JERUSALEM
BAR AT THE AA
THE MONASTERY
BUILDING WORKSHOP, STUDIO PIANO
92 STREET
GLENFORD
WHEREING HOST – NINA FREEDMAN
It is because of a sudden exile long ago, despite my many beloved places since…..that I still look for ‘home’. I had thought it was a choice between worlds, the before and after, but have discovered that the contrast or collage of these places is possibly, the strength underneath a creative core.
“Where do you belong? Where are you most yourself?
Where is home? Does home witness you? How do you carry it with you?
Where Are You?….is a basic existential question.Your soul is an intimate, soft witness to places in your memory and the stories that unfold to curate the arc of your life. Home is in your soul. You take it with you. It remembers you…..Where is your map?”
As a child, I lived with my family in a rental apartment in a white stucco house, which sat on a shaky foundation and had developed a crack. To repair it, the owner of the house painted six inches of black tar over the crack, in a jagged line from the top to the bottom of the house. As a little girl, the tar felt like a visible scar .Perhaps today that would seem like an interesting metaphor. I spent my childhood rearranging and painting my room. What we couldn’t afford, I would curate. It was always a symbol of inner change. My son laughs at the memory of ‘revisions’, a moveable place I continued to impose on his childhood.
I became an architect. I work and think about place. I went into design for ‘change’, for the possibility and the dream. For the inherent right to belong, claim space and have beauty. I am a professor of architecture and interior design. Teaching has helped me to listen, even more closely.
I was born in Brooklyn, New York, but I’ve lived in London, Paris, the Italian Riviera and Jerusalem. I now live in New York City. For thirty years I have worked on designs for alternative living, museums, places of worship, sanctuary, care, schools, hotels, theaters, wellness, installations, galleries, stores, furniture collections and landscapes. I’ve done this in my design practice, Dreamland Creative Projects, and have been privileged to work for visionary architects, including three Pritzker Prize winners. Along the way I’ve tried my hand at sculpture, painting, and psychology. I love writing, poetry and practice spiritual mindfulness.
“Often, I’ve had the feeling that in the design process, there was so much unsaid, or uninvited. The people we needed to hear from - you - your vulnerable conversations were untouched. Designers are trained to fix and solve. Perhaps there is nothing to fix? As you might already realize, this podcast has been percolating.”
I wonder…will these unmanicured conversations at WHEREING, map a new creative space, which further seeds a sense of belonging? By focusing on stories, I hope to invite genuine, holistic and compassionate connections which might inspire physical results. A space, which begins with this lens, is transparent, a vessel for community and a platform for spatial, empathetic understanding.
I hope that WHEREING it will be a sacred, generative, joyous and irreverent space.
Nina
P.S. The Photographs are some of my places…
GARDEN AT THE PROMENADE
FLATBUSH
WEST 38 STREET
ROOSEVELT ISLAND
THE ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION
NERVI, ITALIA