THE ASV BLOG
— by JANICE NINAN
CROSSING THE THRESHOLD
Threshold Thursdays | From Employee Mindset to Business Ownership.
There are decisions that feel incremental—and then there are decisions that quietly redraw the architecture of your life.
On the surface, it looks like a professional development choice. In reality, it marked a threshold: a conscious shift from a 9–5 mindset to a business-owner mindset.
Not hustling harder.
Not adding more hours.
But fundamentally changing how I relate to time, value, and authorship.
The 9–5 Mindset I’m Leaving Behind
The 9–5 framework teaches us to:
Be useful rather than valuable
Exchange time for money
Wait for clarity instead of creating it
Measure success by busyness and approval
This framework is not inherently wrong—but it is limiting when you want autonomy, flexibility, and financial agency.
For a long time, I carried that conditioning into my creative work. I focused on execution, over-delivery, and staying adaptable. What I did not focus on was the thing that actually creates freedom: a clear, well-designed offer.
The Business Owner Mindset I’m Stepping Into
Business ownership is not freedom first—it is responsibility first.
Responsibility to:
Define scope (what I do and what I do not do)
Price my work based on value, not effort
Create structure so creativity can be sustained
Treat my time as a finite, intentional resource
Structure is not the opposite of freedom.
It is what makes freedom durable.
A Note on Thresholds
Thresholds are uncomfortable by nature. They ask you to release familiar identities before the new one feels fully formed.
I am no longer optimizing my life around a job.
I am designing a business that reflects my values, intellect, and lived experience.
This is not a leap of faith.
It is a step into authorship.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
I don’t know exactly what the business will look like three months from now—but I know this: I will not be thinking like an employee waiting for permission.
I am building with intention now.
And once you cross a threshold like this, there is no real way back.
Birthing a Design Practice with Many Voices
Studio Saturdays | Janice’s vision for Architecture Speaks Volumes
It didn’t begin with a business plan.
It began with a feeling.
A quiet realization that the work I wanted to do — the architecture I wanted to practice — wouldn’t quite fit into the molds that already existed. I wasn’t just trying to start a firm. I was trying to build something that could carry more than drawings and deadlines. I wanted to create a design practice that could speak in multiple voices — through space, through story, through objects — and still feel like one clear, resonant truth.
This is how Architecture Speaks Volumes was born.
Listening for a New Kind of Practice
As a trained architect, I’ve spent years learning how to think spatially — how to listen to a site, a material, a brief. But what school never quite teaches you is how to listen to yourself, or how to design a life that feels as intentional as the buildings you create.
I began to sense that I wanted more than project cycles and client calls. I wanted a practice that could carry personal memory, cultural complexity, and emotional resonance. I wanted space to write, to reflect, to share. I wanted a studio where slow design, sensory experience, and story were just as central as structure and form.
That’s where the weaving began — between design thinking, entrepreneurship, and personal storytelling.
Scaling with Intention
Too often, the idea of “scaling” a business is reduced to growth for growth’s sake — more clients, bigger teams, higher fees. But for me, scaling meant deepening, not just expanding.
That’s why I structured Architecture Speaks Volumes as a practice with multiple distinct but connected voices:
• The ASV Atelier: My design studio — where I work on design projects grounded in slowness, care, and material storytelling.
• The ASV Edit: A boutique for designed objects, scarves, and photographs — each item an archive of memory and meaning.
• ASV blogs & Podcasts: A space for memoir, design writing, and reflections — where I can explore the edges of architecture, culture, and emotion.
Each branch is its own channel, but together, they speak to a shared belief: that architecture is not just built — it is felt, remembered, experienced and expressed.
The Need for Multiple Streams — Not Just for Profit
In today’s world, many of us are waking up to the fact that a single stream of income is no longer sustainable — especially for creatives. But I didn’t create The ASV Edit just to diversify revenue. I created it to give form to ideas that couldn’t live inside floor plans.
Sometimes a scarf carries more meaning than a structure. Sometimes a photograph captures more memory than a model. The boutique allows me to share fragments of my design language in tactile, intimate ways. It also invites those who may never commission a building to still be part of this story — to wear, hold, or gift a piece of the practice.
In this way, income and impact become intertwined. Not in a transactional sense, but in a meaningful exchange of value and vision.
Building a Community that Listens
The real reason I built ASV in this way — across multiple modes — is because I didn’t want to simply launch a brand. I wanted to build a community.
A community of thinkers, feelers, makers, and quiet rebels. People who believe that the built environment is never neutral. People who notice the curve of a stair, the softness of a wall, the stillness in a courtyard. People who understand that architecture is never just structure — it is memory, language, and care.
I write for them. I design for them. I edit for them.
And I share my stories — including the difficult ones — because I believe that vulnerability is part of architecture too. We build from who we are.
In Closing: Architecture Speaks Volumes
What does it mean to birth a design practice in this moment?
For me, it means resisting narrow definitions. It means allowing architecture to speak through drawings, yes — but also through short film, curated objects, essays, poems, materiality, vision and small moments of shared wonder. It means embracing the many voices that live inside me — the architect, the writer, the daughter, the wife,the witness — and letting them all have a place in the room.
Because I still believe that architecture speaks.
And if we listen carefully enough,
it speaks volumes.