THE EGG

We live in an age of unrelenting acceleration. The city, that extraordinary invention of human civilisation, has become a symbol of this restless pace—optimised, digitised, and constantly demanding our attention. It channels us toward productivity, competition, and consumption at every turn.

But against this tide, I believe it is crucial to defend what the home truly means—not as a mere building, nor as an investment, but as a deeply human space.

The Principle of the Egg

In nature, life depends on protected interiors. The egg is perhaps the most elegant expression of this principle: a delicate yet resilient shell separating a vulnerable, developing interior from the chaotic, often hostile exterior. The egg is not passive—it is active. It nurtures, regulates, protects.

This principle is universal. Mammals carry their young in wombs. Birds weave nests high in trees. Turtles bury eggs in warm sand. Even plants germinate in enclosed husks. Across evolutionary time, life has prioritised safe interiors as the necessary precondition for growth and survival.

Humans, for all our sophistication, remain deeply biological creatures. We may build vast cities and complex technologies, but our nervous systems, our emotions, our needs remain rooted in biology. We need refuge not only from physical threats but from psychological overwhelm. We need spaces where our defences can lower, where we can process and integrate experience, where our sense of self can be replenished.

In the modern world, that role falls above all to the home.

The Home as Retreat

The home should be our egg of sanctuary in this accelerated, technological age. It should resist the instrumental logic that governs so much of life outside its walls—the relentless measuring, optimising, and commodifying of every action and moment.

In The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard offers a profound meditation on the meaning of the house. He calls it “our corner of the world,” our “first universe.” The house is not simply a shelter from weather or danger; it is a container for memory and imagination.

He writes:

“The house, even more than the landscape, is a psychic state. Even when reproduced as it appears from the outside, it bespeaks intimacy.”

Bachelard lingers on the significance of corners, attics, staircases, and closets. These are spaces of withdrawal, of reverie. They invite us to slow down, to inhabit our thoughts, to dream. The home is where daydreaming is not a distraction but a practice. It is where we can rehearse our past, imagine our future, and simply be.

The modern world threatens to erase these spaces. Work follows us home through email and messaging apps. Social media penetrates our bedrooms, colonising even our quietest moments with comparison and performance. Smart devices measure our habits, sell our attention, and push us toward constant optimisation.

Against this, the home must stand as a site of resistance.

The Beauty of Imperfection

Here I am drawn to the Japanese aesthetic philosophy of wabi-sabi, which celebrates imperfection, impermanence, and the quiet beauty of the natural and unpolished.

Wabi-sabi sees value in the crack in the bowl repaired with gold (kintsugi), the weathered surface of an old table, the uneven shape of a handmade cup. It tells us that beauty is not found in sterile perfection, but in the marks left by time, use, and care.

This aligns beautifully with Bachelard’s vision of the home as a repository of memory. A house is not simply a stage set for contemporary tastes. It is a palimpsest—layered with traces of the lives lived within it. The scuffed floorboard where children played, the faded armchair that cradled countless conversations, the quiet nook where one reads on rainy afternoons.

These imperfections are not defects but records of intimacy. They resist commodification. They are deeply personal and unrepeatable.

In design, embracing wabi-sabi means rejecting the sterile, the uniform, the soullessly new. It means using materials that age gracefully, creating spaces that invite use and wear, and fostering layouts that prioritise comfort and connection over spectacle.

Designing for the Human Scale

As a designer, I believe our role is to fight for this human scale. The home should not be treated as an extension of the office, nor as another arena for consumption. It should not be yet another site for optimisation or data extraction.

Instead, the home must be recognised as a space of meaning, memory, and refuge. A place where we can be unproductive without guilt. Where we can disconnect in order to reconnect—with ourselves, with those we love, with the quieter parts of our own minds.

At The Goose, this belief guides everything we do. We design spaces that invite conversation, encourage stillness, and honour the imperfect and personal. We are not anti-technology—technology has its place, even in the home—but we are pro-human.

We celebrate what cannot be coded, cloned, or automated: the nuance of lived experience. The gentle rituals of daily life. The slow accretion of memory and meaning.

Because in the end, even in an age of AI, automation, and bioengineering, there will remain this simple, inescapable truth: humans need sanctuary.

We need our egg—a space to dream, to remember, to be vulnerable. A space to remain, in the fullest sense of the word, human.