Daily Inspiration Quote by Genevieve Gorder

She’s swatting away the easiest joke about design: that it’s rich-people problem-solving with better throw pillows. “Not about doing over the living room” is a deliberate demotion of the makeover-industrial complex, a world where taste is treated like morality and “bad color” is a mild crime. Gorder’s phrasing is pointedly unglamorous; “doing over” sounds like quick TV magic, the kind that disappears the moment the cameras do.

The pivot is the real tell. By moving from private interiors to “historic buildings” and “public spaces,” she reframes design as civic infrastructure - closer to stewardship than style. Restoration isn’t just nostalgia here; it’s an argument about continuity and ownership. Historic buildings become shared memory you can walk into, proof that a place mattered before it was branded, redeveloped, or forgotten.

“Instilling pride” carries the subtext designers often avoid saying out loud: the built environment edits how people feel about themselves. If a community is offered only neglected facades and no inviting “social gathering spots,” the message is that public life doesn’t deserve investment. Designing plazas, parks, and communal rooms is a way of counter-programming that message, making pride less a slogan and more a daily experience.

In a culture where design is frequently marketed as personal optimization, Gorder’s intent is to relocate the discipline’s moral center. Beauty, in her view, isn’t a private luxury; it’s a public signal of dignity and belonging.