What "The Odyssey" Reveals About Authenticity in Design
Why the most authentic spaces begin with understanding how they’ll actually be experienced.
I’ve never been very good at just watching a movie.
I can be completely absorbed in the story and, at the same time, equally captivated by the world around it. Sometimes it’s the wallpaper in a room, the way a window is positioned, or an interesting piece of furniture. Other times it’s simply the feeling a particular setting creates. And inevitably, I want to know more. How did they do that? What is that made of? Is it real?
It comes from my background and education in theatre arts and set design. That way of looking at things is so ingrained in me that I don’t really think about it anymore. I notice what feels convincing and, just as quickly, when something doesn’t.
Set design taught me early on that the environment surrounding a story is doing far more than providing a backdrop. At its best, you barely notice what it’s doing at all. You simply feel it.
Which is exactly why a story about Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey caught my attention.
Discovery has become fundamental to the way I design.
It’s where every project begins, long before we’re talking about what a room will look like. Nolan’s approach to The Odyssey brought into focus something at the heart of that process: the search for authenticity.
Early in the making of the film, Nolan’s team found the Draken, a real wooden Viking ship in Norway, and decided it was the right vessel to play Odysseus’ ship. The production adapted it for the film, but importantly, this wasn’t simply a set piece. It could actually sail in open water.
So they sailed it.
The Draken traveled through the Mediterranean, the North Sea off Scotland and waters around Iceland. The actors learned to sail and row, while the ship’s 26-person crew became part of the film. Nolan says they spent months on the boat and “shot like it was a documentary.”
Then he said something that really caught my attention: they discovered things they never would have known to ask about if they had been on a soundstage.
That idea immediately resonated with me.
Because discovery isn’t just about answering the questions you already know to ask. Sometimes it’s about putting yourself in a position to uncover the things you didn’t know you needed to understand.
One Decision Changes Everything
Once Nolan decided to use a real ship, everyone had to respond to the reality of it.
The actors weren’t pretending to be on a moving vessel. They were actually sailing and rowing. They felt the movement of the water, dealt with weather and exhaustion, and had to respond to the physical scale of the ship and everything happening around them.
The crew actually knew how to sail it. The cameras had to work with the conditions rather than the control of a soundstage. And Nolan and his team began discovering things that simply couldn’t have happened in a studio.
The ship became, in his words, “a character in the movie.”
That distinction matters.
The value of the decision wasn’t simply that the ship looked authentic. It created an authentic experience for the people making the film. What they encountered and responded to became part of the story itself, and ultimately part of what the audience will experience.
That’s the impact of a good decision made early. It doesn’t just determine what something will look like. It changes what becomes possible.
Discovery Makes Authentic Design Possible
Nolan’s description of the ship as “a character in the movie” also struck me for another reason.
I often talk about wanting a home to have “main character energy.” It’s a slightly playful way of describing something I take pretty seriously. A home shouldn’t just be the backdrop to someone’s life. It should feel connected to the people who live there and play an active role in how they experience it.
That doesn’t mean every room needs to make a bold statement. It’s less about making an impression and more about creating a home that feels distinctly yours. After all, a space can be beautiful and still not feel like it belongs to the people who live there.
You can choose beautiful materials, develop a sophisticated color palette, and create rooms that photograph beautifully. But none of that tells you whether the design is authentic to the life happening inside them.
What makes a home feel true starts much earlier.
How does this family actually use the kitchen? Where does everyone naturally gather?
What frustrates them about the house now? How does the sunlight move through the rooms?
What needs to work differently five or ten years from now?
This is the purpose of discovery. I’m not asking these questions simply to collect information. I’m trying to uncover what is specific to the people I’m designing for: how they live, what matters to them, what they need their home to do for them, and ultimately how it can best support the life they’re building.
Those discoveries become the decisions that shape everything else.
And those decisions determine not only how the home looks, but how it feels to live there.
The Work Before the Work
This is why the earliest stages of design matter so much.
Before we talk about finishes, furniture, or paint colors, there are bigger questions to answer.
What should this home make possible? What needs to change?
What should stay? How should the space support the people who live there?
The answers have a ripple effect. Moving a wall might give a room the space it needs, but it could also completely change a sightline and the way you experience your home. A decision about how you want to use your kitchen affects the layout, the cabinetry and where things are stored. All of it ultimately affects how the house functions every day.
And when those decisions are grounded in a real understanding of how someone lives, the finished space changes their experience of home.
Maybe cooking becomes easier or everyone finally has a place to gather, and you recognize you’ve created a home where your family can come together for generations.
That room you once wanted to hide from guests becomes a point of pride, or even the best thing about your home.
These changes may happen within the walls of your home, but their real impact is on how you feel living there every day.
And that is the point.
You Can Feel It
That’s what I find so interesting about good design.
Sometimes you know something is right even if you can’t explain why.
There’s an ease to a room that feels authentic. You settle into it. Nothing is asking too much of you or feels like it’s there simply for effect. It feels natural, personal and somehow inevitable.
That feeling is difficult to manufacture. And I think that’s what brings me back to Nolan and the Draken. All of that discovery, all of those choices and experiences ultimately created something the audience doesn’t need to understand or even know about to experience.
They just feel it.
The same should be true of a home. You shouldn’t have to understand every decision behind it to know that it feels right.
You just do.
The instinct with any design project is to start designing. Draw the plans. Look at materials. Solve the problems you can see.
My process starts before that.
Discovery is about understanding motivation and aspiration. Why are we doing this in the first place? What isn’t working now, and what do you want your life in this home to become?
Those answers create the foundation for everything that follows. They give purpose to the decisions we make and help ensure we’re not simply creating something beautiful, but something deeply connected to the people who will live there.
That’s ultimately what discovery is designed to uncover.
A home that feels like theirs.
Because it couldn’t have been designed for anyone else.
Until next time,
XO, PE
Love this post about “The Odyssey”, discovery and authenticity. In the design process , I had not realized this could be so meaningful to achieving the desired results.