“It is primarily an office for me to write, make phone calls, answer e-mail. I might see a client there infrequently, but more typically I go to the client’s office.

“Books, books, books, I have lots of books I use on a regular basis. I use the books to locate ideas that I am writing about and it helps me to just have the covers in view to be reminded of ideas that are important to my thinking. For example, seeing a book out of the corner of my eye, like John Seely Brown’s The Social Life of Information, stands for a whole frame of reference to me about how knowledge is embedded in social exchange. So both the content and the presence of the books are important to my thinking process.

“There are also the special books that I have written - seven of them that I give a special place of honor - I’ve circled them in this raster messy picture here. (referring to an enclosed picture of her present workplace) The shelves in this picture have book on both sides and there are two more sections like these. I have probably about 700 books that I live among. the open dictionary is symbolic to me. On the window sill you can see a few of my African Violets. The wonderful thing about African Violets is that they bloom all tear around in an amazing variety of colors. Through the book case you can see my desk that faces the big picture window.

Two of my favorite places are greenhouses, for the light and the growing aliveness of living things and libraries, that are quite yet full of possibility because of all the knowledge that they hold. To be surrounded by great ideas - to absorb through my skin as well as my eyes is wonderful. Libraries are the epitome of organization and structure - shelves of squares and rectangles that are designed to allow you to find things as efficiently as possible, Like a library, my books are alphabetized by author and subject matter.

Greenhouses, on the other hand, are organic and a profusion of green shapes, with little order - in fact the randomness of pattern is what makes them so appealing. On the surface libraries and greenhouses seem at odds with each other - but in me they are compatible. they are both quiet, peaceful, neither are places where people rush or bustle. Can you imagine the sacrilege of someone running through a greenhouse of library? they are full of color, but one has to seek out the color, it does not hit you in the face - the colors are of book jackets, of the blooms on the flowers in a see of green. If I could manage it, my office would be a library interlaced with a greenhouse.

There is a tree in the backyard of the house on Selma (referring to the house where the Studio is be be built) that my son and I planted when he was just a boy. (Did I say that I raised my sons there") The tree was severely abused by my two sons by running into it, pulling on it, and often neglecting to water it - so it persevered by developing a strange configuration with three tree trunks, most to some degree parallel to the ground. My son is going to build me a platform in that tree, just a few feet off the ground to use as an outside office. An office in a tree is an idea I really like.

My ideal is to bringing the outside into my office and to bring my office outside.