Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1544027
60 Every summer, her mother put Ginger and her siblings on an Amtrak train to their grandparents' house in Carmel, California. Pebble Beach, the Pacific, the redwoods, her grandmother's lemon tree … The beauty of that landscape took root and never left. "I always associated nature and beauty with the thing that rescued me," she says. Years later, when her daughter Avery was diagnosed with leukemia at five months old, Curtis and her husband found themselves at a Ronald McDonald House in Memphis near St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. She remembers it as the most depressing place she had ever been, with fluorescent lighting, brown walls, and linoleum floors. Then they were invited to the grand opening of a new Ronald McDonald House nearby. She walked in, and her eyes filled with tears. There were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves exploding with color, a chandelier made of guitars, and a chair fashioned from a saddle. "I felt myself smiling for the first time in months," she says. "Somebody had the foresight to think: 'What if we change the environment? Does it change the experience for the families?'" It was her first encounter with what she would later come to know as neuroaesthetics. Avery survived and is flourishing. Not long after, Curtis herself was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer and began 18 months of chemotherapy, raising five young children through it all. Her instinct was to surround herself with beauty. She renovated her house and entered the rooms in a national design competition. To her surprise, "every single one won first place," she says. Near the end of treatment, she went to the bank, opened an LLC, and Urbanology Designs was born. Self-trained, she built a team around her, hiring for the skills she didn't have and leading with the vision she did. She has since told her full story in her book Beauty by Design: Refreshing Spaces Inspired by What Matters Most. The girl who once split a stick of butter with her sister because there was nothing else in the refrigerator has since been named HGTV's 2025 Overall Designer of the Year and featured in Architectural Digest, Forbes, and other publications. The foundation of it all, Curtis says, was that first renovation — and the conviction that beauty had saved her life. Neuroaesthetics — the study of how the brain responds to aesthetic experience — is central to Curtis' design philosophy and to every decision made in this house. In her hands, it's instinctive: how the spaces we inhabit act on the body the way nature does, quietly and below the level of conscious thought. "Ninety-five percent of the brain's awareness is in the subconscious," she says. "Your blood pressure either goes up or it goes down. You either release dopamine or you release cortisol. Think of the compounding effects over a lifetime." Translating that philosophy into interiors begins, Curtis says, with space planning. The den is a case in point: a long, narrow room where Robertson and her husband were convinced the television belonged over the fireplace. Curtis put it on another wall instead, then bisected the room with a sofa, creating a second seating area flanking the limestone fireplace. Two zones, two orientations, one room — each with its own sense of shelter and its own view into the other. In neuroaesthetics, this is called prospect and refuge — the feeling The den's French limestone fireplace is from Italy. Custom chaise designed by Ginger Curtis with scallop wood trim, upholstered in Perennials Tatton Stripe in Pumice. In the entry, original architecture was preserved including walls and wrought-iron railing. Floors were stained dark. Curtis shopped Round Top for antique furniture and vintage art.