Leave the Bag. Get on the Plane
What would you leave behind to get on the plane? For Amy Conner-Murphy, the answer was her suitcase, and it changed how she sees everything.
Michele's friend Amy Conner-Murphy is an architect, interior designer and founder of ACM Designs in Asheville, North Carolina. She's also a mom of two, a gardener, a watercolor painter, a runner, a cyclist and a dog lover. Amy shares the childhood memory she pieced together decades later: watching from her crib as her granddaddy built a bathroom onto the family farmhouse. She talks about the summer her parents set her up to shadow friends at work, and the architect's office that just felt right. She started architecture school at Auburn at 17 and never looked back.
Liz gets to ask two architects a question she's always wondered about: how do you even start designing someone's home? Michele tells the story of the house she designed for her parents, built around a coal breaker in honor of her grandfather, who left school in fifth grade to work in the mines. Amy explains why her client questionnaire asks whether you're a night owl or a morning person. Amy also talks about building a firm almost by accident while raising her daughters, why the business side is her least favorite part, and what she's learned by taking a tile class with the trades.
Then it goes deeper. Amy describes Hurricane Helene's impact on Asheville: the loss, the grief, and the community that came together to rebuild. She shares what decades inside people's homes have taught her about what people really want. And she tells the story of the morning she left her suitcase in the car, got on the plane anyway, and found one of the most freeing weeks of her life.
In this episode you'll learn:
- What makes a house a home, and why it always starts with story
- How Michele turned a coal breaker into a family home her parents loved to the end
- The unexpected questions Amy asks clients, and what they reveal
- How caring for young children taught Amy how a home really works
- Why the business side of running a firm is so different from the work itself
- How learning from builders and tradespeople makes a designer better
- What Hurricane Helene revealed about loss and the human spirit
- Why, in this stage of life, it's worth caring less about what everyone else thinks
- How one decision in an airport parking lot opened up a week of unexpected joy
Resources from this episode:
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