Rebuild Your Inner House:

Feeling Good Within Your Home and Within Yourself

Éric Brun-Sanglard

(Cherche Midi, 144 pages, 2020)

 *** TRANSLATION SAMPLE AVAILABLE ***

Architect and interior designer Éric Brun-Sanglard lost his sight at age thirty-three as a result of the disease cytomegalovirus. He has since been known as “The Blind Designer.” His portfolio of clients includes celebrities such as Francis Ford Coppola, Penélope Cruz, and James Stewart, and many more. In Rebuild Your Inner House, Brun-Sanglard shares the lessons he’s learned from his impairment with the aim of giving simple advice on how to rethink your house in order to feel better within your own home and within yourself.

Brun-Sanglard addresses us as he would a fellow colleague and client. His advice is specific, useful, and easy to apply. Drawing from a specific house he previously worked on, he outlines the most important aspects: the foundation, the exterior, and the overall style. He then focuses on smells, sounds, and colors, explaining how our senses are constantly stimulated but underused when designing. He asks us to pay attention to each of them to understand why we feel better in different parts of our own homes. He then splits the house into its various spaces: the entrance, the living room, the kitchen, the closets, the bedroom and bathroom, the office, and then children’s rooms. With easy examples and simple explanations, the author analyzes what each room represents, and which details to focus on when designing it.

Brun-Sanglard’s blindness became a tool he now uses to work better within the spaces he rethinks. He uses his body as a unit of measurement, and his hearing allows him not only to know his whereabouts but also to find balance in designing a space. The other senses are fundamental parts of design we tend to overlook when sight overtakes our judgment. He reminds us to feel a fabric before buying it, to smell materials that will be parts of our homes, to take our time in choosing colors that we will see every day. He questions each aspect of what makes a home and invites us to do the same. 

Though he aims to give his expert advice, he also insists that there is no one rule all should follow. Each person has their own stories and tastes, which is what their home should reflect. The tips he lists throughout the book help the reader to pay closer attention to changing the home they already live in as well as building a new one, always consciously. In Rebuild Your Inner House, Brun-Sanglard hopes we can all enjoy our homes at a fuller level. He reminds us that we are the architects of our own house, which is a reflection of our inner life, our personality, and our state of mind.

Éric Brun-Sanglard has lived in Los Angeles since he was twenty years old, where he started his career as an interior designer. After losing his sight at thirty-three, he learned and created new methods to be able to keep working. In 2006, he worked on Designing Blind (A&E), a reality TV show centered on his work with his clients. He still designs for some clients and has focused on conducting seminars in architecture institutions and conferences on personal development.