Standing inside a recently completed spec home in Port Royal, Naples interior designer Lisa Kahn-Allen gestures to the wide bay windows that peer out over the water. “This is what it’s all about, bringing the best of what’s out there … in here,” she says.
Over 20 years, Lisa has built a practice centered on what she calls “sanctuary design”—spaces engineered for physical and mental restoration. She aims to bring the healing energy of nature inside, where private nooks, supple fabrics and echo-muting designs further soften the emotional depletion of the day.
Her client roster spans private residences and public institutions: developers seek her biophilic approach for spec homes, while local arts organizations like Gulfshore Playhouse and The Naples Players commission her to create environments that enhance their programming. But, the impact of her ethos is most evident in her work with nonprofits, like The Shelter for Abused Women & Children, Youth Haven and David Lawrence Centers. She’s currently working with STARability Foundation on their new campus at I-75 and Immokalee Road, a facility that will include classrooms, event space and eventual housing for adults with disabilities.
Lisa’s sanctuary practice began as a necessity before it became a philosophy. Her daughter, Chloe, struggles with autism and oppositional defiant disorder, making their home a daily battleground against sensory overload. About a decade ago, she decided to tap into her day-to-day craft to find solutions at home. Lisa consulted occupational therapists, studied neurodivergent design principles and systematically reconfigured their home environment.
The transformation proved dramatic. Chloe, who had retreated from social interaction, began engaging with her surroundings—and her family—for the first time. “I realized the power of our environments,” Lisa says.
During the COVID-19 shutdowns, as people around the world disappeared into their fortresses, Lisa started thinking about how her discoveries could help others and developed a framework for wellness-centric design.
The designer sees her efforts not simply as a business, but as the catalyzing agent for a global movement. A recent reading of Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks, which calculates the average human lifespan, has sharpened her focus. “If I only have roughly 1,000 weeks left, what, then, can I afford to care about?” Lisa asked herself. The answer: scaling sanctuary design beyond individual projects.
This year, Lisa and her husband, Philip, are launching the Finding Sanctuary Institute, a nonprofit offering certification programs and online resources for creating spaces that heal. “I believe in the abundance of the universe,” Lisa says. Each designer who’s trained will create sanctuaries she’ll never see, support families she’ll never know—a collective impact that cycles back as fuel for an ever-expanding movement. —Emma Witmer
