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• Architecture
• Industrial Design
• Interior Design
• Sustainability

• Avinash Rajagopal
• biobased materials
• Ege Carpets
• Filzfelt
• Koukos de Lab
• Lingrove
• Mater
• Model No.
• Normann Copenhagen
• Spinneybeck

University of Pennsylvania graduate architecture student Kirah Cahill also turns her attention to the nonhuman world. Latrans Cohabitator portrays an elegant, detailed example of what our world might look like if humans shared their homes, harmoniously, with wild coyotes. The imaginative design for the multispecies dwelling helps tell the story of how coyotes have coexisted, mostly unseen, at the edges of human civilization for centuries. Modeled on the way coyotes build dens in the wild, the Latrans Cohabitator addresses the problem of isolation from the inside out: Its craggy, boulderlike form is laced with functional hidden tunnels organized in a system that accounts for both creatures’ daily needs and cyclical movements. 

Cahill wants to dismantle the mental barriers that block humans from understanding plants and animals as living creatures. It’s about challenging the cultural norm that “nature is seen as a separate, often threatening entity that must be carefully controlled.” By imagining a built environment that serves and protects two species simultaneously, the Latrans Cohabitator offers a new way forward: What if we extended our sense of safety and comfort to the other forms of life surrounding us? 

Embracing the more ephemeral aspects of interior design, Jessica Wilsey’s Notes + Notions highlights the interplay between two primary senses, smell and sound. Her project embraces a moving, multisensory narrative that feels both vivid and immersive—“akin to the complex layers of a symphony or a richly composed fragrance,” says the University of Texas at Austin graduate interior design student. Her Notes + Notions “Fragrance Lab,” designed to foster and celebrate the symbiotic relationship between two lesser-used senses, plays with the rich synesthetic and emotional links between smell, sound, memory, and imagination. “I find the synchronicity between smell and sound to be profoundly rooted in their ability to evoke memories, emotions, and sensations without the confines of visual or tactile boundaries. Both can transport us to different times and places, evoking a sense of atmosphere and mood that is ethereal and deeply personal,” says Wilsey.

The design demonstrates how different senses interact to inform and inspire not only how we feel but also our sense of space (i.e., how we feel in a particular environment at any given time). Notes + Notions uses the acidic sweetness of citrus and the dry heat of burning cedarwood to evoke sultry southwest Texas heat, offering visitors a multifaceted examination of feeling and place, where internal and external connections can inspire new ways of creating.

Each project offers a new way of embodying and moving through the built environment by paying close attention to the interplay of the senses and experiences of all beings. 

As climate change poses unprecedented challenges, the interior design industry is stepping up, embracing sustainability not just as a trend but as a necessity. New 2024 research shared by INTERIOR DESIGN magazine and analyzed by ThinkLab reveals a significant growth in sustainability-focused projects, with design fees for the top 100 Interior Design Sustainability Giants coming in at $2.4 billion in 2024, up from $1.8 billion the previous year. 

Carbon Conscious

A key aspect of this transformation is the industry’s increased attention to embodied carbon. Firms like AECOM are at the forefront, leading the charge in the number of projects scrutinizing their carbon footprint. And industry-wide, the number of projects tracking embodied carbon rose from 5 to 7 percent between 2022 and 2023.

Freedman received an MArch 2 from the Southern California Institute of Architecture in 2023, after earning a BS in architecture at Washington University in St. Louis. He learned, while honing his body of work, to balance timelessness with timeliness. “Are you designing something that is of the moment, or are you designing something meant to transcend the time and place in which it was created? For me, there’s a little bit of both in every project,” he says. Freedman currently serves as an adjunct design faculty member at SCI-Arc, where his frequent collaborations with students demonstrate his conviction that “the best creative work comes from cross-pollinating ideas of different perspectives, backgrounds, and contexts.” 

Photography plays a critical role in shaping Freedman’s focus on composition, visual storytelling, and leveraging light and shadow in designed spaces. But it’s a deep interest in human psychology that drives most of his work. This translates into a design philosophy that stresses the critical importance of letting people fill spaces with themselves: “their energies, perspectives, and feelings.” His belief in the value of other people stems from his belief in the power of originality itself: “It has taken a long time for me to convince myself that the way I see the world and the way my brain works, deficiencies and all, is what makes me a powerful creative force.” 

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• Student

• Anna Elise Anderson

Equally inventive is a project by Clemson graduate architecture-and-health design student Roshan Jose, who also takes cues from insects to model an ecological response to water pollution and stormwater management. Based on the science around water’s inherent health benefits, Pooling is a community hospital and health campus with extensive on-site water retention ponds. A natural filtration system composed of native plants and sediments is populated by endangered Carolina heelsplitters—mussels that clean fresh water—offering the center’s users and local residents a large recreational swimming pool. Jose’s imagination of an integrative multispecies ecosystem, limiting structures on-site to provide habitats and a healthy environment for people and other species, would be a fantastic principle to adopt in building and zoning codes more generally.

Similarly, Elisa Sofia Castañeda’s Gulfport Lagoonas project for an undergrad Mississippi State architecture studio looks at the role of shoreline ecologies and wildlife for climate resilience. Supported by a grant from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the studio participated in the Gulf Research Program to research resilient, sustainable solutions for the region. Castañeda reimagines the shoreline as a series of blue lagoons that improve stormwater protection and water quality, and promote ecotourism. Here too, oysters, fin fish, and other marine species gain new habitats through installation of specially designed breakwaters that also prevent soil erosion.

Like Roshan Jose’s Pooling, SUNY University at Buffalo master in architecture student Yau Wai Lam’s One Riding Center makes a point of limiting the built-up area in the design of an equestrian center adjacent to the Kensington Expressway. Lam’s design weaves in underground retention tanks, wetlands, a rain garden, a septic tank for horse manure, permeable pavement, and landscaping to filter stormwater, balancing the effect of architecture on the natural environment. The equestrian center structure itself forms a sound barrier to the highway, and landscaped ponds step down to produce a calming white noise for horses and visitors. The environment even takes into account fine granular details such as thermal comfort for the horses, softness of the ground for their foot joints, easy drainage of manure, and remediation of odors for the community.

And if we don’t succeed in keeping Earth inhabitable, Oripods by Parsons interior design master’s student Sanjana Gopalakrishnan hedges bets and gives us two options. The modular habitat system is imagined as deployable on Earth and on Mars. Composed of a central core with greenhouses fed by freshwater reservoirs and filtration tanks, it orients comfortable living spaces around a closed-loop system in which families can survive in unusually harsh conditions. It’s sobering that Gopalakrishnan’s context is this world’s heavily polluted Hindon River in Uttar Pradesh, India, as well as life in the otherworldly parched craters of the Red Planet. But through her injection of plant life and origami-inspired forms, she makes the conditions appear potentially attractive, even if the edible plants produced in the algae-and-turmeric biomass have a slightly radioactive quality. 

Too often luxury is associated with excess. Luxury without a conscience is finally being replaced with conscious consumerism in the collective economy, but it’s been a core value of my personal and professional practices for years now. I have always led from the link between sustainability and wellness, because when we live in alignment with our values, we experience more authenticity and comfort in ourselves and our surroundings. Conscious consumerism offers peace of mind. When there is an alignment of values, luxurious experiences are not to be underestimated.

That’s why I launched Studio Laurence, where luxury transcends mere opulence and marries sustainability with aesthetic appeal. Our mantra, “Beauty from the Inside Out,” underscores the intrinsic connection between sustainability and wellness. I’m thrilled to see similar ethos being adopted by other luxury brands as well. The more we normalize these new standards, the more readily we professionals (and our clients) can adopt them. 

To prioritize these principles, designing for longevity is paramount. Timeless styles, durable materials, and multifunctional pieces not only minimize waste but also ensure that residential spaces evolve gracefully with their inhabitants. As we go through different seasons, facilitating a longer life cycle for each item we select for our interiors is crucial. 

Material consciousness is also key. Opt for healthy selections such as renewable, recycled, or upcycled materials when possible, and choose natural fibers like organic cotton, hemp, or bamboo for textiles whenever possible. 

The paradigm shift toward regenerative living signals a profound transformation in the industry. It’s not merely about reducing our environmental footprint; it’s about actively restoring and enhancing the ecosystems we inhabit and living in harmony with nature. Architects and designers hold the power to shape a future where sustainability is synonymous with luxury. This practice honors the planet and enriches the human experience. Together we can redefine beautiful living for a more sustainable world.

Sustainability is the new luxury. 

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Laurence Carr is the founder and CEO of Laurence Carr Inc., a regenerative, multifaceted interior design firm, and the founder of Studio Laurence, a sustainable luxury home goods brand that specializes in zero-waste product design.

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• Residential

• Kelly Marshall
• Laurence Carr
• Residential Interiors

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• Architecture
• Interior Design
• Process
• Sustainability
• Technology

• Avinash Rajagopal

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• Architecture

• Construction Materials
• construction specialties
• CS
• Francisco Brown
• Healthy Materials
• Kalwall
• Kingspan
• Mid-Atlantic Timberframes
• Net Zero and Net Positive
• Skyline Design

The desire to exhibit the structure’s interior may be related to Yin’s passion for storytelling. Before switching to architecture for her master’s, she had been an undergrad art student at Tsinghua University in Beijing, where she produced a series of remarkable studies of rooms. In A Piano Piece on the Sea, comic-like sketches illustrate the concept of a cruise ship that gives spatial form to Chopin’s Nocturne in C-sharp Minor. In her Botanical Garden Design for a 2022 UCLA studio, colorful hand-drawn perspectives evoke the experience of visiting a scalloped, biophilic building that overflows with plant life. 

“Architecture, for me, every project is a story,” says Yin. “What we want to achieve is to tell this story well. The comics communicate to people who don’t have an architecture background. It’s like a storyboard in film design: to show them as a first person how you step up into the space to the final stage.”

Yin completed two internships in Los Angeles, exploring different building scales and types, from small residential projects to larger commercial ones. She’s already had the chance to work on a skyscraper during an internship last summer. “It was interesting for me,” she says. “I’m not sure what scale of building I’m comfortable with, so I want to explore more to find out what I feel best in.” 

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• Student

• Future100
• Qing Yin
• Stephen Zacks

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• Student

• Colorado State University
• Drexel University
• Future100
• Mingming Zhao
• SCAD
• Tasha Singh
• Victoria McMillan