Designing Experience
I often say that I design experiences, but that wasn't where my journey began.
I began by studying architecture because I was fascinated by a simple question:
How does design shape human experience?
Architecture taught me that space is never neutral. Every wall, threshold, proportion, and path influences how we move, gather, perceive, and relate to one another. Buildings do more than shelter us, they quietly shape our behaviors, our emotions, and our sense of belonging.
Over time, however, I became less interested in architecture as the design of buildings and more interested in architecture as the design of experience.
That curiosity led me to theatre.
The stage revealed something architecture alone could not. Space did not have to be permanent to be transformative. A temporary environment, inhabited by performers, light, sound, movement, and an audience, could alter perception just as profoundly as any building. Set design became more than constructing scenery; it became the choreography of relationships between bodies, objects, narrative, and space.
Working across theatre, opera, and film expanded that understanding even further. Each discipline offered a different way of exploring the same inquiry. Theatre taught me about presence. Film revealed how time, framing, and editing shape perception. Painting became an exploration of composition, attention, and atmosphere. Although the mediums changed, the questions remained remarkably consistent.
I eventually realized I had never been moving from one discipline to another.
I had been investigating the same question through different forms of practice.
Today, I no longer think of design as the creation of objects. I think of it as the design of relationships.
Every project is an opportunity to shape the relationship between people and space, story and audience, image and emotion, movement and meaning. Whether designing a theatrical production, directing a film, creating an installation, developing a visual identity, or collaborating with an institution, my work begins by asking how an experience can invite people to see, feel, and relate differently.
For this reason, I describe my practice as experience design. It is a field broad enough to encompass architecture, performance, film, visual art, exhibition design, and immersive environments without being confined to any one of them. Each project demands its own medium.
The philosophy remains the same.
Collaboration is central to this process. Every story, place, organization, and community already possesses its own intelligence, rhythms, and relationships. Rather than imposing a visual language, I begin by listening, studying the conditions that already exist before shaping an experience that feels authentic to its context. Design, for me, is not about adding meaning. It is about revealing possibilities.
Whether creating for a theatre, a cultural institution, a public space, or an organization, I am interested in experiences that invite participation rather than passive observation. I believe the most memorable works are those that remain with us long after the event has ended because they have shifted not only what we experienced, but how we perceive the world itself.
I think like an architect.
I compose like a visual artist.
I create like a theatre-maker.
Today, those disciplines come together in a broader practice dedicated to designing experiences that transform how people perceive, connect, and engage with the world.
The questions that have guided my artistic practice eventually expanded beyond the performing arts into a broader exploration of perception, creativity, embodiment, and organizational life.
Vessel is the continuation of that inquiry, a transdisciplinary experience design studio that partners with cultural institutions, organizations, and communities to create immersive experiences that foster learning, collaboration, and human development.
