Nathnael Solomon Abate

Curating Atmosphere: My Design Ethos

As a multidisciplinary creative working across architecture, branding, motion design, and visual art, my design philosophy is rooted in one central force: atmosthesia — the emotional perception of atmosphere. I coined this term to name what I do instinctively — the act of curating environments, images, objects, and experiences that evoke mood, memory, and sensation. Whether I’m designing a building, a workstation, a piece of furniture, or an album cover, my goal remains consistent: to elicit feeling through form.

Design Philosophy

Rather than approaching design through identity politics or performative cultural references, I believe mood is the most honest language. Culture, to me, is not a source of aesthetic content but a survival tool — ancestral adaptation to place and time. I draw from symbolic, mythic, or even spiritual cues not as tokens of origin, but as channels for emotional resonance and affect. My work, whether digital or physical, often evokes a sense of wonder, ambiguity, or sacred quiet — a space between things that cannot be fully named. I don’t design artifacts. I curate sensations.

Design Strength and Skillset

My strength lies in concept-driven, emotionally charged design — the ability to create experiences that are both atmospheric and symbolic. I’m as comfortable modeling adaptive reuse projects as I am painting ritualistic portraits or producing avant-garde Instagram reels for musicians. This ability to translate feeling across media is what defines my practice.

From a technical standpoint, I model with Revit and Archicad, and use Twinmotion for rendering. I’m also proficient in Adobe Photoshop, After Effects, Illustrator, and InDesign, which I use extensively in my branding, motion, and graphic design projects. My sculptural furniture concepts are modeled and often 3D printed, drawing on structural logics and material experiments. One such design — the Beehive Workstation — merges parametric geometry with workplace typology, creating a hexagonal cluster of desks that evoke both modularity and warmth.

Architectural Experience

In architecture, I’ve worked on a range of real projects. Most notably, I’m currently part of Bereket Tesfaye’s studio, contributing to the adaptive reuse of a 2B+G+6 building, converting a former hotel into a functioning hospital. This project engages questions of structure, circulation, and program transformation, demanding both technical precision and creative interpretation.

Prior to this, I worked at HDfitout (HD Trading PLC), a Turkish-Ethiopian fit-out firm, where I gained hands-on experience with material detailing, FF&E, and execution logic. I also interned at Abba Architects, one of the more established firms in the region. Each setting exposed me to different modes of architectural practice — from high-spec commercial interiors to design-led healthcare programming.

Visual and Conceptual Work

Outside architecture, I’ve developed a body of conceptual work for underground musicians like RAPDOLL and Yimra — crafting album covers, promotional visuals, and motion pieces that translate their sonic worlds into visual ones. These are not mockups. They are real commissions, designed in conversation with living artists, often pushing toward avant-garde or surrealist aesthetics. In these projects, I operate less as a graphic designer and more as a creative director — shaping a full emotional language around the artist’s sound.

In visual art, my early paintings during quarantine opened up another layer of my creative vocabulary. One of my first works — a mythically charged image of a woman holding a red fruit amidst tropical foliage — marked the beginning of my lifelong exploration of symbolic figuration and emotional curation. These works are not "illustrations" but affective environments in 2D, layered with psychological and mythical cues.

Vision

I believe the future of design lies not in disciplines, but in the collapse between them. Just as Peter Saville translated music into visual systems and Neri Oxman blurred the line between biology and design, I aim to work at that edge where fields dissolve — where architecture becomes sculpture, motion becomes ritual, and space becomes sensation.

But while I believe in poetry, I am not divorced from practicality. That’s why I’ve chosen architecture, a realistic, stable path that allows me to stay grounded. My conceptual work will continue alongside it — not as a careerist pursuit, but as a sincere, sacred practice. For me, curating atmosthesia is not about self-expression or fame. It is about evoking feeling in others — the kind of deep, wordless awe I first experienced as a child playing games and seeing a glowing, immersive world open up in front of me.

That was my first portal. Now, I build portals of my own.