How do we realize our full potential? By engaging with the world whole, across and beyond our professional life. Playing, exploring, observing what goes on outside of our habitual territory makes us more responsive and inventive. Design, done wholeheartedly, is lots of fun.

IN THE WOODS

The lot Gregoire’s family reserves for weekend gateways is wild woodland, most of it very steep. Instead of digging the earth and pouring concrete, he built their tiny retreat up in the trees. As is often the case, the most constraining aspect of the project turned into its defining and most beneficial asset. It was built fast and light. The bird's eye view is dreamy. Humidity and other uninvited guests are kept away, on the ground. This unusual setting, particularly distant from ordinary concerns, lifts the mind and encourages a poetic attitude.

FURTHER AFIELD

Graphic design is a process of distillation: a large amount of information is gathered, sorted out, then condensed into elemental and precisely rendered forms. As a counterpoint to this practice, one might like to experiment more loosely: putting forward spur-of-the-moment statements without attempting to direct their implications, looking forward to witnessing – rather than controlling – the eventual appearance of meaning, watching how that happens, how it rises and where it goes, untethered. Examples of this kind of work are presented in drawn and written forms on Grégoire’s personal site.