Mattias Maruntel

Space for Beauty

Beauty has the power to make us more aware of our surroundings and positively influence our well-being. It's more than aesthetics; beauty touches how we feel and how we connect with the world around us. As a designer, I don't see beauty as decoration, but as a means to bring meaning and mindfulness into everyday life.

Attention plays a central role in this. In my graduation project, I investigate how architecture can be not only functional, but also how a place is experienced as pleasant and meaningful. Through conscious choices in material, form, and location, an interplay between user, design, and environment arises. This vision converges in Hei,m: a house on the heath. A place where attention becomes tangible, both in the spatial layout and in the objects and the surrounding nature. Hei,m is situated at a crossroads of cycling and walking routes on the Stroeseheide, an open space in the landscape where people can meet and reconnect with their surroundings. Hei,m is a place that deserves the care and attention it deserves as if it were our own home, a place to come together, slow down and enjoy.

The dining room forms the heart of the design. Not a neutral backdrop, but a space that invites encounters and awareness. The design guides movement without forcing it, inviting the user to experience the space consciously. By interweaving architecture and landscape, a place is created where presence, experience, and deceleration converge. It demonstrates that design not only determines how we use a space, but also how we move within it and how it can contribute to our happiness. It is a space that invites us to pause in the moment, to connect with those present, and to truly share the space. In this way, beauty becomes visible in its entirety, and in the smallest moments.