Architecture, a building forged from steel, stone, grit, and glass creates an environment. Directs your emotions. Influences how you feel-makes you weep.
Recently I experienced a rollercoaster of emotions upon entering the rolls down like water gallery at the new Civil and Human Rights Museum in downtown Atlanta.

 

The gallery is dark, rendered in black and white, hushed, and intimate. A stark contrast to the buzzing, bright and expansive lobby just steps away. Photos journal the extraordinary, ordinary lives of two races-Black and White- during the American Civil Rights Movement.

 

Their stories are our stories and our stories their stories.

 

Stories of love and legendary laughter.
Stories of remorse and redemption.
Stories of sovereignty and chains.
Stories of survival and salvation.

 

Life. All the moments of truth that flow through our veins and shape our dreams and desires.

 

Before despair curls up and burrows a home in the left chamber of my heart I enter the next room in the gallery-which feels vast, and is bright white.

 

It feels like promise.         Elle C. Wolfe Interiors, Atlanta GA,  interior decorator
It feels like sunshine on the grayest day.
It feels like hope from the son of a preacher man.

 

A mega-plex size screen is presenting footage from the 1968 March on Washington and plays Dr. King’s I Have a Dream Speech.
Moving to this room a sense of optimism is carved into my bones as permanent as the I have a Dream Speech is carved in the Carrera panoramic tableau around the room.

 

Stark and Stunning

 

The visit to the museum gave rise to the newest eye candy collection. The Stark + Stunning Collective is a series of black and white imagery that inspired me, moved me, and touched my soul. I hope the collection inspires you.

 

Architects of public spaces are not the only ones who govern how you move through and feel in a particular space.  You can adopt similar design techniques for how you want to live and feel in your own home.  Be it warm and cozy, artsy, inspired, and creative, or minimal and serene.

 

How do you want your home to feel?

 

And your home? Its not merely shelter.

fountainsIt’s the ebb and flow of life.

 

 It rolls down like water.