What if we treated our home as more than a machine for living in?

“A house is a machine for living in.” ~ Le Corbusier

In 1927, Le Corbusier changed the way we designed modern life - and modern homes - with his architectural manifesto that celebrated the age of the machine. From the enlightenment to the industrial and digital revolution - we have perfected our ability to objectify, quantify, and mechanize almost every aspect of our existence. Ever so slowly, we have normalized a rational mindset that treats exchanges as transactional, and the natural world as inert and infinite. While this system has enriched many, it comes at great cost: disconnection.

Integrating Rational and Relational Creativity

As we lean into the next era of artificial intelligence, how can we begin to seed a more relational system? We believe if we embrace the full breadth of human creativity - not only from our heads, but from our hands, our hearts and whole human bodies - we can create a different kind of world built on interconnection. Creative States celebrates designers and decision-makers who integrate the rational with a more relational creativity that re-engages the long-forgotten wisdom of our body’s Felt Sense.

Re-Engaging Our Body’s Felt Sense

“Most of us see ourselves as thinking creatures that feel, but we are actually feeling creatures that think.” – Jill Bolte Taylor

Evolved as a means of survival millennia ago, our bodies constantly scan and process cues in our surroundings to alert the brain of danger, safety or symbiosis. We now know this process of neuroception, or our Felt Sense, is as important as conscious thought in our choices and experiences. In fact, we sense and feel the world before we think about it.

Our Felt Sense grounds us in our:

Physical Senses - the tactility of our hands, and the viscera of touch, taste, sight, sound, and smell

Emotional Senses - expansive emotions, such as wonder, curiosity, honesty, compassion, joy, play, sensuality

Intuitive Senses - instinctive sensing, inner knowing, connecting to the wildness in ourselves

When we sit in our Felt Sense, we pay attention differently. We remember that we do not have a body in a world of things, but are a body among a web of beings. We listen more deeply and become participants rather than possessors of a world that is sentient, connected and alive.

Awakening Creative States

“All things change according to the state we are in.” – Robert Henri

By centering ourselves in our bodies, we shift our entire being into a different state. Mind body integration releases neurochemicals in our brain that open us to more generosity and generativity with others, and orient us toward aliveness. We reawaken and flow from our ‘creative states’.

Our Shared Home as a Living Body

Creative states, in many ways, act like mycelia for humankind. They help us communicate and collaborate across boundaries, perspectives, languages and species as one living body. They channel our ability to innovate within the cyclical, circular constraints of our shared home for kinder, more kindred possibilities.

We invite you to join us in our explorations, collaborations and conversations for shaping an age of more than machine.

Our Story

The origins of Creative States began on a grade school playground. Kimberlie and Maren found kindred spirits in their imaginative, coming-of-age selves. They spent many hours dreaming and drawing, often sketching mythical creatures to be made out of clay. Today, they aim to mold something different, but in every way as grounded in the same kind of imaginative creativity. 

Kimberlie Birks is an art and design writer and curator. Her work has been featured in publications such as Dwell, Domus, and Metropolis. Her book, “Design for Children”, is a century-wide survey of beautiful design for children, published by Phaidon. 

Maren Maier is a design strategist, educator and researcher. She is professor in the Design Management and Arts and Cultural Management programs atPratt Institute School of Art and co-author of Leading as if Life Matters: An Invitation to Attend a Future of Our Own Making.