There's always a moment that tilts the scales of the project, and it's always different in every project.

The idea of being in the desert is fundamental, but it's totally relative, and it's about that membrane: the way that one defines self versus the environment.

I think when you're younger and making things, it's something that you have to fight through, to finish things. I feel like I'm past that stage, and I get the appreciation for being in that moment, and soaking it in.

The way that I Am is designed, it becomes a kind of archipelago, which the Bahamas are.

Sometimes I'm inspired by the material and sometimes there's an idea that speaks to a material.

When you're in [ Bahamas], it feels like a bunch of islands, with keys and things like that. It's an existential archipelago. It's funny, you try to escape who you are and where you're from, but it's always part of your social DNA.

There are certain conceptual powers in this project, like the relationship of glass to sand, and the idea of putting glass back into the earth, which is where it comes from, which are related to the whole concept of I Am. So there's that one below-surface idea, and then there's these other practical and more pragmatic ideas about how the light functions and the geometry and mathematics behind the reverberation of light from the surface outward.