Design with Awareness, Passion & Intention

WHAT IS DESIGN FOR WELLNESS?

Below is a Transcription of an interview with Delahrose.

(It’s a more extended read than average)

Question: Okay. Delahrose, can you define the design for wellness, please?

Delahrose: Design for wellness is about harmonising your environment with how you want to live in your environment. It's about looking at the elements. It's about looking at the textures. It's about looking at the colour. It's looking at how you want to move within your environment and what you need to feel. Whether it's having lots of plants or saying, “No. I don't want any plants. I don't want to see anything. I want minimalism.” Whatever it is, you require how things are strategically placed so that energy can move and freely flow in that environment and how easy it is to maintain your environment.

If it's very clunky and cluttered, you can quickly feel overwhelmed, like, “I just can't keep on top of things.” If you can design a space that becomes very easy to look after and care for, you’ve lightened your load and that energetic weight of feeling like you're not keeping up with things. So instantly, you feel lighter in your spirit. You feel healthier and like you have more time to do other things you love and enjoy.

Question: All right. Can you talk about the whole principle of energy and environments, please?

Delahrose: Energy and environments. Energy is an exciting concept. And it's a word I use pretty liberally, so I'd like to explain it better for those that don't quite understand it. It is a feeling. It’s where you feel shadowed or where you feel light. That's energy. If you put much furniture into an area, you will feel the room feel dense. It will feel heavier, especially if it's a small room with big furniture pieces. It pulls energy from you rather than gives and restores energy to you.

When you're in an area where it's very light, there's lots of glass, or it's expansive, instantly, you feel lighter. You may not necessarily feel better, but you'll feel the energy shift. Whether something is stuck, whether something is soft, or whether something is heavy, or something is physically lighter. You can think that transition occurs. So that's a term for energy. You understand how something is feeling and how it's imposing itself towards you.

Question: Why is it important to have wellness in our environment?

Delahrose: In today's times, the world has become highly demanding. We're expected to fulfil many roles and have many duties to perform daily. We have to keep up with so many different things. The more we can find moments to enjoy the pause where we can just be in an environment where we can just be with ourselves or where we can just sit and appreciate the day or appreciate beauty, that gives us wellness. That's what.

When people say go in nature, take a walk, you know, connect with the earth, allow yourself to be grounded, usually that works so well because instantly it simplifies our lives because we've left the noise at home. We've walked into a space that does not expect of us. It just allows us to be with ourselves.

So if we can create environments that allow us to feel comfortable and not like, “Oh my God, I'm going to dirty this couch. And no, please don't sit on the couch. Let me put a towel on it because it's so white, and I’ve got a house full of children.” I mean, that's not creating a sense of wellness. It's creating a visual piece of beauty but not making you feel well because you’re concerned about how you will care for and clean it. Who's going to dirty it? Are the kids going to put their feet on it when you're not looking? That creates tension, and that makes you feel nervous anxiety internally.

And so, it's learning to appreciate what is feeding my anxiousness and giving me a sense of calm so that I can restore to go out and deal with the world full of that.

Question: First, can you tell me the hallmarks of an environment that feels well? How would you know?

Delahrose: When you walk into an environment, you instantly go, “Ahh”. As soon as you walk into the doors, you know, “Ahh. I can just sit. I can put my feet up. I can just enjoy that beautiful painting that I bought. Or I just feel instantly safe when I’m here.” So it's giving you a sense of place and a sense of safety which provides you with a sense of belonging. When you feel like you belong somewhere, it elevates you to the importance of, “I feel anchored, and I feel grounded in my being.” That's the contrast of what can make you feel well.

Living in environments that aren’t harmonising with you can make you feel heavy or don't have things that represent love, beauty, and likeness around you. Something that should resonate with your spirit of being, you know. Some people like lots of white. Some people like lots of colours. Some people like dark, moody rooms because that's what their spiritual needs are to feel restored. They need to feel like, “I want the lights dimmed. I don't want to feel like my brain is switched on. I want to feel like I can be quiet and calm, have music piped through the rooms because it's soft and gentle.” People have different desires, but it understands what makes you feel well, and you bring that to somebody like me, but then it can create that template of wellness for you.

Question: As we talk about wellness in environments, can you talk about its opposite and what makes an environment toxic? And can you list some factors that make environments toxic?

Delahrose: What makes an environment toxic is if you're living where there are rubbish bins at your front door, that's not ideal. There's always a way to relocate the containers, or you could put some sort of shielding around them, some plants around them, to soften their appeal to the eye.

If you have to… You just never have time. You kick off all your shoes at the front door and find you have to climb over your shoes to get into the kitchen. These environments take energy from you all the time because you see clutter. You’re seeing things that make you go, “Ahh, I should pick that up. I should do this.” As soon as you start beginning all of your sentences with “I should” instantly, you’re taking energy away from yourself because you're living in the space of complexity. You’re perplexed. It’s like, “Oh, I’m tired. And I just want to put my feet up, but I should pick up those shoes. They just start climbing every day.”

So it's understandable. Or if you've got bad smells that are constantly permeating. If you're sitting at the dinner table and the rubbish bins are overflying with rubbish, you can see it while trying to eat. That's not a harmonious, healthy, and well-feeling environment to eat a beautiful meal. Even though you may have spent ages cooking the meal, what you've lost is the… to bring in the harmony of the environment where you're eating the meal. I mean, even if you started a little tiny venture outside near a fragrant gardenia bush, just, for example, that would feel better to your spirit than if you just got inside next to a rubbish bin eating dinner.

And often, I see kitchens designed this way, where they don't think about where the bin will be. How is that smell going to impact me? These are the tiny details we have to think about: wellness. Health is an environment speaking to your senses. And so, we have a sense of taste, our sense of touch, our sense of sight, our sense of smell, and our sense of self. And so, how does an environment speak to all of those parts of me and learn to appreciate and know? We're not all in a position where we can create our ideal outcomes, but for those of us, we have a golden opportunity to build something that can be restored. Or we can create something very restorative to us so that we can be dynamic in our role and fulfil our external ambitions knowing that we're taking excellent care of ourselves. So then we're living in alignment. And for those who don't have the means to transform their environment because they're renting, you can still make small steps to replenish. Whether it's your bathrooms, how you’ve laid out your kitchen, or where you could put that bin. Where is an alternative place that you could put that bin, you know, that it's not going to have such an impact on you?

Some people have to… you know they have their kitty litter in the kitchen. It's like, “Is this where a kitty litter needs to be? In the kitchen?” You know, it’s thinking things through a little bit more and understanding their flow and impact.

Question: Great. So I'm going to circle back to that in the end. Can you talk to me about the design and when it’s like colour, texture, etcetera that you… when are you approaching the space that you take into consideration?

Question: Domestic and commercial. Domestic and commercial.

Delahrose: The domestic and commercial environments. Okay. When you're approaching a space, it can be tricky. And not everything can go in a particular area. You can have an environment that may be triangular in its nature. And so, you're not going to be putting lots of rectangle tables into that space because that's going to clutter that space. And it's how I can find the central centre, which is the heart of that room, and from the heart, I work my way up from there. And so I allow the shape to define the flow space of what I'm working with. Then I understand, “Okay. What is it we need to put into this space, and what sort of shapes can work within this space?”

Then I work with colour. How can I bring colour into this that can elevate and raise the room's energy so that the eye isn’t looking at a round table in a triangular space? It's just standing back and seeing the whole landscape as if you were, you know, looking at a beautiful painting. You’re not looking at one aspect of the image. You're looking at the picture as a whole. And it's the whole thing that is speaking and resonating with you. It's not just one piece in the painting talking to you.

So it's appreciating how the room's shape, colour, tone, and structure need consistent, cohesive language but not matchy-matchy—learning to bring out the individual strengths of the room. For instance, a triangular space can be tricky, but you can bring out some incredible energy in that room because you've got two impressive walls as your backdrop. And if you've just got an open front that's leaning into another part of the house, then you've got an opportunity to frame that and turn that into an actual feature that can resonate and become natural energy of itself in a space that you want to be in that doesn't feel like it's just one big open plain room. You've taken a piece and said, “I'm defining this piece to become my breakfast room.”

And then over here, yes, it's adjacent to my living room, but because you've defined that shape as your breakfast room, it tells that story. And so, it harmonises with that and then gently brings its conversation to join in with the living room so that you've got a whole picture again. But if you take segments, you can still enjoy that piece for what it’s telling and saying to you. It's like when you decorate a drawing room. And then, you might decorate a study. And it's like they have a language, but they have different elements that define them.

Question: Can you expand on that a little more about different rooms? You've been speaking a lot about homes. So can we… We might come back to that piece as well. Can you talk about the design for rooms in spas, please?

Delahrose: Oh. I’m designing for wellness and spas. Now, I think they have such an excellent environment. Instantly, you’re thinking about air. You’re thinking about water. You’re thinking about cleansing. You’re thinking about restoring. You’re thinking about low light. You want to feel at peace. You want to become quiet.

You instantly want to become quiet in many of these environments and start whispering. That defines a wellness spa now, though I don't believe that this is what all wellness spas need to represent or be reminiscent of. Because to feel well is actually to feel at ease in one's skin, not feel tight like, “Oh, I have to be shhh. I’m going to be quiet. I’m going to put on a robe and just sit here quietly and not make conversation because it’s always a whisper.”

Sometimes, I think spas need to start to look at becoming more of a health club per se, or it needs to be more of a gathering where you can go. You can experience different environments within that wellness institution that can feed other parts of the spirit. Whether it's taking part in a very dynamic, inspiring workshop, or where it's going and having an elixir at the green bar, or where it's going and having an astrology conversation with somebody, where it has some spiritual guidance or whether it's telling a beautiful history of the massage, or where you’re having a facial. We need to start to expand on these environments a little bit more and find ways that we can connect with other people because it's when we connect with other people that we begin to appreciate more of ourselves because we can see some of the wisdom that we carry that other people enjoy hearing about and exchanging stories. It's a powerful story. It's the power of learning something from somebody and then moving that on and sharing that with somebody else.

I think our environments, rather than shutting us down and making us feel silent, need to be environments that can replenish, restore, inspire, and feed us in a way that we become more evoked and more involved in our lives. We’re engaged. We need more engagement, not so much separation. We have so much separation. There are places for silence, and there are places for meditation. But then there need to be places where we can have engagement. And not everybody wants to go to a tennis club. Not everybody wants to go to a squash club or a gym and work out, pump iron and blast music. Still, people do want to feel like they can connect and have a conversation and learn something that can be empowered by information about looking after their bodies, looking after their children, looking after their families, and caring for their careers. How they can build, grow, and expand.

You know these dynamic conversations need to be brought into wellness more. So it's not about shutting off and switching off. It's about actually gathering information that can restore us, feed us, and nurture us at the same time. These environments now, I believe, need to become dynamic environments that provide a multitude of desires that we have and needs that we have.

Question: Thank you. And can you talk about Design for Wellness? There will be about five areas. Design for Wellness in residential structures, please. What it is, and why it’s essential.

Delahrose: Okay. Well, in residential areas--.

Question: Residential developments.

Delahrose: Residential developments, we need to appreciate. We need a certain amount of privacy. We don't want to feel like we're sitting on top of our neighbours in that I can be in the living room, and I can hear what my neighbours are discussing in the bedroom because our windows are almost arm's reach away from each other. This is not a wellness residential development. This is a cookie-cutter residential development that's been created that way purely because it's maximising the footprint, it’s maximising the profits, it's maximising everything for the developer and nothing for the homeowners.

The homeowner’s getting home on a piece of land, and they're getting a home that looks like almost everyone else's home on the street. This is not the direction that we need to be going in now. We need to be able to bring some individuality. We need to be able to get some of our lessons. We need to be able to create villages that have a unique signature to them that they have an independent language so that we don't feel like we've become soldiers in a grey town. And just painting your front door a different colour doesn't necessarily give you an individual edge in these environments.

So let's say you are in one of these environments and trying to bring a sense of more wellness; well then, my advice would be to look at colour, lighting, and screening. How can you create a slight separation from that noise you're experiencing right next door to you? How can you make some buffer to take your focus off that? And that's purely the best that you will achieve is to remove your stress from that. The only way we can do that is to create something aesthetically beautiful that speaks to you in another way so that your attention isn't solely on what you dislike. Now it's applying it to what is beautiful about it.

Question: Can you talk about design for wellness for residential developments from a developer’s point of view?

Delahrose: From the developer’s perspective, we need to realise that… Okay. Developers are always looking at how many houses they can get on their possible land to make the returns he needs to make to do this development. That's where he's coming from when he's doing this.

Well, where it can be looked at is that it's not about how big the building footprint is; it's about the quality of the home built on that footprint and how you can create some privacy. So instead of setting all the houses lined up like ducks, how about you set one back, one forward, one back, one ahead? And start to create some… you know, just break it up a little bit so that you've got some context and some texture to it so that it's not just this machine. Like it's just been spilled out of a factory. And start to think about building an extra floor rather than just one flat landscape because everyone wants this big house. Then we’re using that more land when perhaps we scale back and allow indoor and outdoor spaces to have a continual language; you feel your home has an extension. It's larger than really what it is.

And it's learning to use those mythologies and appreciate that the townhouse is an excellent medium that I like because they have a beautiful resonance where they can sit on the landscape, they don't take up a considerable footprint, they have other layers to them, they have other floors, and they're creating dimensions so that you're making this excellent textual environment for those that love it, for those that want to level floor. Like I said, if we use some of the outdoor space and allow that to speak to our indoor space so that when we open it up, we have a lounge room that's double the size rather than saying, “No. I have this lounge room, and then I have walls, a door, and then the deck.” One allowed language to extend and become a part of the deck depending on where you are building, but we still have strong sunlight here in Australia, so we shouldn’t be worried about those things.

Question: And can you talk about design for wellness in resorts, like luxury resorts? What would the luxury resort owner need to consider in designing an alternative?

Delahrose: In placement is the first paramount where public space is, where a private room is, where your activity space is, and then where you've got your rest, and then where you're eating. This is how you break it all up, and you need to understand how that language must communicate across that entire landscape.

For instance, how do villas access the main body if you're a hotel and have villas? How far do they have to walk? Do you need to have buggies, or can you take a stroll? Are you building it with health and wellness in mind, or are you making it purely with luxury? It's getting clear on your initial intention, what you're trying to deliver, and how that needs to be mastered and managed, but it's working with materials. Materials that are soft to the eye. Materials that are grounded create anchor and presence. And then using colour and soft fabrics and textures that bring out this sense of, “I feel safe. I feel nurtured. I feel cocooned. This is where I want to be on a resort holiday. I want to feel like I'm not in this… what feels dim, or what feels spa, or what feels empty.

You want to feel like you can have an experience at each corner. You turn your eye is being delighted by a new venture or a new wonder, you know. If you're in… there's a lot of natural animals, bushlands and things around, and you want to feel like you can take these strolls. You can have an experience, and you can stumble across a turtle walking on the beach, or you can stumble across a beautiful giant gecko crossing the road, and you’re stopping to allow this to happen. These are experiences we don't want to take away from our life or our holiday. These are the stories that we want to go home and talk about. “Do you remember when we see that? That was such a wonderful thing just to pop out of the blue.”

When we build with the environment in mind, we’re sensitive to that natural wildlife and ensure that we allow corridors for this wildlife to merge with what we're creating. And so, it's appreciating the template. What's the type of land you’re building on? Where’s the environment you're making? What are the natural attributes of that environment? What sort of trees are you planting? Are they trees that might look good when they're five years old? But what are they going to look like when they are 20 years old? Understanding the evolution of what you're creating and how does its life force live through that evolution.

Question: Beautiful. Can you talk about design…? You talked a lot about plans for wellness in homes. Can you talk about three aspects, one of which is principles for newly built homes, principles for renovation, and principles for renters? Can we talk first about when you’re designing and wanting to build a house? What sort of design for wellness principles should you consider?

Delahrose: Okay. The first thing that comes to mind is the master question: What do you need from your home? What do you need to facilitate? How many bedrooms, for instance? How many children do you have? Do you like to have your kitchen separate from your dining? Do you want it to be a part of the same? Understanding how you like to move around your footprint is number one. Number two is, what is your building envelope? That actually should be number one. What’s your building envelope? How do you want to live in the house? And then, how do you want to scale that house? What is your budget? Because we’ve got to work with these realistic factors. We have to understand how much money we have.

For instance, if you're building something I know very well, I can quickly build something for about $350,000. For that, I would probably get a beautiful home made of wood. It would have a deck. It would have solar panels. It would have good pipes. It wouldn’t be plastic pipes because of the toxicity from the plastics that leach into our water systems. Filtered waters. It may not have a lot of heated floors because that's energy consumption and it’s unnecessary. It’s a luxury, but it's something that you don’t have to have. It would have a beautiful stove so you can cook lovely meals. We would have a communal dining table that would become the central theme of the kitchen so that it is a prep table as much as you can have breakfast ball there. It would have two bedrooms. In this case, with this budget, you would have two bedrooms. That would be large-sized bedrooms, probably about 4.5sqm. Then you would get a walk-in wardrobe. You’d have an on-suite in each of the rooms. And then between that could be an open deck which can be your entrance but also, they can be a closed-off area that could become a study so that you've utilised a door that’s also a study area, the quiet area between the two bedrooms. Then you’ve come into your living/dining space, and then you’d have a calm space where you can read, and everything else could be connected to the garden. And then you can build on from that. High ceilings are significant because high ceilings give you elevation. It gives you a sense of expansiveness so that your footprint doesn't need to be as substantial. And you can have a smaller footprint with more significant ceilings, and you will believe that you're living in a larger home. It's just the nature of space and learning how to understand spatial organisms.

Question: And can you talk about a renovation?

Delahrose: A renovation is usually someone says, “Okay. I want to renovate because I feel crapped or don't have enough space.” Usually, the main reasons people want to renovate are (1) they're trying to capture more space or (2) they don't like the flow of their home. There are too many tiny rooms that just don't get utilised. That there’s not enough space to make any good out of them, so you'd approach it as, “Okay. What are you trying to achieve?” If it’s to build a better living room with a library and you can use the library ladder, various things. Then you approach it from “Okay. This room will easily be able to break into that room because this is not a structural wall.” You have to understand what your structure beams are. And where your structural foundation walls are because you can't bust through those. You go to work with them.

And you've got to understand what walls you have that you cannot get away with. And it's learning how to harmonise those, so they’re no longer walls. They become beauty spots and features rather than saying, “Oh my God, I've got these big steel pipe that comes through the middle of my apartment, and it's just the nature of the building. But you know what I can do? I’ve got this big pipe.” Turn it into a feature. It can be a true songbird. It can be a real piece of difference that gives you a unique edge. That little work makes us feel like we're living in a unique environment unlike anybody else’s.

Question: And for renters?

Delahrose: Renters? Renters, it's the case of learning how to select furniture pieces that can suit the environment where you are. Sadly, you may have things that don’t work. Usually, it's a case of something you may need to modify and change. You may not be able to fit as much in this home as in another home. And it's appreciating when it's time to let go of something so that you can experience something better. And by that, I mean, if you are trying to hold on to lots and lots of things because they worked in this house, but now they're not working in this house, then you have to sit down and say to yourself, “Well, how long am I living here? Is this temporary? Am I building something after this, or is this my journey for a few years?” Suppose it’s a journey for a few years. In that case, you need to say, “Look, if you can't loan it out to a friend that can look after it for you and utilise it while you're not able to, then perhaps it's best to sell that so that then you can buy something that's going to work in that environment because that's going to bring you more peace and more centring in yourself. That'll give you a sense of wellness because you're creating something that's working within its environment better. It's not saying you have to wipe the slate clean and start over every time you move house; what it's saying is learning to pick pieces that become anchor pieces that can work and become very adaptable in most spaces and then using feature pieces that bring out the best in those anchor pieces.

Question: Thank you. Can you talk about design for wellness in apartments where you might not have much outdoor space? If you have a balcony at all. And how you might feel well living with many people around you.

Delahrose: Okay. Then what you need to do is when you go like this, you're already fixed on the lights you've got. Because if it's a rented space, you’re in a heavy, dense community, and your apartments will all look relatively similar.

The things you can change are: You can add some lamps. You can add some beautiful texture pieces. You can add some plants. You can pipe fragrance through your house. You can add elements and candles. You can allow yourself to have a corner that represents a quiet space to you. And then you have an area where this is where you function. This is your utility area. This is your laundry area. This is your kitchen area. This is a noisy area. So then that's where you make sure you tucked away the bins. The bins are not as apparent because they have a small footprint. You can scan the room and see everything everywhere, but the pieces resonate with your heart so that you can add cushions. As I mentioned, you can add beautiful lamps with fragrance—plants. But also it's positioning of furniture and not cluttering up your work areas. That's what's important is learning your layouts and what's going to work and not working at it as “Ah, I just don't want to let go of this. I've got to put this big concrete chair there because that's my favourite chair. It's appreciating, yeah, but that favourite chair is an eyesore in this environment which is no longer a favourite because it's not making your heart happy anymore. It might make you feel comfortable sitting in it, but it's not that… you can see that this is not working. It's not resonating with where you're living, how you're living, and who you are now.

Question: Can you talk about design for wellness in retail spaces?

Delahrose: Retail spaces are exciting. When I talk about retail spaces and wellness, it's fun because it's about entertaining the customer, delighting the customer, understanding the consumer, and how they want to feel when they come into and shop in this environment. Do they want to feel like, “Oh my God, I'm bumping into everything? I'm knocking things onto the floor. I feel awkward. Oh my God, get me out of here. I don't want to be in here.” That’s not going to attract your customers. That will attract a customer who stands at the counter and asks to be served. But if you don't have that sort of environment and it's a… area where a customer needs to browse, then you need to think about your workspaces. You need to consider how much space they have to walk around these areas and how strongly your displays are. Are good anchor pieces that will not fall apart if they get bumped? Do they need someone to help them get something, or could the customers get it themselves? These are all things that contribute to wellness. Wellness is peace of mind and ease of shopping.

Because that's how the customer wants to feel, they want to go there. They want to know that if I go to that shelf, that's where I'll find my favourite peanut butter or, “Oh my God, I just love that display. I just need a piece of that. That is just so beautiful.” It stops them in their tracks, elevates them, and releases their spirits. It delights their eye, and instantly as soon as that happens, they want to be a part of it, and they want a little piece of that to take home with them because it makes them feel like that in the shop that wanted to adapt that feeling and take it home with them. And remember it, and recall it so that they return to your shop to have that experience again.

Question: And why is featured visual merchandising so extremely important?

Delahrose: Visual merchandising is extremely important. We've become such a visual community now. The whole world is driven by its visual intent. We have Instagram. We have internet. Everything is picture driven. We want to see something that can give us ideas, can expand down imagination and take us to another level. And take us to another space. Take us on a journey in our mind or help us daydream about a time when “Oh, I remember when I was in Europe, and I experienced walking down that arcade. This reminds me of that. It was such a joyful time in my life.” So people want to continue to be moved. People buy feelings, and they believe in experiences. You are selling a sense when you do beautiful visual merchandising displays with beautiful windows. You are selling an experience to somebody because you’re transporting them to think about things differently. You’re allowing them to see something that they wouldn't ordinarily see. And that is entertaining your customers, which keeps them returning because they keep returning for that feeling.

Question: Absolutely. What are the major design trends for wellness design coming in the next three years?

Delahrose: The next three years, we're starting to look at… what I've been sort of… I'm a little bit entertained by this, and I don't have a document, but I'm a little bit amused because we're now starting to see death as not something to mourn and feel wrong about. We’re now beginning to see death as something to celebrate. You're celebrating somebody’s life, their legacy, their existence, the fact that they were here, and their effect on you.

And so, I see wellness is now starting to approach these areas. It's also starting to come in our school environments. It’s beginning to approach our childcare environments because it’s starting to say that when we feel well, we do well, and that's the way it is, like plants. When plants think well, they produce much fruit. They do well. And so, we need to start to see ourselves more from this primal perspective and begin to say how we can become better. The only way you can become better is not intellectually. Yes, intellectually, you can. You can study things but must improve from within to maintain that. You have to feel better. And when you feel better, then you can emanate that out. And then that…

And when you feel better, you magnetise that energy. And then that energy starts to come back towards you and feeds you. So, wellness is moving towards the future now that we've got wellness travel. People want to have an experience. They want to have a feeling. They want to know that they've got a story to tell and a story to share of how something trends on them or transporting them to discover another part of themselves that they didn't know was there.

These are magnificent experiences. We've got our wellness holidays. We've got wellness living. We've got people now starting to appreciate wellness now. Office space instead of burning out and just sitting in front of the computer for so long trying to tune out numbers, we now have pods that can be created where people can have a time out - 10 minutes, just sit in the pod and allow yourself to replenish, restore, and come back to your computer.

I remember years and years ago. I was working in hospitality. My general manager would come into the office, and he would just lay completely flat on the floor in front of all of us. So we go. “What's going on? Are you okay?” And he said, “Completely. I just need to shut down so I can restore, and then I'll keep going.” And he only needed five minutes just to ground and anchor, and then he was ready to fire again.

And so, I think we don't allow ourselves enough time to do this. So as we move towards the wellness of the future, we’re starting to appreciate fitness for the earth and our plants. How are we eating our food? Where is our food being produced? How is it being made? What are we feeding when we’re supporting and buying this product? Is this product ethically created? Are we helping people, and small businesses, that need to survive in this world? Are we supporting artisans who put so much love and energy into their work? Everything is having an impact. And as we progress further, we’re seeing how all of this is having an impact not only on our world, not only on our footprint, not only in our air quality, but also in our spirit, in our being and how we can keep sustaining and going at that fast pace. And it’s learning to take those moments to say what I need. And we're learning to ask that question more and more. People appreciate. They need a support system to keep trying to get that dynamic personality from an individual. And so, wellness will look more and more at how people can be supported in their transitions through life.

Question: I'm going to take it on a completely different track. Just to circle back to homes. Can you talk about trends for kitchens and trends for bathrooms, please?

Delahrose: Bathrooms are going to become a place where it's a reservoir. We need to understand that our bathrooms are not somewhere where we just go in there, dump our clothes in the laundry basket, take a quick shower, brush our teeth, go to the bathroom, and then just go out, and you know, watch TV.

Bathrooms are now becoming a ritual space where we go, “Ah, I want to clean my skin. I want to give myself a rap. I want to have a body scrub. I want to be able to soak in a long tub. Or if I can't have a tub, then I want to be able to have a shower.” Maybe you can have… If you're building your own home, I advise you to put steam showers in your showers so that you can clean your senses. If you're renting, you don't have this luxury. I appreciate that, but you can still have humidifiers that can allow you to clean the senses and the nasal passages so that you can open your airways.

Bathrooms are a place of solace. They are a place of creating softness for your spirit, where you can light a candle, where you can just be with yourself, where you can nurture yourself and cleanse your body. We have cleansing rituals.

Kitchens. Kitchens are all about where we eat, how we eat, what food we eat, and how we prepare our food. Do we like to have a lot full of many pantry items because we want to make many preserves, or how many dishes do we need? How much cupboard space do we need? Understanding the food that you're buying. You need larger areas in your fridge for your green products, so you've got all your green vegetables for your juicing. Is your juicer in a place that it's easy for you to clean and wash? Are you going to use it? If it's something that you've got to drag out of the cupboard, or put on a bench, most of the time, people won’t utilise it as much as they could. It understands the flow and the layout of your kitchen. Do you like to have dehydrators? We don't want microwaves in the future. We're turning away from microwaves. We're trying to come back to slow cooking.

Question: Is there anything else? I'm just checking all the keywords. Anything else, design for wellness?

Delahrose: I think wellness truly comes from the more you know yourself and the more you know what you need to feel well. The more you vote and full of vitality you're going to feel.

Question: So when you design an environment for wellness… Could you talk about how people like to stay in those environments longer? Can you talk about commercially successful and how they build business returns?

Delahrose: I can give you an example of… From a commercial point of view, in a retail environment. When you put some energy into your store, and when you put some energy from a hot space, it’s coming from love. You want something to resonate and look beautiful, complete, abundant, and lush. Instantly, as soon as you make that commitment and set that intention, and then you find somebody like myself that can bring that to life and create that for you, your ROI will go straight up. I've proven it over and over and over again. I feel so fixed on this because it's just proven. As soon as you create something people want to be a part of, you cannot help but make a profit.

Question: Thank you. It appears that you’ve taken principles of spa design and resort design for wellness and applied that to other environments.

Delahrose: Yes, I did. And I did a beautiful penthouse apartment in a lovely old wool-store building. This will store about 150 years old, so the developers have gone in, done all the flats, and put white doors on the front. Everybody had the same coloured door. It just looks like a standard sort of, you know, apartment building. You go up the lift to come out. All the doors are the same. They all have a number on the door. But it was in this fantastic building. It was incredible. It had these stunning Bolton ceilings with this old timber and these big timber beams coming up through the floors. I’m like, “This place is incredible. There’s so much history. Why would they want to put these, just these yucky white walls and white doors everywhere?” Anyhow, we couldn’t change that. It was all part of the bloody corporate, but I had the opportunity to do this penthouse apartment. It was just all on one level. It was just a plain old, you know, 250 square metre flat. It had a balcony, and it had windows that could… you could see the river. Well, you couldn't see the river. It just had these beautiful old-case windows.

I walked into it, and I went, “Wow! This place has so much potential.” I had such big roots in the spire industry at that point when I had this opportunity. So instantly, I could see the potential of this building. And by creating a mezzanine floor, I could increase the building’s footprint by 60 square metres. I was able to create a main bedroom upstairs plus another entertainment area. And because we had regulations of putting grills on the windows for safety, I designed windows with an appeal by adding the grills, these grills were handmade by a beautiful artisan.

I wanted him to make them reminiscent of cherry blossom branches with cherry blossoms on them. So even though they were over the windows, they didn't look like jail bars. They look like cherry bronze cherry blossoms. And so, I had those sorts of things. I put in a Japanese bath house because I had the luxury of that space. And so, I decided it was going to be a yoga space. It was going to be a dressing space. And it's going to be washing, a cleansing space. I was able to do these. I brought in the Japanese seethed doors and put the Chinese rice paper between the glass. They are very authentic, and they have a real personalities. Then I raised the floor of the apartment by 300mm, which allowed me to create what we call in the industry a floating floor because it was a void underneath onto a concrete floor. Still, I could have a timber floor that felt like a timber floor that wasn't laminated timber nailed to… glued down to a concrete base. However, it allowed freedom now.

Walking around the apartment, you could see the river through the window. You improved the ROI because now you have a view from wherever you look. I crazy paved the balcony so that the balcony wasn’t concrete. This is a beautiful apartment. Why am I walking out on an awful concrete patio when I can harmonise that crazy paper? So I did that with a fragile slate so that it didn't increase the height of the floor too much because we had sliding doors, and I needed to understand how that could read. So we had something transitional so that even as it transitioned from the balcony into the main living area and the kitchen, everything flowed.  

In the corner of it, I had a beautiful floor-to-ceiling library space which was… this was all in one footprint. This was all within this space because I created nooks that allowed you to experience different areas of this apartment. Even though you could see the whole thing, it's still when you went inside the library space and walked up the ladder to pull your book down; you honestly did not feel like you were in a plain open apartment. You felt like you were in this library nook. And it's being able to create theatre. And so that's what I love to do most of all when I have the opportunity to create theatre, and context, and atmosphere, and blend those, that gives you a resonance that you wouldn't experience anywhere else because it's your independent personal home.

Delahrose Roobie Myer

Awaken Designs

www.awakendesigns.com.au