For decades, the metric for a successful workspace was efficiency. We designed for maximum output, visibility, and "constant collaboration". However, by obsessing over output, we inadvertently designed out the very thing high-level performance requires: the ability to reflect.

At Field and Folk, we believe that efficiency is the old metric. Reflection is the new one. Our research into environmental psychology and neurodiversity shows that when we fail to design for the nervous system, we fail our best thinkers.

There’s something quietly powerful about a space that holds you. Not just somewhere to sit and work, but a space that makes you exhale. That knows the shape of your day and wraps around it and supports it. Most of us don’t ask for that kind of relationship from our workspace. But, we should….

In a world that often rewards outward expression; achievement, visibility, productivity, we can begin to forget the quiet considerations of the inward gaze. We become caught in the world of expectation, roles, output and place, losing sight of our original self, our body, our breath, and the intuitive pulse of our being.

Some spaces feel engaged. Others don’t. Our senses know, your body knows.

The flicker of unease.
The tension in your jaw.
The need to get up and walk away, without knowing where you’re going.

These are not mood swings or quirks.
They’re signals.
Whispers from within saying: “This doesn’t feel safe. I can’t rest here.”

Before the brain has a chance to process, your body has already spoken.
And if we’re paying attention, it becomes clear:

Design isn’t just visual. It’s physiological.

There is a small crack….an aged piece of furniture…
A thread coming loose...

But there is something comforting about them, isn’t there?
Not despite the imperfection, but because of it.

This is the quiet language of wabi-sabi.

Not a trend. Not a style.
But a way of being.
A way of seeing the world, not because of what’s missing, but despite it.
Just as it is.

Wabi-Sabi is a way of seeing the world, one that honours imperfection, impermanence, and the natural cycles that shape our lives and environments.