Most design objects begin with a creative impulse.
Mine began with a threat.

A different starting point.

I didn’t set out to make art. I set out to understand how we might survive something radically new—something like mirror bacteria or AI-designed pandemics. But as the research turned into engineering, and engineering turned into form, something unexpected emerged: a capsule that was not just functional, but sculptural. Something that could speak to the future while holding space for the present.

I didn’t plan to build shelters. I spent most of my career in wind energy—modeling airflow, designing systems, solving problems that once felt impossible but now mostly work.

Eventually, I began to ask: what’s next? What problem still matters, but hasn’t been solved?

So I started designing.

I spoke to people at the edges of the map—biosecurity researchers, AI safety leaders, risk analysts. What they told me changed everything.

The world’s threats were getting stranger. Faster. Harder to see before it’s too late. Some were trying to predict them. Some were trying to prevent them. I wanted to explore another part of that work: physical protection that could be deployed quickly.

Early interest came from people at the highest levels of U.S. national security, from strategic advisors to AI safety philanthropists, and from elite biosecurity professionals. The project received generous financial support from the Survival and Flourishing Fund and the Long-Term Future Fund. That backing made it real.

From research to form.

At first, it was pure research. But the more I worked, the more it manifested.

Fønix became an inflatable cleanroom: an enclosure supplied with filtered air and maintained at positive pressure. It inflates in minutes and arrives on three pallets. It can sit in a garden, studio, or garage and wait—without explanation—until it’s needed.

AI safety researchers were among the first to order one. Others were driven by a quiet skepticism—that our wisdom may not keep pace with our power. A reluctance to be helpless in the face of accelerating technological progress.

Beauty, readiness, restraint.

I built Fønix to show that something like this can exist. That one person, with enough care and the right support, can bring together beauty, readiness, and restraint.

Some will use it as a guest pod. Others will treat it as sculpture. Others still may never unbox it.

But all share one instinct: that being a little early is better than a little too late.

I don’t know how many of these I’ll build. The first editions carry the original vision—pure, unsimplified, and directly from my hands.