Antonia Hellman is a co-founder and CEO of Toucan.

She is a senior at Stanford University studying political science, economics, and management science & engineering.

Prior to Toucan, her career experience has been in data science and political campaigning.

We keep hearing people talk about “remote work” and “hybrid models” of work, but for many, it can be difficult to envision what that means. But Ken Newby and the Vision RE team have cracked the code. They have figured out a way to emulate their in-person office feel online with, you guessed it, Toucan.

This past year has forced many companies around the world to rethink not only how they do work, but how they engage and connect their teams. Community and togetherness has become more of a conscious priority than ever before, and that’s what brought Ken and his colleagues to Toucan in the first place.

 is a safety company based in Alberta, Canada, and that’s where their office was. Having worked together in person for quite a while, they had developed an implicit office etiquette tailored to their work style. When they could no longer work together in person, they went off in search of a platform that would support that same office etiquette, thus allowing everyone to work and interact in, essentially, the same way that they did before.

Ken Newby describes the Vision RE office space as including several “pods,” with 3 people in an office space - but with 4 desks, just in case someone from a different pod needs to pop in and collaborate. Having 3 people in a pod is perfect because it allows anyone that needs help to simply turn around and get outside input. They have been able to recreate this fluid, collaborative environment using Toucan. In their Vision RE 

, all they have to do is create Meeting Spots for each respective “pod.” That way, everyone knows exactly where to go.

In an in-person office, each individual can also have their own personal space to work. This can be done on Toucan as well. Ken describes how, within the company’s 

, each team member has their own designated 

, which serves as their personal “office.” And part of the Vision RE remote office etiquette is that, whenever anyone uses their own “office,” they provide a status: “Door open,” “Door ajar,” and “Door closed.” The first means that they are inviting others to come in at any time. The second means that they are busy but can be interrupted for time-sensitive matters. The third means that they cannot be disrupted at all. This system mimics the physical signals that one would observe in their in-person office.

. One for their office space, and one called “Connections,” where they invite people from outside their company to meet. This can be clients, and it could be potential hires. Regardless of who it is, they always come away with the same reaction: “Wow.” It’s always so easy bringing new folks onto the platform, and the casual environment speaks volumes about Vision RE’s values. Seeing the freedom that Toucan affords you instantly conveys a company culture of inclusivity, kindness, respect, and trust.

Ken Newby is interviewed by Toucan CEO to discuss how VisionRE is using the platform as their remote work space.

Superhost Spotlight: Ken Newby on the future (and present) of remote work

One thing that this past year has taught us is that virtually anything can be done online. That’s right, even networking. That’s why we’ve put together online networking event tips to guide you through your first event.

At Toucan, we’ve seen time and time again that if you get it right, online networking events can be hugely successful.

. Our tip to you is to use your strongest channels, whether this be emails, Facebook, Linkedin, or Instagram.

Telling your existing network that you are hosting the event encourages sign ups. Also, it increases the chances that they will tell their friends about the event. So don’t forget to distribute an event link that they can share.

: Publicize post-event as well. A successful event can lead to great content, connections, and new community members.

The more purpose-driven your networking event is, the more likely it is to succeed! This applies to picking out the right event name, the description, and the wording you choose when you publicize it.

. No one’s going to stop and notice a long event name on their timeline. But they will click on it if it catches their eye and has a purpose that interests them.

An important lesson I’ve learned with online events is never to assume that people have all the information they need.

Firstly, make sure your guests know how to set up an account on the platform where the event will be hosted. For Toucan, we send the newest members of our Flock to the 

 page. These types of guides should also be accessible for the online location of your choice.

Secondly, send your guests any other relevant information for your specific online networking event. This can be any number of things, whether it’s adding their Linkedin, or filling out an ‘About Me’ card, the more prepared your guests feel, the more they’ll enjoy the event! Trust us, we learned this during our 

This is key. The last thing you want is people showing up and leaving after 10 minutes. To keep it engaging, plan ahead. Have a schedule of 

 throughout the event.  For example, after 20 minutes, make an announcement for everyone to join a new group to meet other members!

Speed online networking events - who would have thought this was the future?!

Check-in with your guests! The best thing you can do is learn from your events. Find out what everyone loved and what they would have wanted more of from the online networking event.

This is a great opportunity to connect with your community and establish a dialogue.

There you go, five tips for your first online networking event. The main thing is to enjoy it. If you do, then so will your guests! Follow these easy steps and you’ll be a pro in no time. Good luck ☘️

Are you thinking about hosting your first online networking event and don't know where to start? Have a look at our 5 tips to set you up for success!

5 Tips to Host Your First Online Networking Event

Toucan co-founder.
Rabbi, driving instructor, and acrobat in parallel universes.

We used to have physical workspaces. When a parent told a child “I’m going to work”, it was understood that he or she would be leaving the house.

Today, many of us work in “virtual” workspaces, workspaces that are accessible from anywhere. Today, the laptop class can go to work without leaving the house.

For a lot of people it’s an office, a factory, a field, a restaurant, a hospital, or even a vehicle. People work in lots of places.

 they work hasn’t changed and won’t change. But for many white collar workers, workers who mostly work at their desks, things are changing, and the recent string of lockdowns has accelerated this change.

These workers  interact with the world through four interfaces:

Until recently – a couple of decades ago – most of those things weren’t mobile. Today they all are, and this has very profound implications on the flexibility of these people’s workspace.

, although it still exists, has been virtualized, i.e., digitized. Sure, we still see lots of papers in offices, but it’s no longer necessary. I still know people who print their emails, but I personally haven’t owned a printer in 15 years.

 are just as accessible through a video conference as they are in person.

Today, a white collar worker is no longer bound to a workplace. He or she can work from anywhere: a traditional office, a shared workspace, a home, a boat, or even a beach. I’m writing this blog from a beach house in Southern Italy. I could just as well be in the mountains in France, or an office in New York.

So if a workspace has already been virtualized, what do we mean by 

When I work, some things I interact with – people and paper – have been virtualized, and others – telephones and computers – have been made portable. But I don’t work in a virtual workspace, I work virtually, in different places.

I work virtually, in whatever space I happen to be.

. In this space you can bump into colleagues, you can have lunch together, you can meet and share a whiteboard, etc. It’s just like being in the office with your colleagues.

As much as I like working virtually from anywhere, I sometimes miss working with people in a shared space. Needless to say, I’m not alone. A lot of people miss being together with their colleagues. And of course, when there’s a need, the boffins try to address it. We’re addressing it in two ways:

When designers recreate something digitally they frequently use a representation of a physical analog in order to make the transition from the physical to the virtual as intuitive as possible. Here’s an example. When you delete a file from your computer, do you put it in a trash can? Right. That works, even though we all know it’s an analogy.

If sticking to physical analogs is your design approach, you are aiming to create 

, i.e., virtual spaces in which desks look like desks and people who look like people. In these spaces you can “walk” from your desk to a meeting room, or into someone else’s office. In order to simulate all those things, you need VR. You need to strap goggles onto your face, and get to work.

I’ve done it. It’s kind of cool. It’s great for discussions and it’s great for watching media together. But it’s beyond terrible for working on a spreadsheet or for writing email. Keyboards in VR are a bit of a joke. Until we really nail voice interfaces or haptic gloves, I won’t be spending my days in a “realistic” virtual office.

Now, let’s talk about lighter weight virtual workspaces.

Sometimes we don’t need a perfect analogue to create a useful digital alternative. My favorite example is 

. An office facilitates communication. And so does Slack, even though they aren’t remotely similar. Of course an office enables many richer interactions, but they aren’t always necessary. And Slack automatically saves context in a way that isn’t possible when conversations are in person.

Slack, and other collaborative tools are able to replicate in-person workspace functions without simulating an office environment the way we do in VR.

How does Toucan support virtual workspaces?

In offices people don’t just talk to each other in conference rooms. They stop by each other’s desks, chat in the hall, sit down for lunch together, and sometimes even leave the office for a breath of fresh air and a private chat.

Traditional video conferencing tools, like 

, are excellent digital analogues to conference rooms, but they don’t allow casual connections in different places across time. 

 two people can get together for a quick sync, either personal or professional. Or a group of co-workers can get together to polish a shared document. Or the entire company can meet – in conference mode – to watch a presentation by the HR team about upcoming benefit changes. All of these modes of interaction are possible in 

 lets people move around and interact with any other person in a 

 facilitates communication, but it goes much farther. Without trying to recreate an office environment literally, 

 enables the many types of in-person office interactions.

All that without strapping a big headset onto your face.

Do we need virtual workspaces that literally recreate physical workspaces or do we need tools that allow us to work virtually the way we do in physical workspaces?

What is a Virtual Workspace?

At Toucan, we celebrate and recognize many different occasions; however, Father’s Day is perhaps the most important. I would hope that every child thinks of their father as the greatest man on the planet. It’s too bad that they would all be wrong. I would know because I’m pretty sure my dad is the greatest man on the planet. All kidding aside, it is no exaggeration in saying that without my dad, Toucan would not exist today.

Just like everyone else last March, Antonia and I would consistently complain about being on video calls all the time and how unnatural it felt. Dinner discussions were dominated by the subject. But these were just hollow words. It was not until my father said, “you should make it better,” that those hollow words turned into a company. That’s my dad. With just a few sentences, he has the ability to change your life. From the very beginning, he has been there to push us, advise us, and help us grow. Almost every single day, I call him up with a question because I know that he will always have an answer. I would not be an honest person if I did not give credit where credit is due. He has been the coach in our corner at every step of the way. Yet, Toucan is only one example of his influence.

Though I tell everyone I am a first-time founder, truth be told, this is not my first company. Just when I was on the cusp of not being cute anymore, I decided to cash in on my remaining time as a ridiculously adorable kid and set up a lemonade stand. Every day for a summer, I would drag my cooler, pitchers, and sign to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where I would poach on unsuspecting tourists who planned poorly for a walk in the park or museum visit on a hot New York City summer day. Before long, the business grew astronomically, and I had to expand operations by hiring my baby sister - my first employee. From there, the cash only continued to flow. (It helped that Arianna was also 

cute.) Production had to be managed like a real business, and soon my corner stand rivaled the likes of Minute Maid. “LEMONADE” could very well be the greatest business I ever start.

The most content I have ever felt were the times when my father would bring his colleagues around to show them the fruits of my labor. Not only did he bring good business to the table, but he instilled in me a sense of pride in myself and my project. All the singles in my toy cash register paled in comparison to hearing him boast about his son’s little business in front of his friends. At night he would encourage me to consider my business strategy and find ways to streamline productivity. Really what he taught me was a thirst for entrepreneurship.

Ever since I can remember, I always wanted to start a business. Growing up around someone who has started over a dozen of their own can inspire you to do that. As it turns out, it is more difficult than I thought it was; but it is easily the most interesting thing I have ever done, and I am all the more grateful to share in this journey with my amazing older sister. In many ways, starting a business with Antonia has brought us closer together as brother and sister than ever before. If nothing else, I would thank my father for introducing me to two of my best friends in the world - Antonia and Arianna.

To the rest of the fathers on the team, your example shines through everyday and leaves an impression on the rest of us. Whether it is Paul inviting his daughter to greet us during early morning meetings, Michel treating Antonia and me like his own kids sometimes, or Andrei calling into meetings while driving across the country to pick up his daughter from school, we see your dedication all the time - not only to Toucan but to the others in your life. Meeting and knowing you all through this platform has shown us more about each other than meets the camera. That is why we want to celebrate you today.

In many ways, I view Toucan as my own child, and I am constantly striving to be a better parent. I really was not expecting this one, so do not blame me if I have not totally figured it out yet. I am only 20. But in all seriousness, I do hope that one day I might learn what it truly means to be a father. If it means being anything like the role models around me, I can rest assured that it will surely be worth it.

They say that parenting is a thankless job, but today let’s prove them wrong. To my own father, all the fathers on the team, and the rest around the world, thank you and happy Father’s Day!

Toucan's co-founder, Ethan Hellman's, first blog! Wishing the father's around the world a happy Father's Day.

To our father, father figures, and fathers around the world

Our team always loves hearing about new applications for Toucan, and one of the most interesting ones has been conferences. There have been several hosted on our platform in the past few months, one of which was the Code BEAM virtual conference.

 conference is a multi-day event focused on applications of the Erlang and Elixir coding languages. Francesco Cesarini and John Baughen organized a virtual Code BEAM this year and used Toucan for the networking component of their event. And it was a huge hit!

That’s the purpose of the Code BEAM conference - and most virtual conferences, really. Conferences centered around one particular topic bring people together from all over to learn, discuss, collaborate, and network. The 

; it creates bonds and interpersonal connections among members of interest groups, which can, in turn, result in job opportunities, mentorship, and friendship.

This is where Toucan comes in. We’ve had so many virtual conference organizers come to us and say exactly what John and Francesco told us: “We only wish we had found Toucan earlier!” Creating a 

 close to an in-person one has been a challenge for so many organizers that aren’t familiar with Toucan. But once they begin using our platform, they realize that holding a conference 

a solid networking solution is incredibly detrimental to the overall conference experience.

That’s one thing that makes Toucan so great - and something that both Francesco and John mentioned when giving advice to future Toucan hosts. When you’re running a conference, the last thing you want to do is spend time wrapping your head around some complicated software. Toucan is the exact opposite of that. All you need to do is create the event itself, send out the link, and then wait for the “ding, ding, ding” of your guests arriving. “It’s simple and intuitive, and there’s no clutter.”

Not having to worry about learning complicated new software means that you can focus on enjoying yourself. “Be yourself. Have a good time and network. Meet old friends and make new ones!”

Code BEAM recently hosted a virtual conference of Toucan for their community. Read on to find out about their experience and their chat with Antonia.

Code BEAM Virtual Conference 

We have heard time and time again that what makes Toucan truly special is the way that people are able to connect with each other. Sure, this year has been difficult and lonely, but among the Toucan team and our users, we have seen something else.

The reason we built Toucan in the first place was to foster relationships and friendships among people regardless of where they are in the world. We wanted to create a comfortable place for networking and meeting new people that were not constrained by geography. After over a year, we’ve learned a lot that we’d like to share with you. Here are a few tips from our team and Superhosts on how to host a successful networking event.

It’s always great to have a theme or something that ties the people you’re inviting together. That gives anyone an automatic jumping-off point for conversations. If you are part of a 

, LinkedIn group, or organization, just create a Toucan event and send the link out to the other members. That way, your attendees have something in common.

, allows you to give yourself a short bio, share your website, and link your social media accounts. When anybody hovers over your icon or video, a small card will pop up. If they click your name or the “i” icon next to it, they will see all that information. This helps you introduce yourself to other attendees. It also makes it very easy to connect with others on social media and follow up after the event is over.

3. Create a “Start Here” Meeting Spot in your event space.

For people that are new to Toucan, it’s nice to have a 

 that indicates where they could gather to meet new people. The “Start Here” spot serves a dual purpose: it helps teach new users how the platform works (click & move to join/leave a group), and it gets the networking flowing from the get-go. I’ve had so many great conversations with interesting people that I otherwise may not have met in the “Start Here” spot. And once I single out some people that I’d like to chat with more, I just ask them to break off and form our own group. It’s that easy.

As the host of the event, you are the common thread that ties everyone together. You are the one that brought them to that space, so it’s really nice when the host gets up and says a few words. It doesn’t have to be long at all, just a short greeting message. Click the orange “Present” button at the bottom of your screen and select either 

(your face will be smaller and at the top of everybody’s screen) or 

(your face will be large and in the middle of the screen). Say a quick hello to your attendees, mention any special guests, give a toast, explain the basics of how to use Toucan, and/or give an overview of the event. It’s up to you!

From my experience, it’s just great for everybody to interact in some way with the host of the event, and 

 makes your attendees feel as though they get that moment with you.

Ever wonder how to host a successful virtual networking event? Antonia Hellman, Toucan's CEO, has written up a how-to for making the most out of your networking event! 

Networking on Toucan Events

 yet, let me know! Happy to grab a coffee or a glass of wine. I’ll show you around.

Our Events product is awesome for planning and running large events, but for day-to-day use, Spaces is the bomb. Having a 

 seems like a small thing, but to me, it’s night and day. Now, when I schedule a meeting with someone, all I have to do is create a calendar invite and drop in my Space URL. No more having to do the work twice by also scheduling it on Toucan.

Maybe I’m lazy, or maybe I schedule too many meetings 🙂. In either case, I now use Toucan Spaces many times a day with no friction at all.

I like to personalize things with the artifacts: books, CDs, artwork, and bric-à-brac I pickup here and there. As I’ve complained before, digital life is robbing us of the ability to surround ourselves with all these things. Sorry, but NFTs don’t make the cut.

I can’t bring all my things into my Toucan Space, but I get around that limitation by abusing the Meeting Spots feature.

In large events Spots are meeting places. In my Space they are signposts of things I care about right now. If you come for a visit, you’ll see Spots floating around with the names of 

. That’s the music I’m currently playing during my hikes. You’ll also see spots with the names of 

 I’m reading, and you’ll very quickly get the idea that I’m on the undisciplined end of the reader spectrum. As of now I think I have five books going in parallel. On occasion I’ll add a spot with 

You can bet that as soon as our designers give me the ability to add even more things to my Space, I will!

Lots of meetings! I know that sounds boring, but it usually isn’t. When things get dull I have the uncanny ability to offend people, which has a tendency to spice things up.

I also hold “brainstorming” sessions to work through new ideas. They aren’t always very brainy, but they tend to be collaborative, even if it’s in a let’s-waste-time-together kind of way.

My primary use of Events was for hangouts, both professional and personal. Now I use my 

, even though it’s currently limited to 50 people. Some people will be surprised to hear that I don’t host bigger hangouts, but the ability to offend people does, it turns out, impact the number of people who want to get together with me on a casual basis.

Events are limited to two hours. That’s not enough. I like very loooong events.

One of the best days of my life took place in New York. It was a real-time reading of Lolita. Dozens of people were given a section of the book to read. Each brought his/her own voice to it, although 

 obviously produced the common thread. People were encouraged to leave for meals, bathroom breaks, etc. I sat through the entire novel.

I’ve sat through “Einstein on the Beach” several times. Watching 

Peter Brook’s nine hour production of “The Mahabharata”

 was also one of the best days of my life. You won’t be surprised if I tell you that the Ring Cycle operas are amongst my favorites.

As I said, I like long events. I like anything that distorts my sense of time. Events didn’t do that for me. I was forever bumping up against time limits. Spaces – ironically – have freed me from that time constraint.

One of these days I’m going to organize a reading in mine. Current candidate is 

 a close runner-up. If you’re interested, let me know.

One founder explains how he uses his Toucan Space.

How I use my Toucan Space

: the baker in question is my oldest daughter, so my reporting will be even more scrupulously accurate than usual. 😉

Every week Toucan hosts an online social for friends, family, ex-colleagues, investors, and the otherwise Toucan-curious. Normally these events are like a cocktail party. People show up, chat with each other, maybe have a drink or two – depending on their timezone – and “go home”. A few times our CEO has organized a Jeopardy game which 

This week we decided to try something completely different: a baking class.

We invited Delphine Murphy, a professional baker who’s baked and managed production at one of the top bakeries in the US, 

, as well as at one of the top bakeries in the UK, 

. She taught many bakers. This was her first time teaching a roomful of civilians. We learned to make French baguette.

If you’ve been following Toucan you know that we live all over the world, and that we don’t have a physical office, so naturally this class was online, and naturally we ran it on Toucan.

Starting with the punchline, it was a smashing success.

We got a few things wrong – it was our 

 online class after all – but Delphine rolled with the punches, and our audience was forgiving.

The week before the class we sent out the list of ingredients so everyone attending could be prepared.

: keep your audience’s environment in mind.

The list of ingredients was in grams because that’s how bakers work. It’s much easier to adjust ratios precisely using weights rather than volumes. But of course most of the North Americans attending the class didn’t have scales, so we needed to make some last minute conversions for them.

Once everyone showed up and was settled, Delphine got started. The first thing she had us make was a poolish. A what?! To a lot of us the word “poolish” sounded like a bug, or a disease. In fact, it’s just a starter that’s used in a lot of French baking. Easy enough to make. It’s not creepy, and it didn’t make anyone sick 😏

We’re all guilty of this. It’s easy to forget that “normal” people don’t use a weird French word to describe a mixture of flour, water, and yeast!

One of the coolest things about the class was the way it was set up. Delphine used two cameras, one pointed at her face, and one pointed at her hands. When someone’s giving a class or a lecture, we all want to see them of course, but if it’s a cooking demonstration, it’s even more important to see their hands.

Making bread is all about manual manipulation. From mixing, to kneading, to shaping, to scoring – another word I learned – it’s all about technique, and those techniques all require hand motions we don’t make in our everyday lives. Having a camera show us what Delphine was doing on her work surface turned out to be critical.

I mentioned “scoring”. Scoring means cutting the top of the dough so that it doesn’t explode in the oven when you bake it. “Explosion” may be an exaggeration, but Delphine made it clear that we shouldn’t forget to score our dough if we wanted the finished product to look like a baguette!

Baking, it turns out, is a rather physical, and sometimes violent, activity. Besides 

 our dough against our work surface while 

 it with a force that would make a sports masseur blush. Most of us got more exercise during that class than we have during a whole year of lockdown. Bread bakers must be a fit bunch.

I mentioned that we had two cameras. We broadcast the one of Delphine’s face in a bigger format than the one of her hands. This was a mistake. Her hands were more important than her face.

One of the great things about running a baking class on Toucan is that we all had the opportunity to chat with other students while we were working. When I got confused about how much water to put in the poolish, I just asked a friend. The way Toucan works I could do that without bothering the rest of the class, or interrupting the teacher.

The later part of the class got very social as people moved around showing each other how well (or badly in some cases 😬) their shaping had turned out. To people who were new to Toucan, this was a bit bewildering. We’re all used to Zoom lectures that don’t allow us to interact with other participants. Being able to hear a lecture 

 talk to your friends at the same time is a bit novel!

: teach people about Toucan before starting the class.

For those of us who are familiar with Toucan, this seems unnecessary, but it’s really not. In a way, this is just like the jargon lesson. Just because the platform’s dynamics are obvious to us doesn’t mean they’re obvious to everyone.

Even though we had never put on a cooking class before, we got fantastic feedback from this event. A lot of people even requested that we invite Delphine back to teach us how to make something else. I think we will.

Delphine sent out after the class. It includes both weights and volumes for the ingredients, so should work almost anywhere in the world!

If you want to be kept up to date, and want to be sure to know about our next online baking class,

We invited a professional baker to teach us how to make baguettes. We learned a ton!

Toucan's First Online Baking Class

I love space. To watch my reaction to it. To feel space crush me. To feel space free me.

Almost always space makes me feel. In extreme cases space connects me to a flood of memories the way a madeleine connected Proust to his.

In my life, I’ve been lucky enough to live in some extraordinary spaces. I want to tell you about them, and then I want to tell you about the 

.
My stories might wander a little bit, but I promise you it won’t rival 

My parents briefly lived in a ruined stately home, heavily damaged during the unification of Italy. By the time they lived there it had been well-restored, but the restoration respected history. It didn’t try to hide better days, and it didn’t try to hide the damage inflicted by Napoleon’s army.

The hallway to my bedroom had been destroyed. It wasn’t rebuilt. To reach it I had to go outside. The exterior walls of my room were pockmarked by grapeshot. Often I wondered how many people died defending those grounds.

As wonderful as this preservation-by-omission might be, it didn’t compare to the treatment of the living room. The original villa was three stories high. When its roof was destroyed by fire, it collapsed and tore through the two floors below it. Miraculously the exterior walls remained undamaged. Instead of rebuilding the missing floors, the restorers decided to re-enclose the space with a glass roof. I’ve never spent time in an indoor space that felt more outdoors. The light, and therefore mood of that living room was the light and mood of the sky. During the day, no artificial light could compete with whatever might be happening on the other side of that glass. Only at night could the room provide any intimacy at all. My parents were careful to light the space with low pools of light in order to bound the space, once again, to human proportions.

I moved to Brooklyn Heights when it was still so rough that shopkeepers kept shotguns under their counters.

In those days I spent a lot of time in junk yards, and my favorite junk yard happened to be under the Brooklyn Bridge, on the Brooklyn side. Thanks to my obsession with decay I got to know the area, and found an apartment in the old headquarters of the Brooklyn Railway.

It was an odd space. Both stunning and oppressive.

It was stunning thanks to the outlook. Twelve very large windows facing Manhattan and the Brooklyn Bridge. It was oppressive because its proportions weren’t human. Thirteen foot ceilings covered in cross-hatched beams felt low over a large empty space.

This was my first lesson in space manipulation. Working with a friend, a very talented architect, we divided the loft into what I now realize were smaller spaces that respected human proportions. These opened up on larger spaces framed by windows. This transition made the ceilings feel higher. By reducing the average distance between a room entrance and the windows, the outside became an important part of the interior. This became crystal clear when another friend, a photographer, turned the apartment into a camera obscura to project the outdoors onto the apartment’s walls. Watching cars cross the now upside-down Brooklyn Bridge was magic.

I was born in Argentina but my parents left when I was 9 months old. At 18 I failed to report for military service, so was officially a deserter. I couldn’t enter the country without being arrested, so I didn’t. All of that changed when the brutal junta fell after the Falkland Islands. Finally, I could go back. It took years for me to make the move, but one day I did.

Buenos Aires is mysterious, a city with many personalities. I assumed that my time in Italy and Spain would help me get my bearing. It didn’t. It wasn’t until I lived in Switzerland, many years later, that I finally understood how Latin chaos and Teutonic order can combine to create what I found in Argentina.

After a few months living in a neighborhood called La Boca, famous for its football club, I decided that I wanted to live in Barracas, a down-and-out part of the city whose hay day had long passed. My Argentine friends were horrified.

In the 19th Century it was a relatively well-to-do area. The house I found had been built by a prominent doctor. It was in disrepair, to put it mildly. For decades it had been occupied by several families of squatters. Despite that, many of the original tiles, mouldings, ceilings, and floors survived.

The wealthier immigrants to Buenos Aires brought with them the ideal of a house built around a central courtyard. Unfortunately, the lots in Barracas were long and narrow, so only half a square house could be built on each.  My house was like that, the inner courtyard inexplicably bisected by a wall. The property on the other side of the wall was more-or-less its mirror.

The house was designed like a traditional Andalusian home. Going from one room to another always required going outside. None were directly connected.

Rooms were dark, because their only source of light was a French door. Despite this, the rooms felt comfortable because their proportions were classical, close to Le Corbusier’s 

Needless to say, this house was a puzzle. Somehow I needed to figure out how to bring light into it. I found inspiration in very different places. 

, an American artist, taught me how to remove surfaces to fuse the inside and outside; 

 taught me that removing corners opens a room up to nature; 

, a Uruguayan engineer who was actually more of an architect, taught me to use brick to construct organic shapes to funnel light.

Working with a friend, another architect, and some very patient craftsmen, we came up with some wonderful solutions.

To bring light into some of the rooms we punched oval holes into the rear walls, above eye level. The walls were 40 centimeters thick and we used that thickness to create an inward funnel, a technique used by Dieste in one of his churches.

Turrell builds spaces in which the edge of walls and ceilings directly connect with the sky. No frames and no glass. Thanks to Turrell I decided that these light sources shouldn’t be windows. They should be holes that directly connected the people in the house to the sky. During the winter I covered the holes with glass from the outside, but as soon as the weather warmed, nothing stopped the rain from getting in.

Holes in walls was one thing, but we decided to go even further by putting a hole in the ceiling of the dining room over the dining room table. We used the same inverted funnel pattern by building a 10 foot cone on the roof. The cone was covered in brick, again, a nod to Dieste. The hole at the top of the funnel created a beam of light that traveled through the dining room as the sun made its way across the sky. The cone was angled so that the pool of light formed a perfect circle in the middle of the dinning table on the summer solstice. The cone could be covered with glass in winter. During the warmer months, we let the rain in. The floors were poured concrete and the table steel, so it didn’t matter, unless you were hungry during a rainstorm.

My obsession with connecting inside and outside had reached its logical conclusion.

On my only visit to Falling Water, a house in Pennsylvania built directly over a stream I noticed that Wright had put windows in the corner of many rooms. This was unusual, and I didn’t understand why he’d done it until I opened one of them. Having the corner of a room disappear opens it more than any flat window could. The last thing I did before leaving Buenos Aires was build a guest house with large sliding glass doors that met at the corner. When opened, the house felt like it was inviting the garden to come inside. The effect was so wonderful that I hope to do it again some day.

I now live in a tiny mountain town (pop. 38) outside of the city of Spoleto. My house is small. The old part of the house was built in the 16th Century. Peasant construction. Stone. The newer part of the house was built in the 19th Century out of bricks made from volcanic stone.

When I bought it, a housemate and my brother stripped some of the crumbling plaster off the walls of the kitchen and re-sealed the stone. This exposed the original construction but kept some of the subsequent embellishment. I like walking into this kitchen and seeing the connection to two distant pasts.

A lot of the renovation in the house was done by the housemate I mentioned earlier, a dear friend who died of pancreatic cancer. Now I am alone upkeeping an always-decaying structure and am constantly faced with eradicating or preserving my friend’s work. Almost always, as he did in the kitchen, I choose to keep some of his work exposed. A few months ago I redid our bathroom but left the door frame and painted beams untouched. This slight decay amongst the new reminds me of my friend.

I’ve read that a well-constructed essay first presents its important themes and then elaborates on them. I’m afraid I’ve just done the opposite, which is probably why I write blog posts instead of more serious things.

I’ve told you about spaces I like and I’ve told you why, but I haven’t been explicit about the three themes that run through my relationships with spaces: light, proportions, and history.

Light is easily the most important element in any space. Light makes space. Light transforms space.

In Rome, daylight made my parent’s living room inhuman. Remember that the room was three stories tall, visually exposed to the sky. This is no more welcoming than a cathedral. Awe inspiring, yes, but not comfortable, or inviting. Its absence at night shrank the room to human proportions. A miraculous transformation.

In Brooklyn, light invited our gaze towards the East River, but only when the space was constrained enough to encourage the escape.

And in Buenos Aires light had to be coaxed into otherwise windowless rooms through oval portholes to the sky.

Everyone has something to say about building and room proportions.

The Greeks patiently explained to their descendents why proportions mattered. The Romans paid attention. We lost our way during the well-named Dark Ages. No dwelling is less inviting than a medieval castle. The Renaissance re-read the Greek instructions and applied them with great zeal. In modern times our early 20th Century Modernists paid particular attention to interior proportions.

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