Layered with Life: How Memories Shape a Home’s Soul
When I step into a home that truly reflects the people who live there, I can feel it immediately. It’s not about the perfect color palette or the latest design trend—it’s about personality, about presence. A home with soul tells a story.
When I was getting my MBA, I took my first class in Architecture at University of Virginia School of Architecture. It was called Healthy Cities - and we explored the many factors that set citizens up for healthy lives - from green space to accessible pathways. The final week of the course turned away from practical implementations that the room of future city planners and architects should learn, and asked “What gives a city its soul?”
The answer that resonated most with me came from Greg Heller’s The Soul of City. Heller argued that for a city to have a soul, it needs people who remember what was on that corner a decade ago.
“For a city to have a soul, it needs people who remember what was on that corner a decade ago. ”
The soul of a place is inherited. Maintained. Cherished. Passed on and cared for. The idea that spaces are meaningful not only because of the stories that unfold within them, but because those stories are kept and passed on.
Creating a soulful home follows the same principle. A house is more than just its walls, furniture, or carefully curated aesthetic—it is a living reflection of the people within it. A home is built through the moments shared, the memories made, and the objects that hold meaning. The books that line the shelves, the artwork collected from travels or passed down through generations—these elements transform a space from mere shelter into something deeply personal and alive.
So how do we create a home with soul? It starts with embracing authenticity. Filling a space with objects that carry meaning. Choosing furniture that tells a story, rather than simply filling a space. Mixing old with new, inherited with found, functional with beautiful. It’s about allowing a home to evolve with the people inside it, rather than chasing perfection. A soulful home, much like a soulful city, is built on the foundation of memory, care, and presence. It is not static—it lives, it breathes, it holds the past while making space for the future. It welcomes. It remembers. It shares. It listens. It tells a story worth treasuring.
If you listen, you can hear it.
The city. It sings.
If you stand quietly, at the foot of a garden, in the middle of a street, on the roof of a house.
It’s clearest at night, when the sound cuts more sharply across the surface of things, when the song reaches out to a place inside you.
It’s a wordless song, for the most part, but it’s a song all the same, and nobody hearing it could doubt what it sings. And the song sings the loudest when you pick out each note.
- Jon McGregor, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, 2003
