Room to Think

From Bottle Service To Bedroom Bliss

• Lyssia Katan • Season 1 • Episode 4

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Some rooms nudge you to relax, connect, and smile before you’ve said a word. Others feel loud, flat, or awkward. We wanted to know why, so we brought on designer–builder John Sofio to break down the psychology of space—from high-energy nightclubs to quiet, restorative homes—and the small, invisible choices that change how people feel.

John shares how a simple shift to figure-eight circulation transformed his club projects by giving guests agency and relief in crowded rooms. We dig into spatial hierarchy, VIP psychology, and why bar corners and “blockers” create intimacy without walls. Then we translate those ideas to homes and restaurants: compress ceilings over seating, expand in circulation, keep lamps low and warm, and aim for 30–40% soft surfaces so conversation stays rich, not shouty. If you’ve ever left a restaurant exhausted by the noise, you’ll love his acoustic playbook.

We also get hands-on with materials and proportions. John explains how handmade details carry soul, why durability can coexist with beauty, and how kevlar-backed upholstery, thin cushions, and solid cores keep hospitality seating comfortable and tough. He shares precise dimensions for seats, backs, and tables that make bodies relax—and talks through a practical three-color paint system that sculpts light in any room. Throughout, he returns to a powerful mindset: treat your home as a machine for living and tune it to give you energy back.

If you’re designing a venue, upgrading a dining room, or just trying to make your living room feel more like you, this conversation gives you real steps to build flow, calm, and connection. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves design meets psychology, and leave a review to tell us which idea you’ll try first.

Purpose, Craft, And Soulful Design

John Sofio

As a designer, one of the things that I struggled with in the beginning was I was designing, I was doing stuff, but I didn't have a path or a purpose to start.

Lyssia Katan

What do the nightclubs get right that homes often get wrong?

John Sofio

Some of the things I've learned on the commercial side was the durability is critical. My first experiences was did all the booths, and the next day, every single booth had a hole in it, ripped apart.

Lyssia Katan

If you could leave listeners with one mindset shift about homes, what would it be?

John Sofio

In Feng Shui, you don't want to separate two people in a bed by having a beam going perpendicular to you. Because that does, as you look up or as you sleep, there's an energy that separates between the two people.

Lyssia Katan

Where do projects tend to lose their soul?

John Sofio

Projects go off the rails very quickly when Welcome to Room to Think.

Lyssia Katan

If you've ever wondered why some rooms instantly make people loosen up, connect, and feel alive, while others feel flat or awkward. This episode will give you answers you can actually use. I'm sitting down with John Sofio, a world-class designer and architect, and we talk about nightclubs not as nightlife, but as highly intentional spaces designed to shape behavior. We break down what clubs understand about human psychology that most everyday spaces completely ignore. Things like how to create flow, how to make people feel more comfortable faster, and how atmosphere can do more work than conversation ever could. Let's get into it. John, it is such a pleasure to meet with you and have you on the podcast. I have run into your videos on Instagram many times and I've just gotten hooked. I love what you say and what you how you explain things and the books you recommend. And it's really, truly such an honor having you on the podcast. So welcome to the show.

John Sofio

Thank you very much, Lisa. Appreciate it.

Lyssia Katan

John is the founder of LA's Built Inc. And his visionary design build work has redefined hospitality, nightlife, and residential spaces by crafting soul and really adding immersive environments with details that really feel intentional. John, for listeners that may have experienced your work out in the wild, but aren't really familiar with you or haven't seen your videos, how would you describe what you do and why you do it?

John Sofio

Great. So I while I have a design build firm, and that's kind of what we do as a business, more than that is uh that I'm a designer and I'm an artist. And uh the purpose of building my own work is so I can craft the design uh during the construction of it as well. So while I'm a general contractor, uh we really come from the design side of being the general contractor. Um we like to control the project through the uh the not only the design side, but the um construction side and the furniture, fabrication, and procurement side. I find that having uh myself to have enough time to be on these projects and really dial in the design work uh through construction, it creates something a little more soulful than we see in other places.

Lyssia Katan

I see that's part of your goal, right? Creating spaces and hospitality with soul. Um what first got you into that? What made you decide I want to create spaces with soul? Did you have that particular experience?

From Homes To Nightclubs

John Sofio

In uh 1995, I started my company. And um, right from the beginning, I knew that uh there was an opportunity to um explore and create uh a unique way than uh the cookie cutter process. So one of my first projects that I designed, the client asked, Well, can you build it? And I said absolutely yes, and um went out and got a general contractor's license as quickly as I could. So I had the opportunity. And that first project was a very small home. It was 700 square feet in Studio City, California. It was at the bottom of this uh beautiful, like wooded glen. And I knew that I had an opportunity to kind of study all of the elements of a house that we may take for granted. So I really questioned what is a wall. And uh that the result of what is a wall to in my mind was I made these walls move so they created a beautiful indoor-outdoor effect, more so than buying a sliding door and just sliding it. So uh like the front door, the front wall had a cantilevered balance that I uh built, and the the massive wall opened up and it opened the site to the house or the house to the site. The corner walls also were these massive walls that I uh made open. And now when you have these four, these three walls open, it was as if they were living in the uh property instead of being sheltered from the property. So each piece of the uh project I took a little another look at, what is this, right? And um, even like the handrail, I took the old wood from the house and made the handrail uh out of the uh the old lumber. All of the ceiling trim in the house was from the old lumber of the house. And the house was built in the early 20s by a a demo contractor. So he reused that material. So when we opened up the walls, there was like painted studs that you could tell he salvaged from other projects. So then we repurposed it and made those pieces more of uh the finished pieces, but I kept the soul of the home from who knows when the original uh lumber was used to where it is today. And once I did that house, um, we got some recognition through the LA Times. It uh gave us a lot of uh uh additional projects. But really the the the result for me was that I created something that was very soulful for the client and I enjoyed that experience and understood that that was a that was uh a great goal to have and a goal to strive towards, uh, as opposed to being a GC, knocking out projects and just doing whatever, right? So I select the projects that we do. I love to um understand kind of the depth of the project in terms of what we could add to it. So when there's some of the projects are harder when there's nothing to start from, a blank slate. It's harder than here are the parameters, you have to work within this. But at the end of the day, starting a project, we I try to create a narrative, um, but a narrative with a perspective, as opposed to just a story, tell a story. I think the story has to have a perspective on what you're trying to um uh uh accomplish and what people are gonna experience with your work. So as a core uh artist, all right, that's where I'm generating my ideas from, from the art side and from the livability side and from you know creating a soulful space that people could live in. So after um many years of building uh homes and uh doing uh residential remodels and uh some teardowns in 2006, we got our first opportunity for a nightclub. And that nightclub, um, I learned a lot off of that first project. And uh from there I was able to imbue the same uh philosophy of um artistic, soulful spaces within a commercial space. And one of the things I learned and realized off of that first nightclub was that in a home, a handful of people will um you know see the home over the course of a year. In a nightclub, thousands of people see this home, which is the club, uh, you know, within a week. So really got an opportunity to affect people through the design by having you know more of a commercial uh footprint in our work.

Lyssia Katan

That is so cool. That's actually one of the videos that I stumbled on first when I discovered you was uh the figure eight that you design in a nightclub. Can you tell me a little more about that?

John Sofio

I kind of stumbled upon that result. My the funny story was uh I come from New York and I used to go to the limelight and all of these like New York City or early 80s clubs, and they weren't designed like this. They were more getting the dark spaces and uh you know, finding your niche within the space. And uh I mopped up the nightclub um with some plywood and I showed my client. Um, I was like, okay, so this is the layout, right? And he's like, What is this? I go, This is a nightclub, like the not the limelight, uh, all these I was mentioning all these places. And he's like, that's not a nightclub. A nightclub is booths that face each other and a center. I was like, what the heck is that? He goes, It's bottle service. And while I'd heard of bottle service, I didn't really understand what it was, right? So I was like, okay, let me figure this thing out. So I kind of float off of his uh basic direction on you know how you lay out a nightclub. And um, that tenet of how you lay out a nightclub is very similar today as it as it was the first time I I learned it. So you have these booths that face each other because everybody is um there to celebrate the night, but they're also in a way kind of interacting across the club. I this guy buys 10 bottles, the other guy buys 20, and this is strange interaction that uh is the nightclub business back then, which was big bottle circles. Today the nightclub scene has changed somewhat, but back then, and I learned the figure eight concept where I put an island of seating in the middle, and I realized the first time that uh people were going around in a large circle, and I got stuck into that circle. It's almost like you're stuck in a crowd and the crowd's pushing you around. And there was really no way to get out of that track unless you like kind of squeezed out, but then you're just stuck and you have to get back in to get around the club. So I realized if I pushed the booths away from each other in the center, it gave you this opportunity to create a figure eight where you could take a short track, you can go a long track, you can pop in, you can pop out. And just that little relief valve of having that cross kind of figure eight um has been very successful. I've used it over and over in different ways, and it created the opportunity for people to be much more comfortable within a very crowded thing. Because if you had to get up to go to the bar or to the restroom, you just almost dread it because you were in this circular kind of um, you know, cow track. But if uh you split it and created that figure eight, you could hop in, cut across the room, pop back out, and it created a lot. So small things that I've learned, I was able to um incorporate further and further on all these hospitality and restaurant projects.

Lyssia Katan

That's fascinating. For this, did you need to observe how people in a nightclub just to see how they're moving?

The Figure-Eight Flow Breakthrough

John Sofio

So I don't necessarily go to nightclubs, the clubs that I design and build, I uh do visit and observe. Uh I think I've built six clubs before I actually sat in a booth and experienced the bottle service side of it. And that was eye-opening as well. I was one of the um uh patrons was like, Hey, John, get up here, and he pulled me into the booth. And I was like, Oh my god, this is crazy. And you're standing on top of the booths because we designed the booth so you can stand on top of. And the the room is there's two levels to the nightclub. It's the you know, floor level where you're walking around or sitting on the booths, then there's the back level where you're either sitting on the back of the booth or standing on the booth. So there's almost two kind of um landscapes. There's the lower landscape where everyone's walking, and then there's the upper landscape where everyone's standing and dancing. And um, I learned from that uh to observe, well, I was always observing my work to see what the uh interaction was between my decisions and uh how people were experiencing it. And I had an assistant standing next to me looking at the club. We were in the back of it, just looking at the energy of the room. And um, I'm looking at like the space and the light and uh the DJ. And uh she just turns to me and says, Oh my god, did you see what you've done? Do you see what you've done? I was like, What? She goes, Look how happy everybody is. And then I started looking at everyone's faces. I was like, oh my God, she's so right. She was very observant. You know, you've made people happy for these few hours, uh, obviously the music and the energy of the room, but also the environment that they were in. So I think there's a lot to be said about that in terms of how you cause uh happiness through your design.

Lyssia Katan

And how is that uh everything that you've incorporated it in design of nightclubs in the past, has that changed dramatically today with how clubs function these days?

John Sofio

I think the main difference is how people use the club or use the space or use the going out. There is still uh a good sense of bottle service and that type of energy, but with the um reduction of uh people drinking and um but still being interested in music, there's a lot more dancing, even in West Hollywood where you know people don't dance, people are dancing and the music's changing. And uh, I think it's uh it's a very fun place to be. And while the bottle service isn't what it used to be, people still want to have their own space for their own friends to come in within a more public space. And I think the hierarchy of space is still there. I think there's um a real um psychological um tenant to study in terms of um VIP. Uh, one of the first nightclubs we did. The client got upset opening night because everyone was pushing into the VIP room. And I made a joke. I said, hey, why don't we just take this sign and flip it around and make the big room the VIP room? And I'm sure everyone would have flocked to that if we didn't let them in. So there's this, you know, uh concept of scarcity and uh um, you know, the ability to get into a space that someone else couldn't get into. I mean, it starts at the front door and it's still that way. And then once you get in, you know, do you get a booth? Are you in this more uh, you know, which booth do you get? Um, but that translates to all public spaces and specifically uh thinking restaurant spaces. There's definitely a hierarchy of seating within the restaurant, while it's a uh you know open to all, but some a lot of the restaurants we do are uh more limited in terms of um guests' uh you know, availability to come in because they're so busy and they're so wanted. So there's still that same kind of nightclub idea of um scarcity and uh trying to get your private space within it, and do you have a better space than the next guy? And um, again, these kind of restaurants that we do are very uh uh a lot of people know each other within the restaurant as they as they come and join. So there's all of that to it.

Lyssia Katan

That's fascinating. And does it change based off of the location, like a restaurant or a club in LA versus one in Miami? Do you have to take cultural into account cultural differences?

John Sofio

It definitely changes, and I think it's more about ownership and who they know and their friends than it is necessarily about the vibe of the city doesn't do this or does or does do that to a degree, right? You have New York City, Miami, Dallas, and um and New York and uh Los Angeles. And those cities are really uh clicky and friends come to uh to meet friends, ownership brings friends, and it's it's more of a club, uh club atmosphere. Um but then you know, going to Scottsdale, that that still has a we just opened uh 40 Love a couple of nights ago, that still has a very good energy, great energy. Scottsdale is an amazing uh high-energy city. Um I think uh Scottsdale, Nashville, those cities are really filled with this even more you know organic energy than I see I find in some of the other bigger cities.

Lyssia Katan

Before we move into uh restaurants, when you're designing nightclubs, um, they're essentially an emotional experience. That's kind of how I think of them. What do the nightclubs get right about mood or connection that homes often get wrong?

Happiness, Energy Curves, And Club Psychology

John Sofio

I think it's hard to compare the home and the nightclub, but um, you know, you don't how do I say it? Um in a home, we're not really creating for a moment, we're creating for um a duration of of life. In a club, you're creating this moment. It's a very short life, I guess, right? And um the way the energy builds in the night. Um fun, funny kind of concept is it just I put this amazing lighting system in at Keys. I'm so excited for it. I can't wait to see it just full-blown going crazy. And uh as we're I'm standing there and waiting, and the lighting guy is just being so uh, he's just holding back the energy of these lights because he's building the night too, and I'm getting completely anxious, like God just just blast the lights. And I'm like, oh my God, this guy's killing me. And it's because he knows like the ramp up at the end is just insanity. And uh there, I think that that um anticipated energy and the buildup, uh, my own anxiety of waiting for this thing to happen. Um it's it's a pretty uh active and uh energetic kind of uh of time within an extremely compressed uh you know few hours. Literally, you know, the club is in LA, people don't really start showing up till 11:30, and by 1.30, you know, you're pretty much done, two o'clock. If it's just going crazy and you know, letting it go over a little, then it's like bananas. Uh so you really designed this thing that's just a compression of time, a ton of energy within that time, the explosion of that thing at the end of the night where the lights are going crazy, everyone's whooped up, going nuts. And then the crazy psychological part is I would wait till everybody leaves, and these clubs could empty out in a matter of minutes. And you're like, oh my God, this was nuts 10 minutes ago, and now it's just like some you know, stragglers and flip workers, and and it's it's it's a psychological uh craziness. And then you go outside during that that drive of 10 minutes, and it's like a half hour of mayhem outside, and then another half hour later, dead quiet. And if you start thinking of like how much energy and all these people, and then nothing, um uh I I've enjoyed watching it and trying to learn from it and seeing the psychology of people from trying to get in to being in there to the ramp up to the exit to the craziness outside where everyone's trying to like hook up and meet before the end of the night to a dead quiet street and live like within three or three hours. It's crazy.

Lyssia Katan

You recognizing that and observing that like almost like bell curve of energy, I would say. Do you translate that or try to translate it into a residential space you might be designing or a restaurant, or is that a solely unique nightclub experience?

John Sofio

I think it's pretty close to solely unique nightclub experience. I think for a restaurant, while a lot of our restaurants do have a club component to it where they have live music and a DJ and programming works that way, and that that tailors a little bit closer to the nightclub. But for residents, I think the concept for residential is one when you walk in there, you don't know why you feel so comfortable, but the space is comfortable. And this kind of goes back to true design, true, you know, architectural design, design tenants of uh compression of space and expansion of space over your head from entry to um you know the living room. Do you feel comfortable in the bedroom? Is the ceiling done correctly so you uh don't have any bad feng shui moments in there, like a beam between the bed or the beam cutting across your stomach above your head? So there's more a sense of comfort and um quietness about a home that I think is uh a result of uh a lot of things that I've learned and understood. And you know, we're trying to create a place where you can rest and uh recharge and um, you know, get build your energy. In the nightclub, you're spending your energy, I guess is a good way to contrast.

Lyssia Katan

Wow, that's a cool way to look at it. You you just mentioned the beam across the bed. Do you mind repeating that?

John Sofio

The beam across the bed. So in feng shui, you don't want to separate uh two people in a bed by having a beam going uh perpendicular to you because that does as you look up or as you sleep, there's an energy that separates between the two people. So you want more of a uh continuous plane, whether it's sloping up. Typically, you don't have the the ceiling higher on your head and sloping down towards your feet. It's almost in reverse. You want to have a lower section by your head, um, and then it could slope up, it could be level, but you definitely don't want any beams cutting across this way because it's almost like it's cutting you uh the energy of the room and while you're laying in there. So it's like that's a very um transferable concept to restaurant design. When I do booths that are at the perimeter of the at the walls, I like to lower the ceiling so you're stepping into a lower environment, the sound is a little bit tighter, you feel more safe and more comfortable, and um as opposed to a ceiling or no ceiling, which we see a lot of these restaurants have basically the exposed pipes. We try to avoid that at all costs. So that same concept of giving comfort, whether you're in the booth or whether you're in your bed or you know in your in your dining room. So these soffits that we build are useful for running air conditioning ductwork through it, um, fire sprinkler pipes through it. But really, what I'm trying to do is compress the space when you get into the eating area, and then you step off of maybe a small six-inch deck. The ceiling's low, like seven feet six, and now you step into the bigger part of the room, the circulation part of the room. That division of knowing you kind of came from a bigger area space into a more uh compressed, comfortable space translates between residential and restaurant.

Lyssia Katan

It almost encourages more intimate conversation in those little spaces, and then you're back out in the real world.

Translating Club Insights To Homes

John Sofio

A recent restaurant we went to in Miami, and they had these barrel ceilings that went in both directions over the booth, and it was really uh not not done well because the sound would travel back and forth in a strange way. You would pick up sound across the room and it would come in to your space. So the acoustics of how the sound is being uh uh you know dealt with or manipulated is is key. So a flat ceiling works better than a rounded dome ceiling over your head. Uh the that's a very typical thing you'll see where or hear uh noise from where someone's voice from the other side of the room catching into the dome, and you would hear some weird intimacy of the other s of the other uh guests. So lowering the ceiling, having a you know, acoustic batting within the space. Is great, having um you know uh upholstered channels for the back wall of the of your booth is great. Yeah, but you're definitely compressing the space and compressing the sound and you know the light, we love to hang the lights very low over the table. Very, very, very rare would I ever have a spotlight or a can light in my restaurants. And I know that um you know a lot of lighting designers will uh put a spotlight and it'll shine directly on the table. Uh and we find that um there's a we find I find the great way of lighting is to not have those harsh moments and everything is just warm and um uh you know dimly lit, well lit for for eating. Um you could always put a candelabra on a or a some type of small table lamp on the table, but uh we have I don't think I've ever done it actually a spotlight on it within our space or cam light within the spaces.

Lyssia Katan

So it's it's like people notice so much the physical things like the the upholstery or the comfort of the chair, but sounds like these invisible things like the light and the sound really amplify an experience. Can you tell me more about that, your experience with the invisible elements of a space?

John Sofio

Sure. The sound obviously is a great invisible element to study. In a nightclub, like in uh Keys, what we're trying to do is amplify the sound in a in a visual way, where the sound's coming out of the DJ booth. There's clearly speakers throughout the space, but you're feeling the sound go out. Um, the tile floor kind of circulates from the DJ booth out. Uh the whole room kind of builds out of the DJ booth. In a restaurant, you want to compress the sound so we're comfortably talking and eating, and you know, you don't you don't want to compress it too much where it's too dull. You want to keep a little brightness in there. So um upholstered ceilings, um, carpet, um, upholstered uh booths, the those are great ways to accomplish that. Um do a lot of curtains throughout the space that are decorative, but then they'll have a sound component to them as well. So you want to have about 30 to 40 percent soft uh surfaces and then the rest brighter surfaces because you could overdo it and then have this thing sound like a music studio, like where you're recording, and it's just too dead. You need some brightness to keep the energy of the room up.

Lyssia Katan

And how do you translate some of these, or how can someone translate this into their own home?

John Sofio

That's right. That's a great question. I think the concept of um carpeting, soft furniture, curtains, those are all obvious elements that really work. Um there's ways of incorporating um uh sound uh attenuating surfaces. So in the house that I'm in now, this little beam up above has those lines in it, and that can scrub the sound and soften it. The the wood wall soften it. There's a wall on the other side of the screen that's much more articulated and uh will capture the sound. And I did those elements because I knew I wanted the floor to be a stone floor to give us this amazing indoor-outdoor effect. So the stone floor is more bright, all the other surfaces are wood, but then we have the the open windows or the large glass windows, large glass, large windows that um uh right now we don't have curtains on, but we will finish this space with curtains to soften the visual and also the sound. But um, I knowing I needed to balance uh all of the other surfaces because the floor was going to be a hard surface was the key.

Lyssia Katan

So do you look at the first element, let's say you know you want a hard surface floor, and so you balance everything out accordingly.

John Sofio

Build it that way, absolutely. You you know, you you start building the finishes with what is the floor going to be, uh, and then you could approach the wall finishes that way. Um if this entire space was going to be carpet, then maybe the walls need to be a little bit brighter, a little bit smoother, something that can reflect a little bit of sound so it didn't get too dense. In a home, I don't think it's terrible to be more dense and and less bright because you're never going to have that many people all the time at the home. But it's it's nice to have that softness.

Lyssia Katan

And you mentioned feng shui. How much of an impact does feng shui play on your work?

Comfort By Design: Ceilings, Sound, Light

John Sofio

Well, I don't do a full study of feng shui in terms of every single project. I know enough about it to be dangerous. I definitely understand the tenets of feng shui that you um, you know, some of the basic ones where you wouldn't have a mirror across from your bed. You wake up at night and you think there's someone there. I did do some bad feng shui at uh a nightclub where I thought it'd be really cool to put a mirror as you're walking to the bathroom. You'd have to you walk towards the mirror and you make a left. So many people are smashing right into this wall of mirror. It's nuts. And uh I learned from that that you know it a mirror in the dark is dangerous because you don't notice that it's you walking to you, you know. So that's one thing. Um uh positioning the bed properly so the door doesn't open and your head is there to the left. We see that a lot in uh hotels, you know. We when we're doing these hotels, we really strive to make sure you know your your head's back there and your the door is over to the left in that far corner. So it's really a sense of like, would you be startled if someone walked in and you would at least have that distance to be like, oh, that door is opening to feel more safe. You know, and then uh obviously in folks where they get into deeper areas where you know your soul comes out if the door is across from your feet as you sleep. Um I believe those, I take it in a lighter way where you certainly don't want to have your feet pointing at a door, right? It it does, you know, someone opens the door and there's your feet and then there's your head. So uh put the door off to the left. And I think positioning the bed is one of the main things and feng shui that I've been focused on. Um uh, you know, positioning mirrors properly, positioning the entryway properly. So all of those moves I think are organically kind of, oh yeah, those things make sense. But um, at least there's uh a guideline to learn from.

Lyssia Katan

And incorporating those elements or not incorporating those elements, do you see the uh success of a residential space or a nightclub based off of the little details that were really thought of?

John Sofio

I believe so. I I've seen nightclubs that uh haven't lasted even the uh standard three and a half years. And um it's either um bad circulation, poor design, the acoustics are bad, uh, no one's comfortable within the space. I'll I won't name any uh nightclubs, but sometimes it's like the owners are um like ah, we don't need to spend money on that. And it's like, well, you know, there's no ceiling here. The floor is concrete. Like, what are we spending money on? Like, where's the gift to the to the guests? Where's the surprise? They walk in and it's just a raw space. And uh obviously there are there are underground clubs that are raw spaces. Within the keys, we created a raw space downstairs as one of the four rooms that we have with music. But that was like an underground Berlin nightclub. But we still put carpet in, upholster the walls. It has a raw look to it, but it it's definitely designed to accept the concept you're gonna have a ton of people in there and a really small space. Uh the ceilings were low because of the nature of the room, but I'm still designing for comfort, even though it's gonna be this quote unquote raw uh underground Berlin uh nightclub vibe.

Lyssia Katan

That's so interesting you say that because I have friends who are huge, like very big on music, and there are certain clubs they'll go to specifically for the acoustics, and certain clubs they'll avoid, even if it's some of their favorite people performing, just because the sound is so poor quality or very, very good.

John Sofio

And in restaurants you see that a lot where it's just too loud and you know you just can't take it, and it's you know, you don't you won't really visit it many, many times. But if the sound is smooth and you're comfortable there, you know, that's one great element within the overall experience.

Lyssia Katan

Right. That's so interesting. The things that we don't like like we said, it's they're invisible. We don't even see them, but leaving a restaurant and you're exhausted because you heard like 13 conversations around you will really your energy pretty fast.

John Sofio

I think another thing to think of for things that you don't see but you experience is um you know, you don't necessarily notice like how um articulated the bar is or how um how filled the room is with elements where you just don't walk in, you just see the entire room. We like to reveal the the experience and uh create different spaces within the experience for the night so they'll come back and experience the room from a different perspective. Um sit in the middle, sit on one of the booths in the side, sit in the pullmans, sit at the bar. If you can create those those um diverse moments within the restaurant, I think that gives the restaurant some pretty good um opportunity to be successful.

Lyssia Katan

I saw one of your videos about the wavy bar. Is that something that's done with psychology in mind?

John Sofio

I learned it by doing the nice guy restaurant, and the results, the reason why I um had the bar go in these angles was because there was two big columns that were in the way. And um when I drafted it, it made sense. I did these angles. And then when we were on site trying trying to build it or trying to lay the bar out, I was getting very frustrated that I couldn't get the right spacing, it just didn't feel right. And I called a client and I was like, uh, the bar's not working out. Let me just do the square the square bar. And uh he's like, no, just make it work. You got it. And I was like, all right, I'm gonna take it one more shot at this. And all I was doing is laying down two by fours on the floor as the shape of the bar and like kicking them a little and moving them a little. And then finally, like I just kicked one two by four and it just locked into the other. I was like, oh my God, that's it. We got it. And it was trying to get around these two columns that were in the way. And now that bar is kind of an iconic bar, um, the nice guy bar in in uh West Hollywood. And what I've learned from it, and I kind of knew, but I learned even further, is the 90-degree corners allow people to gather at the bar. So usually at a bar, it only has two corners. Here you're making three, four, or five corners within the space, creating more of an intimacy, uh having uh the ability to look from one side of the bar to the other and not be too far away. So you have that interaction between people that's really fun, and it creates a more intimate, friendly level. And then from that, when I started doing bigger bars, I used that uh concept of creating at least another few corners that allows the bar to be interesting. Uh at Delilah, over the Delilah in West Hollywood, it's a very long bar. So I uh broke it in a few angles, but also in the center of the bar off of the back wall, it created a peninsula. So when you walk in, you really only see half of the bar because that peninsula is blocking the other half. Um, and then it creates like two rooms within this big room, just at the bar level itself. So there's things where you don't really notice what's happening, but I'm creating smaller spaces within the bigger space to create compression not only vertically, but also within the floor plan to allow gathering groupings so you're not just kind of like either at the bar or there's this big expansive space behind you. You have maybe a little pony wall that helps you feel like you're at the bar and not dumped into the dining room. Uh we've learned to put um waiter stations as blockers that kind of protect the guests on the other side where they're dining from the bar on the front side. So creating these blockers, uh my client likes to use that word, blockers. It creates spaces between furniture that uh allows people to gather and not feel like they're on top of the dining side of it. Uh, then in the dining room, creating uh pods of plants so we can separate everyone, but also feel like you're all in the same space. So you kind of have your privacy within a public space. And I think privacy within a public space, like a restaurant, is a great um tenant of design to study and try to execute because you're creating those really warm, like safe spaces that you and your guests feel like you're kings of the of the night without bothering the next person, but you're not blocked into this weird little room that would have a zero energy, you know, because you're pulling the energy from everyone else and the energy of the room.

Scarcity, VIP, And Spatial Hierarchy

Lyssia Katan

I'm curious to know how much of human psychology is incorporated to that where we like maybe small little tribes or small, like we've physiologically evolved to like small groups, and we kind of get disoriented in large spaces.

John Sofio

Yeah, I believe that the psychology of the human interaction and the human condition is really uh a core of design to try to master, keep studying and keep exploring. And um what we feel comfortable in our um childhood um, you know, pillow forts, we now are adults and we're still looking for that cool, comfortable safety with friends, being public, but being safe, but also you know, having that energy of like the unknown happening. So there's this um, you know, funness to it.

Lyssia Katan

Where do projects tend to lose their soul? And how do you prevent that from happening?

John Sofio

In the initial design or in the beginning parts of the design, um treating all of the surfaces as important, understanding that there's not only walls, but there's actually a ceiling that you need to create. There's actually a floor that you need to make warm and beautiful. And I think projects go off the rails very quickly when they're like, oh, this is this type of space. Don't worry about the ceiling, we'll paint it black. Like you're gonna have pipes and black paint for the ceiling. All right, so there's no design overhead. Oh, and that's a polished concrete floor. Like, okay, so there's no design under my feet. I mean, I know there are spaces that should be like that, I guess, but I think that's where they lose their soul, right? Right right away when you're not treating every surface as uh an opportunity to create a whole thing. Picture uh a house without a roof and without a floor, just a bunch of walls. So I think the soulful moves are materiality, how materials connect to each other, how you are relating the perspective of the concept of what you came up with that's gonna guide you and how close you are to following that, um, as opposed to some random ideas. Oh, we saw this, so put this in. You're like, okay, but that has nothing to do with it, but uh, I guess, you know, so controlling the design through construction allows us to be like, we're not doing that. No, no, we're not doing that either.

Lyssia Katan

And do you see it happening often that clients come to you with like a Pinterest photo and they say, I want exactly that? And you're saying, actually, that's not practical by any means.

John Sofio

You brought up the P word.

Lyssia Katan

Sorry, was I not supposed to?

John Sofio

I don't allow anybody from our team to use Pinterest, and this is why. As a designer, you need to close your eyes and imagine what it should be versus oh, I saw that over there, let's do that wall, that club has this, let's do that wall. You will create a space, but it won't be a unique whole, holistic space of design. Now, clients, we don't care if they use Pinterest or not. Let them use Pinterest. Let them tell us, in general, these are the things that I love. And then off of that, it can guide us to, you know, they want uh they want this red room, it's gonna be very soft, and um, I could see there they really fixated on this dark red room. So then we'll create our own version of their idea. Um, very rare will client say, This wall I'd love to have over there. You really need to incorporate this tile thing. Um, I think we have great clients that uh have a lot of trust in us, but also uh know that you know they're handing this thing off to somebody. Um and a lot of times it'll be a few words that they'll ask uh or give us to go off of at uh the restaurant Hero in um Phoenix. It's at the base of this building. The building's being built in uh celebration on an ode to Mario Kart, and it's an apartment building. Okay. What the hell is that? Right. Mario Kart. All right, so we're not gonna be on the nose with something like that. And even the building is not the building, basically has these angled walls and it feels like it moves at night because of the angled windows. Um the place is called Rainbow Road, I think. How do we create that that is classy and beautiful and energetic? And um, there's some real fun solutions like my ceiling is torn open over the center seating, and there'll be a golden light, kind of uh like almost I'm picturing a haze of golden light uh going from the ceiling down. So, how am I gonna create that with you know all these different moves? Um so I'm being kind of right in that same zone. He didn't he didn't say we have to make a Mario Kart. He just said this is what the building is. I was like, all right, so it's gonna be a fun building. So we did a lot of color in there. We did uh booths that are more serpentine versus just U-shapes. We've changed the fabric through the booth a little bit to give it this kind of energy. Um and uh the client basically said, That's what they're doing, do whatever you want to do here. I trust you, I'm gonna run these other places while you guys do this. And we were very strong with our idea, and we I really believed in the idea. So with then the first meeting after showing him, he was like, Wow, this is amazing. I love it. There was not one thing you were like, but you know, maybe you should do this. No, he was just like, Oh God, I love it. Uh and then he's like, What should we call it? I was like, oh my god. So we do a lot of branding, but usually the client tells us the name, and then we come up with the logo and the reason for it, and it gave us uh a closer, and some some projects we do do the uh the naming of it, and it ties it together with the brand really well. So we came down to a couple of names, and then I I decided that the word hero makes the most sense. Uh and it could be Asian, it could be Italian, it could be Mario Kart, it could be anything. And the way we did the lettering for hero, I think, is very um uh in sync with the design. And uh he loved the name, and we just went with it. So a lot of clients do give us that um that runway to do whatever we want within their kind of overall idea, and even that place was we we got it. It wasn't gonna be a Delilah, it wasn't gonna be a nice guy, it wasn't gonna be something that was uh too intense, it's gonna be open more to the public. It's that neighborhood is very, you know, more open and public. I wouldn't imagine um you know hard to get in. I would imagine fun to get in and be in the energy of this big.

Bars, Blockers, And Intimate Gathering

Lyssia Katan

How can a listener make a d their designer's life easier?

John Sofio

First, make sure we have a strong designer.

Lyssia Katan

Okay.

John Sofio

Right? When I have a designer that's just going to repeat something else, right? So let's just assume that that's the case. To make the designer's opportunity for success in design, I think the client um has to have a clear vision of what they want, in even if the what they want is whatever you do, do it. Okay, that's what he wants. Or uh we're gonna do a Delilah in uh New York City. What should that look like versus Dallas versus Miami versus West Hollywood? So each Delilah has its own um uh vibe and style and design, but with a common DNA. And we can we're like in New York where we are doing a much different Delilah in terms of like it's downstairs, it's the meatpacking district, it's more of a found space. So I'm imagining like someone came and did an excavation and found this old space that they then turned into this restaurant. Um, much different than uh Dallas, which is a tall space, it's big, it's bright, it's open, um, very easy to kind of do whatever you want there. So it's this swooning ceiling that runs around the room with these large uh lily pads and those big trees made out of brass, things to fill the room because it's so spacious. In New York, the ceilings are lower. There's some beams that we already have to work around. So we've created more of these barrel vaults that you kind of feel like you're like, wow, this I can't tell if this space was been here forever and it's brand new or it's brand new, right? So that's the experience. So I think if the client gives you some general general like direction, that helps a lot instead of just do what you want to do. But um, then you know, let the designer take the full, the full reign. Some projects we've done, um, you know, client loves it, and then they kind of start going, oh well, I went over here and I saw this, so put this in there. You're like, okay, and then put that in there, and then oh, everything. Oh, so it's a different project. And it's okay, but give us those kit of parts that you're trying to put in or those ideas, and we'll start again and then and then go through and make it, you know, you just don't want it to be tacked on pieces.

Lyssia Katan

And do you see there's a there being a disconnect between how people want their homes to look and how what's actually going to support them? And you from a designer perspective is able to say, actually, that's not going to be good for you, let's rework it, or many times are they like, I just want it to look nice.

Handmade Details And Material Soul

John Sofio

Yeah, so I've learned from this very uh um wealthy client back in the early 2000s that um if they want what they want and we can give them a better version of that, let's do that. So she was well traveled and she was um asking for all these fanciful things. And instead of being shy or timid about it, I kind of dug dove in deep and created what she would think, but even you know, beyond. We didn't want it to look fake, because that's the the tricky part. It's like, well, I want it to look like this African hut within blah, blah, blah, because I went to Africa. I'm like, well, okay, we're in Laguna Beach, so how do we do that? But really executing every element that she wanted to the point that I felt it was authentic, but not like, you know, took it there and put it here, more authentic for the idea that she wanted. She wanted a beautiful, fun space. After working with her, I realized that we're not so tied to the rigidity of modernism, which we were very uh immersed in. The house in here is a modernist home, um, and we really believe in it, but that you can take those same design ideas of modernism and execute them in this uh more fanciful kind of uh fantasy way. And I think Luck. That gave me the opportunity to believe that I can design anything by working with her. And from that point, I was like, anything's possible. Let's design it. Let's let's do it. And uh, but we're gonna do it good, and it's not gonna feel like um goofy or you know, poorly designed of that same idea. Um, and then I got into this uh hospitality space, and I already knew I could design anything. It's not that I'm just a modernist through the experience of working with her for a year and a half, and then that allowed me to think things like a little more off the uh the standard. So a good example would be the Nice Guy restaurant, very small restaurant, um uh small budget, but I knew I wanted to make it what the client wanted, which is kind of like uh their mafia style space where they can go in and feel like their friends could be there and feel you know safe within it, and the celebrities can go in there. So I took uh Western red cedar, 12-inch by uh one inch thick boards, 12 feet long, and I milled them into nine different sizes. And uh each stick goes on the wall and it follows itself all the way around the room, and the next one all the way around the room. So there's no pattern there, but it's not a random pattern where there's just a bunch of sticks everywhere. So there's a soul to the space because we put that handcrafted concept of bringing every stick from one end of the room to the other, one end of the room to the other. You can knock off the night, the nice guy, but you wouldn't know that that's actually why the room feels tight and finished. It created the acoustics that I wanted, it allowed me to stain it dark, so you have that darkness. Instead of paint, it's stained, it's wood, it's rich, it's there's energy there in terms of the materiality and the quality. Um so I think like I would never have thought uh that I could do that through that space with all of these sticks and create my own thing if I'd have the experience of working with that with that woman in her home.

Lyssia Katan

Do you think that the hand-finished element of that adds to people's experience when they see something not perfect?

John Sofio

I think the hand-finished, the handmade, the handmade concept, we've been using this term, the handmade thought, where you're taking an idea and creating the finished product there. Putting more and more of the handmade version of the solution is kind of, well, two things. It's the only way I know how to do it. And two, I think it adds what's separates my work from others is it's not so commercial. You'll never feel like, oh, this is just a commercial space. And we can go to restaurant after restaurant and find all this commercial like kind of feeling to it from the FFE, because they're buying it from a you know supply house versus crafting each piece uh as if it's a very important piece of furniture. Each detail is very, very important. So you're only going to design it once, and hopefully this thing can be there for many, many years. So why not take the time to create something uh authentic and individual for that project? And that's where more and more soulful design comes through.

Lyssia Katan

I want to ask you about the actual fabrics and the elements that go into the things, the tactile things, the things that we can feel, like the booths you were mentioning that could be stood on, or perhaps the cushions. What goes into picking those out for a space, whether residential or commercial?

Durability Without Losing Beauty

John Sofio

Well, some of the things I've learned on the commercial side was the durability is is critical, but you still have to make it comfortable and look as if it's a piece of furniture and not a boxy booth. Uh, one of my first experiences was did all the booths, and the next day, every single booth had a hole in it ripped apart. Brand new. Next morning, it looked like someone took a knife and just walked around every booth, and they were the heels from the girl standing on the booths. So obviously, we redid them quickly, but I came up with a design. So the interior of the booth is this strong box of wood, the exterior is this soft pillowed look. We've uh learned to um laminate the booth fabric with uh Kevlar. We learned to not have the cushion more than two inches, maybe an inch and a half. So when they do go through, it doesn't go through, it just hits the wood. But if you sat on it, you wouldn't feel wood and um you wouldn't look at it as if it's this box thing. It would look like a piece of furniture. So uh I did learn from mistake how to make a booth and then took that uh kind of durability concept into restaurants that don't necessarily have people standing on the booths, but um creating the furniture piece with the correct fabric, whether it needs to be lined because it's a softer fabric, or uh creating you know the comfort level within that booth but still keeps it durable, and that's that kind of hidden box within the within the book within the booth. Creating some amazing booths for this current um uh kind of robota bar that we're doing in West Hollywood. And it's not a booth, it's essentially like this very Zen kind of Asian, I don't use the word chair with a very thin upholstered pad uh in this beautiful green, and the piece just looks like a craftsman has worked, you know, worked on it for 100 years to create this piece. Um so the detailing of that was important, the elegance of that's important, the height of the of the booth is is critical. Um we like to go to 17 to 17 and a half for the max height on my seat. I'd like to go 19 inches for the uh depth of the seat, 20 if it's a lounge, 19 if it's a restaurant. I like to slope the back of the seat uh anywhere from four to six inches, depending on how uh much uh you know lounge it's going to be or how more dining it's going to be. And then I take those kind of dimensions and apply them to every seat, every booth, every um you know, seating opportunity within the space. But then the table has to match that. Too many times I'll go into a restaurant, the table is high and the seat is low. It's horrible. There's a great relationship between the top of the table and the top of the booth. If you have uh approximately 10 inches in there, it could vary a little bit, then that that that makes the most sense. Um too many times the uh the table is high and then the seat is low, and you're uncomfortable, and it's like, oh man, this is I feel I feel goofy just sitting in this chair in this in this table. So the standard table base nets the table height to be up to 30, 30 and a half inches. So even if we're buying a more standard table base and powder coating it or plating it, we have to cut all the table bases. And that's one element that we do as a process that um we know is a unique process to executing the FF and E.

Lyssia Katan

Little things that we don't even think about. We just know this table is so uncomfortable. Is there something that looks really good in photos but quietly works against us?

John Sofio

We've actually never picked out of a catalog, but I've seen it happen on like Marriott projects. Um AC Marriott, this is their uh their their uh brand book, so you can click choose within this. Oh, and by the way, they have this catalog that you could, and it's like, wow, that all of that stuff sucks. It's uncomfortable, it's cheap, it's ergonomically incorrect, uh, it's dull looking, and you can create that same vision for what AC uh originally was supposed to be, which is this warm, um sophisticated space, and now it's kind of like this whole cookie-cutter thing that you know you're now into the franchise world of um, you know, Taco Bell and McDonald's and and those spaces where they're not really designing for um uh aesthetics, they're designing to get you in, get you out.

Lyssia Katan

Right. Speaking of that AC Marriott though, um perhaps do you know why those uh uh hotel carpets are so ugly? Because I have so many friends getting married and they're all complaining how ugly those carpets are.

John Sofio

Is there a reason to hide the stains? They're trying to hide the stains. And we always use the idea of if you go to the Wynn Hotel and you see this beautiful carpet and it is clean every single day, right? There's a way to have a beautiful carpet and have it clean. It's called maintenance, proper maintenance. So they were they're designing for durability, and I've had experiences with these types of projects, and they're designing for durability, but you can get the same durability without being cold. Let's talk about a bar edge, the square box bar edge that they always do for no other reason than they have no clue that that's an opportunity for design. They're like, well, that's the bar. Like, oh my God, the who wants to be near that thing? Square, cold, right, as opposed to a lean rail, a Chicago rail, a brass pipe with leather, a soft edge, a rounded thing. Sure, it takes more effort to do that. But I think that, you know, unfortunately, not every project is really well designed or designed by a real designer, it's designed by the team of guys that do this all the time. And the result is they they're skipping all of these things. Everything's boxy, everything's pre-made, stuck in, and there's no transition between one and another. It's just these elements that look like they came out you know out of a box and pushed it against the wall.

Lyssia Katan

You do feel it. Going into the feeling, um, if someone listening wanted to improve how their home feels, given all your experience, not visually, what's the first thing you would tell them to do?

John Sofio

I think I would ask them to think about in terms of design, layers, layering. I think if you can layer the space, you can get there, right? So you let's just say the worst condition is you bought a track house. Right? You got the ugly drywall, like bumpy drywall. So let's start with smoothing the drywall out. You've got the cheap vinyl floor, let's take that out and put a wood floor in, which is a layer of comfort and elegance, and then let's put a carpet over that under the seating groups. So now we're structuring the seating groups with carpet. Um, the then the walls would then get layered with not every single wall needs a special finish, but maybe there's a highlight wall that makes a lot of sense to be with wood as opposed to just the drywall. Or let's highlight that wall with wallpaper. Right? Ceilings are um uh typically left for uh, you know, nobody or in a home. So let's really get the ceilings to look like something, whether it's coving a ceiling, putting um cove lights in. You don't have to go crazy in a house, but certainly some cove lights uh in in key areas are going to do it. And then, of course, your FFNE, which would be your extra layer of opportunity to get soft and warm and soulful.

Lyssia Katan

Do you mind um uh defining what FFE means?

John Sofio

Furniture, fixtures, and equipment is is the FFNE zone in hospitality. What's funny about that is it's typically not much equipment. It's usually furniture and light fixtures. The equipment, I guess, can fall under sound um equipment or um I don't even know what, but usually it's just furniture and fixtures, but we use the word FF and E and it's architectural fixtures that are uh the lighting fixtures, right? Or the plumbing fixtures if they're more decorative and not utilitarian, like in the back of house.

Lyssia Katan

And if they've they're already living in their house, uh listeners already living in their house, they've moved in, they can't really change structural things. What would you recommend things they can do immediately within a week to really improve the space?

Anti Cookie-Cutter: Avoiding Catalog Design

John Sofio

That's that's a great that's a great question. We used to do tons of homes, and one of the key things I did was uh painting with a uh three-color paint scheme. The first color I would use is I would go number one. Actually, the colors I would use is zero, one, and two. So that's three colors. The zero is the white, the one is the light color, and the two is the dark color. And how you paint, like what wall gets what color, I created a system for um how that comes about, and um it made sense on every single home, no matter what style of home it was. So think of this: the lights coming in through the window, it's gonna bounce off of the far wall. So that far wall may be the wall that should have the most color because it'll reflect the light back into the room. The wall with the window should probably have the white, because when you look at that wall, it's gonna be in silhouette, so you're not gonna see that. So let's make that the lightest wall, and then the number one, which is the middle color, would be the wall that transitions between the white and the dark color. So I think that uh you can get a tremendous amount of architecture out of a house that's built with drywall, which most of them are, by by um highlighting the structural elements of the of the room, and you go very, very far with that kind of three-color uh paint scheme.

Lyssia Katan

And what about furnishings? Do you have similar advice for furnishings?

John Sofio

Yeah, for furnishings, uh we start with the couch. That's the central piece. Um I do like to have an L-shaped couch and then have a coffee table that could potentially be an ottoman, so you could pull that closer to you, and now you have a lot of um comfort points within that couch. That's one design, and then a chair or two to complement that layout. And then your uh lighting, which would be the you know, a table lamp on one side, a floor lamp on the other, creating warm lighting within the space. If you did do um directional can lighting pointed at the walls to highlight the uh the walls as opposed to shooting down onto your lap or your head when you're sitting in the in the living room. Um dining rooms are pretty straightforward, but you could really highlight the dining room by detailing the floor under the table to kind of take on the shape of the floor. Some of our uh private dining rooms, PDRs in the hospitality space, are really grand rooms. And the concept is you have the large table. Your chairs are obviously elegant. The table should have kind of a curve to it, like a kind of bows out in the middle and comes back. So everyone's kind of facing each other as opposed to straight on. Uh the floor coming kind of mimics the soffit in the ceiling. So now you're creating this verticality of the ceiling and the floor matching. So you're extruding the room in this way, uh, and then highlighting one wall, which would be like the wall that would, in a private dining room, that would be like the highlight wall, right? And then the two side walls maybe are uh a different finish than that highlight wall. So now you've created the floor planes within the room, the walls, and then you've elegate elevated the floor with the ceiling so those two guys match, and then the plane that's in the middle, being the dining table, is is like an extrusion of the floor or a drop down to the ceiling. And all of those kind of moves create this subtle, like organized space that um uh uh kind of again speaks towards a soulful space. You don't really know why this room is all dialed in. You see the floor, but maybe not relating that the floor is the same size as the ceiling, which is the same size as the soffit hole in the in the same center. Um, layering lighting within the dining room uh is key. The the dining chairs obviously need to be comfortable, need to be at the right height that we spoke of. The dining table needs to be lower and not tall. It should be soft, the edge should be soft, whether it's wood or even stone, it should be soft. So um, yeah, I think that that's the the things that I've learned about, you know, design through residential design, then into hospitality, going back to toggling back to new residential design, those elements really play back and forth.

Lyssia Katan

And are these the elements that you incorporate in a very high-end home to really make like what makes a room a home feel very high-end versus standard?

John Sofio

I think the the concept of a high-end home is that there's elegance within every piece of furniture. There's the proper layering where it's not feeling cluttered, but it's feeling there's no empty space unless there's a reason that you're trying to keep empty. So that that void gives the rest of the room more of a filled feel. The contrast between um the hard and the soft, I think, is is important. Um and a space that just feels so organically um uh peaceful is the is the key. So a little bit lower, uh, no garishness through it. Um and a place that they can also call their own, right? So there is opportunity. Yeah, let's let's choose that art piece that you really enjoy. We believe it should be, you know, four feet by six feet, and it should be this more abstract, or it should be a photograph, and then let the client lean into that. You know, show them fabrics that uh see what they respond to and build off of that. Again, typically the the large couch would be the first element, and then the other pieces flow off of that. If we are creating our own rug, you know, that will complement the furniture. It's the island that the furniture is sitting on. So we started with the carp started with the um couch, moved into the chairs, and then this island or this floating element being the carpet or rug, you know, probably would be uh you know, hand woven to a spec that we come up with.

Lyssia Katan

So it sounds like all these pieces are interplaying with each other, but there's a primary focus on the couch. That's where it starts.

John Sofio

Yeah, and the couch, if we relate it to the nightclub world, it's the organizing element within the room that people circulate around.

Lyssia Katan

It all comes together.

John Sofio

It all comes together. It's all the same.

Layering Homes With Paint, Light, And FF&E

Lyssia Katan

Don, you recommend a lot of books on your socials. Are there any books or is there one particular book that uh really changed the way you think about design in space and that you could recommend to our listeners?

John Sofio

The one that I've probably um recommended the most, and um I usually purchase it for the team members that come on board, is a pattern language. The concept of the pattern language, well, the reason why I suggest it is it's helped me on that first home that I talked about, in terms of uh I use it as a guide to create reasons for the decisions. One of the patterns that they've recognized is called the marriage bed, which should be the central part of the home, it's the command center, uh, even more so than the kitchen. You feel like you have a visual control over the property and over the ongoings of the home. So the marriage bed, so the thing that I built on that house, the first house we talked about, was a master bedroom on the top of the house. It was a 700 square foot house, we made it 1,300 square feet, and the additional square footage was literally the master bedroom, which was focused around the marriage bed and everything flowed off of that. So these tenets of design that they've recognized, I've used over and over. I've used the book so often that I know a lot of those tenets of design. And I think that as a designer, one of the things that I struggled with in the beginning was I was designing, I was doing stuff, but I didn't have a path or a purpose to start. I don't know where to start, so I just start doing. And I think that this pattern language book allows you to kind of pull back, pull out 10 patterns, organize your your project based on that, whether it's a house or a nightclub or a restaurant or a garden or a city, you could use that book for all that. So a pattern language um was was and still is one of the most influential books that um I've used and I've suggested and purchased and given to people and uh donated, and um I think it is the book well beyond most of the other books that I've have suggested that has helped me be a good designer.

Lyssia Katan

Thank you. You're a wealth of knowledge. Now you've designed a ton of spaces. Is there a space that you haven't designed that you've entered that changed you?

John Sofio

Guggenheim Museum in uh Manhattan by Frank Laird Wright was something that I experienced when I was younger, and uh I didn't understand it, but I knew it was something different. And uh over the years I visited it a few times. We were there a couple of months ago. And um the more I learn about design, the more I, you know, execute design, um the more curious I am about the other masters and their design, not other, the masters and their design. There and uh as I'm walking down this um pathway from the top to the bottom, I'm kind of joking to myself or laughing about how, oh my God, that is definitely not the code today. That wall is so low, someone could fall off, right? So I'm in that world, or I'm like, God, I wish I could do that, but the code requires a 42-inch handrah, you know, and I'm designing around all these parameters that they didn't have to do back then. The slope is definitely not ADA um uh oriented, it's much steeper. It's like, oh my, it's so great. Um the wall is tilted and you're supposed to hang art on it. It's so cool. He busted that through and was like, yeah, I don't care about that. It's the building, that's the art. Oh my god, how crazy is that? So I think that you know, the story about how he did the building and even looking at his body of work to get to there from all these other styles to this ultra modernist thing is is is really bananas. And uh it's helped me understand like that you have to keep evolving, keep working, keep learning, um, never go, oh I'm a great designer. I'm just a good designer that I have had the luck and opportunity to keep designing and having uh a lot of control over my own design. And that really was a product of the uh time when I graduated and came out to LA and there was no work. It was a recession, and I was struggling to find work and to the point where I couldn't find work. And I was just doing these little side jobs for anybody, working for free for anybody just to be in the industry, to the point where I started my own company. I was like, all right, no one's gonna, there's no work out here. So I started my own company, and from there, I was lucky that I had that five, six year struggle of just not just rolling into the next. job from the from the jobs, you know, from the graduation and the architects I work with back east. I was like, oh, this is easy. I'll go to LA. And it was a shock and it was very difficult. But it allowed me to, it positioned me to have to, you know, be more entrepreneurial and more on my own. So then from there, I never really had the boss to tell me, no, you can't do this. I never had the the guy, you know, above me to guide me. So you know, all of those, you know, good or bad, I had to teach myself more and more and more. And um I've spoken about this on uh on my uh online stuff. These two architects basically looked at my work while I was struggling to find work. And uh I had work done and they were like well kid if you were going to do it you should have done it good. And they just like closed my portfolio. I was just like oh God I quit I can't take it anymore. And then I like kind of walked out but within a matter of minutes I was like wow you really need to learn because what you know is not even close.

Lyssia Katan

You know and I believed in what they said even though it was harsh I believed in what they said and I put myself on a um a lifelong journey of self-education learning and and and and wanting to learn and knowing I have to learn I have to still learn every day I have to still learn if you could leave listeners with one mindset shift about their homes given all your experience uh in from the very beginning to today something that they will remember next time they walk into a room or they walk into a home what would it be?

Proportions That Make Seating Comfortable

John Sofio

I think uh one tenant would be uh it's a machine for living right so if you walk into that space and know that it is actually a fabricated thing that's built for you and make it for you um it was a time where uh I was thinking man all these people want these houses renovated why don't they just buy a house that they like and and it's because everyone's individual so make the home your own in little in small ways right if if the budget isn't there by choosing those elements and and controlling your environment it's your machine that you're living in. So I I think this machine can nurture us and make us um uh happy and whole every day if it becomes that piece and I think that's I think probably the one of the things I would suggest think of it as a machine for living.

Lyssia Katan

John that's great advice and you are a wealth of knowledge. Thank you so much for all of your I've learned so much. I know the listeners will too and I so very much value your experience and your willingness to come on the podcast and share all your knowledge and I will we will link everything in the show notes so our listeners can look at your work and as well as the link to the books, your recommendations and your socials. Thank you so much for your time with me today. Thank you so much for spending this time with me on Room to think if you enjoyed this episode feel free to follow the show subscribe leave a review and share it with someone who you think would really appreciate a more thoughtful approach to their space. You can find more Design Meets psychology insights on social, in our community and definitely in upcoming episodes so you can build a better life by design. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you next time