Wick Wolfe Talks Timeless Design on Once Upon A Project, Recorded Live in the NeoCon Podcast Lounge
What makes a design last? That question sat at the center of a live recording of Once Upon A Project, the podcast from SURROUND Podcast Network, filmed this year inside the NeoCon Podcast Lounge, a space Unika Vaev sponsored and helped bring to life at Sandow’s DesignScene at The Mart.
A Lounge Built for Sound and Story
The NeoCon Podcast Lounge was designed as a fully functional broadcast space, with acoustic performance built into every surface. At the center of the room is a custom 4′ x 16′ Fraster Felt rug in Aubergine and Lilac, with Ecoustic® Felt wrapping the archways to match. A Pelle backdrop set the scene for on-air conversation, while Holly acoustic lighting pulled the space together from floor to ceiling. Proof that a room can sound as good as it looks. See the full project page for more on the design.
Wick Wolfe Joins AJ Paron on Once Upon A Project
Inside that space, Unika Vaev President Wick Wolfe sat down with Once Upon A Project host AJ Paron, EVP and Design Futurist at SANDOW Design Group, for a conversation about what actually endures in design. Paron opened the episode by framing design as a matter of principles rather than products, arguing that the two are often confused.
The discussion traced Wolfe’s own path into design, which began at age five, sparked by the sight of a red 1962 Ford Thunderbird parked in a family friend’s driveway. That early fascination with cars never faded, but for him, the point was never to admire design from a distance. As he put it, “design is meant to be used.”
That belief carried into a broader philosophy about the built environment: that great design solves for people first, not just for performance metrics. Wolfe noted that clients don’t leave a restaurant praising its NRC rating, they leave remembering how the space made them feel. For Wolfe, the job of a product isn’t just to solve a technical problem, but to solve the design problem.
Listen to the Full Episode
The full conversation between Wick Wolfe and AJ Paron is available now on Once Upon A Project, recorded in the NeoCon Podcast Lounge Powered by SURROUND.
Read the full recap from Interior Design