... work in progress, and things I’m learning along the way. Not a newsletter. Just a place to share ideas, tools, and observations that shape the work and help make sense of the creative process.
COMMUNITY | RYHTHM | BELONGING Communities keep reshaping how I work and why I do it. A year ago they were not really on my radar. Not because I could not see the point, I had just not had the chance to experience them yet.
This year changed that.
I spend time in three global communities, each with its own rhythm. One helps me slow down and think more deeply about brands. Another keeps me close to the day to day of design and the tools we all rely on. The third is where I share the messy middle, test ideas in real time and learn what it takes to hold a community together.
Some days it is about learning. Other days it is about accountability. Often it is simply having space to think and make sense of the work.
Being part of a community is one thing. Helping run one is another. It takes care, consistency and a lot of listening. The structure has to evolve with the people using it, not the other way round.
It shapes the way I listen, question, and make space for ideas comes from those shared rooms.
WHEN BRUTALISM FEELS GROUNDING Brutalist buildings have always had a strange pull for me. Concrete, weight, sharp geometry. I used to think there were not many of us who found them grounding or even a bit comforting.
The Sheraton in Doha is one of those places. For people who knew the city twenty or thirty years ago, it is still the reference point along the water. The business district behind it keeps getting taller and faster, yet that low concrete pyramid holds its shape. In a place that moves this quickly, that piece of brutalism feels quietly grounding.
It has become a kind of visual anchor for the Corniche, a simple form that keeps showing up along the shoreline. The city keeps evolving around it, yet that outline holds the earlier chapters in view so you can read what has changed and what has stayed.
Step out, look across the water, and that concrete wedge tells you exactly where you are. Orientation, memory and mood, all triggered by one shape that refuses to move.
Step in and it shifts again. The interiors carry that 70s modern feel mixed with softer gold tones, mirrored details and more traditional Arabesque influences. Not pure art deco, not contemporary either, but a very specific Qatari modernist moment that still feels right for the structure holding it.
Maybe that is why it keeps catching my eye. The way a city chooses to keep certain forms and interiors says a lot about the story it wants to carry forward. Sometimes that story sits in concrete and brass for decades, and you feel it most when you come back after some time away and realise the place still feels a little bit like yours.
IDEAS STAY WITH YOU Ideas do not always show up when you chase them. Sometimes it is a sound, a small moment, a bit of light that makes you see things differently.
A city corner. The pulse of a train. A line from a book.
Patti Smith wrote, “There’s no hierarchy in the garden of time.”
It is a reminder that every moment holds something if you let it. Maybe that is why experience matters so much. Ideas do not always come from big breakthroughs. They come from the everyday, from the places, details and feelings we move through without realising how much they give us.
They stay with you.
They shape how you think and what you create next.
