Playwright Sara Ruhl has a quote, “The living room needn’t be full of living room detail, though it should feel human,” which we have been pondering lately. The question of, what makes a space feel alive?

It could be that our objects: the craftsmanship, materials, and textures, bring a sense of life to our spaces, but it mostly falls on us, and how we live and operate in a room. The duality of being human means that we require our environments to be shapable, to shift with our mood, to host our needs throughout changing times and temperatures. This, we think, is what a living (and breathing) room is.