It’s easy to observe the brilliance of AD100 designers and architects out in the real world—just visit the spaces they created. But we wanted to know more about what makes them tick behind the scenes: Pivotal experiences, mistakes that still stick with them, inspiration, self-care habits, epiphanies about their philosophies, and processes. We asked members of the 2026 list and Hall of Famers about all that and more. Their responses yielded a revealing—and inspirational—portrait of creatives at the top of their careers.
Lauren Geremia, founder and principal, Geremia Designs
A RISD-trained painter, Lauren Geremia launched her eponymous firm in 2006, quickly rising to acclaim with projects for Instagram and Dropbox, among other Silicon Valley giants. High profile residential work followed, always shaped by her philosophy of putting art at the core. “I didn’t know I was ambitious. I didn’t know I would like business,” she recalls. “Early on, I used the platform of creating interiors as a place to just make connections. I brought in my glassblowing friends and friends who were designing furniture; I helped connect the dots between people needing artwork and artists who needed the work.” That ethos—of elevating the personal, handcrafted, and artistic—remains the centerpiece of her sought-after practice.
- Her go-to for calming her brain: “Drawing is anti-anxiety for me. I use these cork notebooks by an English company called Beechmore—I like the smooth paper and the cork covering and that they can hold paint and thick materials. I use drawing as a tool a lot, whether I’m exploring scale or testing ideas before they get into a computer.”
- What she’s reading right now: “A biography of British florist Constance Spry: I am really interested in old roses, especially the history of certain kinds of roses, and where to get them now.”
- Shifting how she thinks about buying: “I used to wait and buy key pieces only when I reached the furniture phase. But I think it’s better to start looking early—when you’re out and about, pick up something you really want to use in a project. Falling in love with pieces isn’t something we always have the luxury to do. But it’s such an important thing that I’m now trying to carve out time each week to be in shops and talk to dealers.”
Fernando Santangelo, founder, Fernando Santangelo Inc.
Fernando Santangelo was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, and made his way to New York City in 1982 to continue his studies in art. He soon began creating installations for the It clubs of the era, where his work was spotted by iconic hotelier André Balazs, who tapped him to update the Chateau Marmont. In 1995, Santangelo opened his eponymous firm. Though he is known for his sumptuous, historically sensitive styling, his ultimate aim is to disappear from the work itself: “I never want it to look like ‘Fernando Santangelo did this.’” he says. “What I’m creating is a stage for other people’s lives.”
- The voice in his ear: “Alain de Botton: He’s British, and very funny—I listen to his podcast and YouTube snippets on philosophy, religion, and the classics. He’s not only entertaining but also helpful for dealing with this moment in time. I would specifically recommend his book The Architecture of Happiness.”
- On thinking (too) small: “Being a small office, I’m really careful not to get in over my head—but sometimes I’m too careful, like not taking on a job out of fear. Looking back, that has happened a few times.”
- Forcing yourself to declare something “Done”: “If the clients would let me, I would just keep changing things and tweaking. It’s like: How do you move the pieces around until you feel like it all falls into place, and you don’t want to change anything? But it gets to a moment where you just have to stop.”
Jamie Drake, founder, Jamie Drake
Interior designer Jamie Drake began his illustrious career in 1978, launching his firm three days after graduating from Parsons School of Design. “In my earliest years, it was a time of modernism, heavily influenced by John Saladino—so a softened version [of modernism]. Then, in the 1980s, my work moved into a much more traditional base as tastes shifted. Now, for me, collectivism reigns, but it’s still rooted in modernism with baroque flourishes here and there.” A longtime member of AD100 lists, Drake joined the Hall of Fame in 2022.
- How his philosophy has shifted: “I am more flexible than I originally was. Of course, I’ve been in business 47 years, so it’s been a long time. I was once very much someone who was rigorous about, say, if the metal in a room was stainless steel, everything stayed in the silver tones and I would never mix brass or bronze! I don’t think that way any more.”
- The first, and most important, lesson he learned: “My first two projects right out of school were for a father and a son. They were both moving to new apartments in the same building at opposite ends of the hallway. The son’s apartment turned out fantastically because he and his girlfriend, who was my very dear friend and a Parsons Fashion graduate, listened to me and let me do what I thought should be done. The father was a business tycoon: He knew exactly how everything should be done and I agreed, even though I thought his ideas weren’t so great. That apartment didn’t turn out well. The lesson I learned was: You’ve really got to stand up for what you believe, whatever the consequences might be, but also find the words to explain cogently and intelligently why you’re making a suggestion.”
- On working under pressure: “In January 2002, I was hired by the Gracie Mansion Conservancy to oversee the renovation of New York City’s official mayoral residence. This great honor was awarded to me four months after the 9/11 Trade Center attacks. The charge was to complete this complex project by September 11, 2002, on the first anniversary of that terrible day, as a demonstration of New York’s resilience. I had to speed-learn how to do a proper restoration project, which was a fascinating challenge. On the anniversary we were indeed 99% completed. All my team and the house’s staff stood on the porch facing the East River, and at 8:46 AM, clasped hands in silent prayer. Then we went back to making the beds and placing the towels in the bathrooms.”
Corey Damen Jenkins, principal and CEO, Corey Damen Jenkins & Associates
Looking back on his career, AD100 alum Corey Damen Jenkins realizes that, in some ways, he’s done a complete 180 over the past two decades. “Early on, I was so concerned about making everyone happy and trying to be everything to everyone, I was more constrained,” says the Detroit-native designer. “Now I say: More is more and less is bore.” For evidence, look no further than his Master Class, HGTV work, and two monographs—not to mention the magnificent Upper East Side apartment he recently designed for real estate developer Erika Jones, featured in AD earlier this year. And of course, there’s his own Manhattan apartment.
- One habit that hypercharges his productivity: “On Saturday mornings, I’m working in the studio. It’s really the best time for me to be super creative because I don’t have distractions. My ritual is lighting candles throughout the space—I love the aroma and the ambiance while I’m designing. It’s not fancy, but it feels romantic and elegant, and cleansing in a way. Then I’ll have a delicious hot cup of tea, like 70% honey, and turn on some music. I love the great maestro of the orchestra, John Williams, who produced soundtracks from ET to Superman, Star Wars, Indiana Jones.”
- An unexpected source of inspiration: “I’m a bit more of a couch potato than I used to be—you have to chill out. I’m a huge science fiction fan, like Star Trek or the Marvel Comic movies. I love how they transport me to another world, and even though I’m not going to design a Star Trek-inspired home I find the futuristic patterns and the sleekness of it all very inspiring.”
- How he thinks about self-care: “Massages. Facials. A scalp massage goes a long way. I may still read Architectural Digest while I am getting a pedicure—but pampering things are just therapeutic and cathartic.”
Peter Pennoyer, founding principal, Peter Pennoyer Architects
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When Peter Pennoyer was growing up in 1960s Manhattan, he began to notice Brutalist structures replacing low-scale tenements in the city. He very clearly recalls thinking: “This is terrible. And then I thought: What am I trying to say? So I looked at the Plaza Hotel, which was five blocks from my house, and wrote a little ‘compare and contrast’ essay in my school bulletin.” To no one’s surprise, Pennoyer went on to architecture school: Across the intervening decades, he has built both a reputation as a prodigious classicist and a 50-person team of architects, conservators, and interior designers at the forefront of historic preservation. A longtime AD100 member, this year his firm joins the AD Hall of Fame.
- On keeping a sense of humility: “I think that the challenge for all of us, coming out of architecture school, was how to put aside this idea that any of us could be an intuitive genius, and that the great reward was breaking out, showing your own genius, and your own personality. When you start doing this, you realize that the lowliest draftsman is better than I will ever be—that person is more fluent and has more of this in their heads, and it makes you feel inadequate.”
- The rule he will always rebel against: “It’s actually a federal rule, in the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation: If you add onto an old building or alter it in any way that isn’t based on evidence, you’re supposed to design in a modernist, contemporary way, and make a contrast between the old and new—you can’t just make stuff up because God forbid someone actually confused the old and new! I’ve always broken that rule, because I’ve never believed someone can bar me from expressing or designing in whatever way I feel is best for the client or the building.”
- The power of a well-stocked library: “We probably have more books than any firm in the city. My partner collects them—he has dealers all over the world. He’s also the only one who knows where each one of them is. We were asked to do a Czech Cubist house by a client, which is a style that almost no one has heard of, and only existed for eight years. I panicked, thinking, “Oh my god, I don’t know how to do that. He’s going to fire us!” But Gregory said: “Don’t you remember? We bought two books on Czech Cubism when we were in Prague together in 1985!” They had just been sitting there like fine wines, waiting for the moment.”
Carlos Morera, cofounder, Geoponika
“You can create a garden for someone, but that’s just the beginning,” says Max Martin, of the landscape design studio Geoponika. “Then, there’s a lifetime of tending to it, growing with it, caring for it, changing it.” Martin, along with principals Carlos Morera and Marinna Wagner, is thinking not just about the future of landscapes they create, but of preserving the plants, and safeguarding horticultural knowledge itself. The firm’s private nursery—10,000 plants strong and hidden in an industrial district—is like an alien landscape populated by spiky, rare species. Their project scope ranges from designing Diplo’s Jamaican-jungle estate to ecological storytelling through their nonprofit arm, Nonhuman Teachers.
And today, their appreciation of the gardens of others is just as vast and varied as their own portfolio. “I used to be kind of snobby, driving around and thinking ‘There’s only one good garden in this neighborhood,” admits Morera. “But now I’m totally over that—lately, I’ve been looking at every single garden, no matter how ‘bad,’ because there’s always something to glean. Like: Why is that plant that no one else can make look good looking so good? Or why is something doing poorly? It’s been really inspiring to me: Every garden is a fascinating world.”
- How gardening is about accepting mortality: “The proximity to death and understanding that it’s part of dealing with living things is something I have learned to live with. I have killed thousands and thousands of plants over my career. I’ve killed very old, special things, and it sucks. But to learn about plants, you’re going to have to kill them. A lot of what I do is coach people into the understanding that things will die, and they need to ask themselves why. Not say, ‘Oh, I have a black thumb, I’m the worst gardener ever.’ It’s about approaching it like a scientist would: What happened here?”
- On the heritage of expertise, and ICE raids: “The crews we’re working with are still fairly intact, but the current immigration situation has made us realize how delicate the transfer of knowledge is from person to person, from generation to generation of working with your hands and observing this knowledge that’s not written down. It takes years of working with specific plant types and rock matter to really understand how the ecology works. If someone is taken out of the team and deported, that sort of knowledge just disappears with them.”
- On planting the seed: “A lot of people start from this macro perspective of these huge swaths of land, the geometry and architecture of land. But I always feel like, when you’re building out worlds, you should start with the smallest piece that interests you.”
