0:00 currently i am in the panhandle of florida on a beach called secret oh wow okay exactly that's that sounds nice so i think the the first you know logical question is how did you develop what is the universal design method how did you develop it who are you and where are you going [Music] what do you want together we'll find the ideal path on the way to wow show with your host
0:35 kevin bemel one of the things i think we've all learned in the last year or so is how much our environment our home our office affects our well-being how we perform my guest on this show is laura meneth and she's going to help us understand how we can improve our homes and work spaces to really support us finding our way to wow but first i'm going to mix myself up a cocktail
1:14 when i was about six or seven my parents were preparing for a party and they were having a cocktail beforehand my mother always liked a canadian club mixed with something i don't know i i frankly couldn't stand it but my dad loved rum and coke and i remember it was sitting on the coffee table and i saw it i'm like dad can i try that he's like sure son go ahead so i picked it up was a little glass just like this and i took a little sip of it and he had tried to give me beer before which i didn't like and so i'm thinking well i'll give this a shot but and i taste and he went wow and i
1:49 started drinking the whole thing he says wait wait leave some for me so i'm gonna mix up a rum and coke it's a real simple simple recipe a simple simple cocktail it's another type of high ball by the way just put some ice in the glass maybe one more cube and usually you use white rum for uh for a rum and coke although you could also use dark rum white is is more traditional and you mix it in the ratio of one part rum
2:24 to two parts coke so pour the rum over the ice kind of dilutes it a little bit and i'm not going to measure the coke exactly but this glass is about a three ounce glass so if we top it off and there you have a rum and coke salute laura welcome to the way to wow show thanks for being with us
2:59 oh i'm so excited thank you so your assistant told me you were going to be traveling where are you talking from ohio or yes so it's been a unique of course this past year and a half and i haven't seen any of my clients that i normally reach out to across the united states well my mom lives in north carolina so i decided i'm going to make this a road trip so i'm on a road trip currently i am in the panhandle of florida on a beach called secret oh wow okay exactly that's that sounds nice
3:37 the secret beach it's beautiful actually i didn't even know about it but yes so um had to find a way to make uh personal connections with some of my clients and here i am excellent well i'm going to read a short biography about you so everyone knows you know kind of what your background is and then we'll we'll chat for a few minutes so laura minoff is the founder of array design studio she and her team offer lifestyle consultation design and building for residential and commercial environments
4:13 though she's been a designer and builder for over 20 years laura is not your father's contractor during her career she has gained numerous credentials and awards and this is the part that i find most interesting laura's background includes working as a geriatric nurse a profession near and dear to my heart because my wife is an rn having spent over two decades in real estate in construction you are the only person i have ever met who had a background as a nurse before moving into anything related to real estate so through her concept the universal design
4:48 method laura helps builders designers architects and regular people like me design and build homes that improve life as it exists today and prepares you for what comes next as a fundamental condition of good design it goes beyond functionality creating a sense of enjoyment in your home work and social environments so i think the the first you know logical question is how did you develop what is the universal design method how did you develop it so perfect question it actually was developed out of me just
5:23 having interaction with my clients when i first started designing and i realized most people that call me they weren't trying to just pick a paint color they you know or you know change their room furniture something catalystic had happened in their life and i realized i had to dig in and figure out what am i really here for am i here to help them house their mother-in-law that's about to come and live with them because she needs their help or were they brand new parents and they
5:58 didn't know how to you know create a atmosphere that would support the baby and themselves there were so many different things that had happened i realized that most people thought also that a designer was an extravagance and it it was it's such a necessity to create a space that you can feel the freedom the joy and knowing that it is helping you see the future and the opportunities in your future so really it came out of
6:33 that i actually tell a story i don't know if you have a few minutes sure absolutely i had a client he's really the one that really got me started he called me up i didn't know him called me up he was a retired mayor and his wife was an opera singer she was also no longer you know singing opera and apparently maria had had a stroke so he called me and said you know we bought a brand new home it's large because we need to house our children and our grandchildren he said but maria
7:11 needs a bathroom that helps her because she has a quad cane can you come over and design it for us and i did and i went over and i asked all my questions i normally ask you know when are the children moving in what's a timeline you know what are your what makes you happy what colors and all of that wonderful thing and we came up with an amazing plan and we implemented it and you know we were in the middle of it kevin and all of a sudden tom looked at me he goes oh my gosh laura this is amazing
7:47 now i can sleep at night and i said what like i was i was like the bathroom was amazing but what does that have to do with you sleeping he said laura i am so afraid that maria will fall out of bed or trip going to the bathroom that i don't sleep at night because she always has to get up in the middle of the night i said oh my gosh tom i'm not here to redesign your bathroom i said let me help you even further so what we did was we actually embedded you know the um the lights that light up in an airplane that lead you
8:22 in you know if there's an accident you know that lead you to the exit well i actually embedded those into the carpeting on maria's side of the bed and then i put a sensor there so now when she um would get out of bed it would light up a path directly to her bathroom door and she would be safe and then the other thing was i realized that you know like most of us our bed is pretty close to a wall and tom thought that was the safest place for it to be but actually maria had run into it a few times well the wall was a beautiful color and it
8:57 matched the carpeting beautifully but there was no duck perception she couldn't see when she got i don't care even who you are you get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom you're disoriented you're you're running into the wall no matter what i i am exactly so i changed the color of the wall i just lightened it up so she could see the difference between the floor and the wall honest to pete after that event i realized i really am not asking the right questions and i'm not really servicing someone
9:34 sure anybody can come in that you know loves to design any of us can design a pretty you know pretty bathroom or a new home but the truth is that people need so much more and that's how i came up with the universal design method now the universal design is something that we've been practicing for about 15 20 years and that is your ada compliancies that's your safety you know there are rules and regulations to go along with that but it's all logistic nobody's touching the six senses you know
10:09 so i created a methodology using neuro aesthetics that does touch all six senses and so when i design a program for someone it is exactly what they need and that's breaking down those barriers of old habits of thought and creating an ease-free barrier-free atmosphere that they can especially in the past year and a half that they can actually see what are my opportunities in front of me and wow now i get to actually create
10:44 my own reality i'm in a space that just supports everything about what i want to do so does that help yeah yeah for sure so are are there core principles that that you articulate as part of the universal design method there actually are eight core principles in universal design which applies completely with the universal design method the eight core are related to specifications such as accessibility that would be
11:21 in other words when you go to a store and the doors um automatically open up you know instead of a revolving door that not everybody has access to um so there's eight solid core um uh elements to that universal design i just took and applied our senses to it so lighting um your touch your smell your you know when you sit in that sofa are you comfortable because it fits your you know your body or are you comfortable because you can get out of it
11:58 it's not like a big marshmallow that just sucked you in and you know it's funny people don't talk out loud kevin but i've watched it happen they'll invite me over to their home and they'll say and they'll direct me into a chair like at a dining room area where they know they can get in and out of it easily people are we're very we get very embarrassed i think and afraid um i actually i wanted to introduce you to my book it's called a round peg in a square world but people get very self-conscious
12:33 around others and they're afraid of being judged really so as a result we don't do things in our life we don't go to um the store or a restaurant that has no accessibility or there's not a ramp or there's not a proper like when you go to the bathroom and the toilets you go to the bathroom you know you're in an old facility when the toilet is really low to the ground well you know we don't do that anymore we do comfort height seat in a toilet where all you have to do is bend and sit
13:08 that's it so again taking away the resistance and allowing people to know that there is um many things many elements that can be applied to their living that make life fun absolutely fun so if if someone wants to have this kind of living space or workspace but let's say they they you know they can't afford to you know completely you know redesign
13:46 you know their their environment or um you know they don't have the time or what how can how can they take your the universal design method and apply some of the principles or can they take the universal design method and apply some of the principles on their own so although they may not have you know the ideal environment they can have a better environment my gosh that is an excellent excellent question and there is a scientist in japan and he proved that we
14:22 only see straight lines it's called the illusion of curves and what you just asked is so vital to our comfort and ease and fear-free living so it's simple i love that you have a round table behind you i really enjoy it appears i'm not quite sure but your sofa looks like it's on a diagonal all of these attributes it's perfect they're they're creating a movement of energy and sincerely kevin it's as simple as
14:58 that take what you have simplify it but at the same time don't be afraid to put it on a diagonal incorporate some curves and take away that fear factor of tripping so if it is just to put the area rug over a transition area where you had tile to hardwood floor and you had a threshold put a rug over it so that now you have a smooth transact transition simple things very very simple i love that you have a live plant in your home or in your studio that's another perfect
15:36 and he's not dense and heavy he's spry and he's light so again perfect move and movement of energy so so my production team likes that you call the splat the plants spry and light because they were debating whether it was you know on its way out the door no it's you know what you say is so interesting because um if you had come into my home when we first moved in here about whatever it was six seven years ago everything was on the grid and then over the succeeding years um what what i found is it's much more
16:12 convenient if i have certain things you know angled certain ways and so if you go in our breakfast room now you'll see the breakfast table is sort of turned almost 45 degrees and it just it just works better that way and and you know little by little throughout the house that's the kind of thing that you know my family and i have been doing is just shifting things here and there so that life works better even if it doesn't look you know exactly a lot and it's all it's all on me because uh you know i my nickname in the navy was ocd right so everything everything has to be in its
16:47 place and everything you know has a place that's my philosophy of life but uh this i i i can see that the the the ability to look beyond ourselves or well tell me if this if this sounds right the ability to look beyond our our ourselves and and see maybe a a a bigger picture a wider picture is that inherent into extras exercising a universal design philosophy or am i am i off base here no you're right on in fact i love what
17:23 you just said finding the courage to make a change again usually takes a catalytic type of event and that even might be okay maybe you went skiing and you broke your leg that's a catalytic event you know and so as a result without thinking about it sounds to me kevin which i absolutely love you just realized this isn't comfortable let's put it on a diagonal so don't bang my knee into the corner every time i come around you know
18:00 the corner yep exactly so but you did that because it it just made sense to you we don't always trust our instincts and that is exactly what happens when you move the energy and you allow that that ease it's just that's what it is it's just me and watch what happens now you take that ease move that energy and what happens your mindset opens up and shifts and now
18:35 absolutely you have the courage the ability and you have the vision and you have the opportunity to make choices that you really didn't even see before just by making a couple simple adjustments to the atmosphere um it is called neural aesthetics but neural aesthetics actually apply to the beauty in our life and people don't remember but they react to that why was walt disney so successful why was he the happiest place on earth first of all he told you it was
19:11 it's true it's true you're talking to a lot of disney alum in this room right now and i'm on my way there trust me it's one of my stuff but you know why were we afraid to say that out loud you're in the happiest place on earth you should and have the ability to be joyful at any minute at any minute we can begin again and make a different choice but if we surround ourselves with the same habitual um elements it's very challenging to see things in a new light [Music]
19:47 so before we run our time i most of my guests are a little bit bashful about uh you know plugging their books i i don't have to be but but do tell us uh tell us real quickly um about your book and where can we get it and and you know all that that kind of stuff well the cool part about it is everything we just talked about and it's not a cover to cover you know read the book it is what's called an aha book so you can open it up at any page at any time and the exact message that you need to hear at that moment
20:22 is right there and you will say [Laughter] it's called a round peg in a square world designing new opportunities in a world of infinite possibilities and it is all around the universal design method and it's just a discovery and it's it's kind of like it's fun it's just pure fun in fact the cover is even very happy i don't know if i can show it yeah absolutely yeah please do is that can you um maybe pull back a little bit
20:57 it's out of focus oh you know what oh there it is okay it's backwards it's it's it's a right it's right face for us it looks backwards to you oh okay very good but and where where can where can viewers uh get the book oh it's on amazon and please it's on amazon right now um you can even if you have a kindle app and it's it's 99 cents take advantage of it right now absolutely absolutely and and and that really answers what what is usually my final question was what can people do
21:32 right now after finishing watching this episode to get involved in the universal design and and i would say go to amazon a a round peg in a square world you got it and and and get that book and just crack it open anywhere well unless you're on your kindle you don't want to crack it then just open it anywhere and and see what kind of inspiration it gives you huh absolutely absolutely we're all in this together kevin and we're here to be happy laura thank you so much for being on the way to wow show
22:07 it's been a great pleasure talking to you absolutely thanks kevin this has been amazing that's our show for this week thinking about what laura said i guess in a way we're all round pegs in a square world so instead of trying to fit to the grid let's not be afraid to shift things around a little bit to make our lives more comfortable why don't you go download her book from amazon 99 cents
22:43 you know for a kindle book and just open it up for that idea that might turn your home or your workspace into something that will take you on the next step of your way to wow courage at all times my friends marie you're still my bell [Music]
23:48 you