Listen First
One-on-one sessions for people thinking about a different kind of life. Whatever stage you're at.
The moment you're in
You're thinking about a different kind of life. Maybe you have land. Maybe you have a structure and you're still figuring out where to put it. Maybe you don't have either yet and the question is really about where you belong.
What you don't have yet, in any of those cases, is the relationship between yourself and a place you don't know. That's not a gap you can think your way across. It requires actually listening.
Most people skip this. The momentum feels too good to interrupt. Don't.
What Listen First is
Ecology, climate, hydrology, solar orientation. What the place does, how it moves through seasons, what it's been through.
Belonging, community, resilience, a different pace. These aren't soft questions. They're the ones that determine whether any plan actually works.
Layouts, passive solar, building positioning. Not to design your building, but to help you ask the right questions before anyone draws a line.
What it means to steward a place you chose. The relationship between newcomer and land, between individual vision and a community forming around it. These questions don't resolve themselves just because you signed papers.
Architect and regenerative designer. I've spent years working with land that has complicated histories and people who arrive with complicated hopes. The first move is always the same: stop and listen before you act. You can't design for a place you can't listen to.
Listen First draws on architecture, ecology, and the Listen to Your Land methodology. It brings that work into one-on-one conversation, wherever you are in your process.
If you're not yet ready for one-on-one work, Place Journaling is a gentler starting point for developing a relationship with wherever your feet currently touch the ground.
How it works
What you bring
Your specific situation. The land, the project, the question, the doubt. Photos, plans, or satellite imagery if you have them. Or just the conversation.
What you leave with
More ground under your feet than when you arrived. A clearer read on what the place is and what it needs. Questions worth sitting with.
Why the spacing matters
The first conversation opens things up. The second goes deeper. By the third, you usually arrive at something you couldn't have named at the start.
"We used Jo's services for our ground-mounted solar panels, and the quality of her work was outstanding. Unfortunately, we then moved on to the groundworks without her involvement, a decision we quickly regretted. By not continuing to take Jo's advice, we overlooked key drainage considerations and ended up creating a problem that cost us additional time, effort and expense to resolve. It really highlighted just how valuable Jo's depth of understanding is. Her ability to read the land, anticipate issues and design accordingly would have saved us a great deal of time and effort."EmmaHomeowner, South of France
"Jo has this rare gift for zooming from highly technical architectural scales to project feasibility, bringing a developer's mindset to projects — all this combined with an intuitive ability to hold space for the emotional complexity of the work. I am very much looking forward to collaborating with her on future projects."FrancesRegenerative Real Estate Strategist, Florida
60 minutes. One-on-one. Whenever you're ready.
Book a SessionIf cost is a barrier, get in touch.