the heart of the undertaking, as ultimately we are seeking to both support and challenge the artistic capacity and namely, to draw forth untapped reservoirs within their creativity. This studio is a hybrid of creative space meeting high level recording and mixing. There is not just one way to design a recording studio. Each design is entirely individual, based on the musician, the dominant instruments used, and music based preference.
I try to simplify and amplify the artist’s experience. Working with reputed acousticians, the design is home to optimal sound engineering. I aim to create overall flow, with no separation between what is created and what is recorded. Often there is no control room /booth in the studio but rather the sound panel is placed in the room itself, for simple and direct communication and rapport. The studio is multidimensional, several things happening at once and yet it’s also just a song, your song, in that moment . The space extracts that reduction and concentration while supporting you to stand on the pinpoint of real-time artistic embodiment.
The studio is designed with a maximum use of natural materials, used intentionally to create a holistic environment, whether in the iso booth or in the space at large, the aim is that you as an artist are utterly at ease, able to remain, to stay longer, to really go deeply into the musical creative process - and yes, bring forth an album or recording, alive, fluid and spontaneously happening. My mission as the designer is to strike the balance between creation and capture.
My recording studio work has been a great personal pleasure . Combining my love of music with my own sense of what is optimally needed for artistic excellence in the spatial realm, I have worked with some amazing and inspiring musicians who have, in turn, taken my own work to greater levels. I thank you all for your trust and appreciation and the good times shared. Several of my clients are well known but wish to remain anonymous . My most renown work to date is Aaron Dessner’s ( of The National )
Long Pond Studio. Several internationally acclaimed artists have recorded there with joy and abandon.