Cupola fashions architectural and interior spaces to cultivate eudemonia - human happiness, wellbeing, flourishing and prosperity. We aim for this essence in every design we deliver because our environments can affect our outcomes. Our mission is to create transformative spaces that are synchronized with both user and context so that healing, comfort, clarity, curiosity, intellect, belonging, nature, and discovery can be experienced.
Natasha Clews Gallaway
Natasha has devoted herself to the art, architectural, and interior design industry for over 18 years. In 2008, believing that good design impacts lives and connects people on a higher level, she founded Cupola as Principle to focus on creating wellness and healing spaces in healthcare settings. As an architectural designer, she masterfully utilizes art, natural light, and intentional materials while maintaining a clear understanding of context and user needs to create positive environments. She is gifted at combining a human perspective with a natural aesthetic to achieve design solutions that are rooted in the celebration of the experiential. She is accomplished at taking any design challenge and solving it in a way that brings unique clarity to the finished work. Her talents leading the studio have been accentuated by serving as the artistic director for La Napoule Art Foundation based in Denver, with its residency site in France. Over the last five years, she has served as President of the non-profit organization, overseeing every aspect of its success.
Natasha was born and raised in a family of artists and creatives whose drive and perspective was so strong, she learned to believe in the transformational power of presence and the importance of passionate expression. Her cultural education came during childhood summers spent in Europe, traveling with her family to the museums and gardens of Italy and France. They resided by the Mediterranean Sea where the family ran art programs in the South of France. There, she lived among gregarious creatives who lived and worked passionately and playfully. It was a world of light, freedom, and discovery. When back in the United States, Natasha grew up in a Northeastern port town among many hard-working laborers and a few old-money elites and intellectuals. As a young child she remembers feeling the comparative austerity of her hometown. As soon as she could, she left New England, feeling the thrill of an opening.
She attended Florida State University graduating with a Degree in Creative Writing and Psychology and with a Minor in Fine Art. During college, she worked in a women’s prison on mental health initiatives, made a lot of art, read poetry and drank Guinness at poetry jams. She then attended the University of Miami and received her first Master’s Degree in Mental Health Counseling. She learned about the science of people and about its limitations. There, in the late day sun, Jimmy Buffet happy hours and seemingly limitless opportunity for exploration, she also learned how to feel alive and share that. It was then she realized she needed to work as a creative—an artist or architect.
Natasha graduated from the University of Colorado, Denver in 2005 with a Master’s Degree in Architecture. While in school, she worked at WorthGroup Architects, a resort design company. Soon after graduating, she took a position at Anderson Mason Dale, leading the interior department in institutional building design including police stations and hospitals. After her second child was born, she launched Cupola and has been running it ever since.
In her free time, Natasha practices yoga, plays tennis, paints, writes poetry, reads, spends time with her kids, has conversations with anyone who will talk to her, and dreams of everything.
Tamara Layman
Tamara is an accomplished creative professional with 20 years of experience spanning the disciplines of architecture, interior design, and art. The overarching goal for her work is to fabricate the physical ingredients to help cultivate a life-well-lived. Over more than the past decade she has offered Cupola her expertise and dedication as a multi-talented lead architectural and interior designer focusing primarily on creating healing environments for healthcare and providing artful solutions that foster a sense of wellbeing. She is talented at collaborating within a diverse team and thrives during all phases of design. She has led the realization of projects in a multitude of genre ranging in budget from the thousands to multi-millions, but measures of success through ensuring that all aspects of a project are handled respectfully and positively for a client. Committed to creating within a climate-conscious philosophy, she utilizes materials, methods, and theories that are responsible, relevant, and meaningful, purposefully aiming to achieve a wholistic vision.
Native to Colorado, Tamara spent her childhood surrounded by a loving family, mother, step-father, and grandparents, first in the area northwest of Denver and then in west Boulder. She often travelled to New York City to visit her father and step-mother and enjoyed many hours at the city’s noteworthy cultural sites. Her spare time in Colorado was spent riding horses, enjoying nature, and making art.
As a young adult she worked in her grandfather’s electric motor business, simultaneously paying for college and honing her metal-shop skills under the tutelage of her uncle. She attended the University of Colorado, Boulder where she received a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts and Humanities, with a focus in Sculpture and Art History respectively, and received scholarship for her work as a female artist working in metal. She continued her devotion to the cultural-arts by receiving, with honors, a Master’s Degree in Architecture at the University of Colorado, Denver. During this time she supplemented her studies by working as an associate at the notable Smith-Klein Gallery in Boulder. Tamara and Natasha Clews Gallaway met while in architectural school and formed a strong friendship based upon their shared love of creative culture and design expression.
Outside of Cupola, Tamara has designed many genre of projects and has also offered her services free-lance to Neoera on progressive commercial and residential designs. She started her career as a designer at Olson Studio Architects in Louisville, Colorado where the firm focused on residential, multi-family, and small commercial and retail designs. She then joined Barban and Associates, in Boulder where she teamed with principle architect Reno Barban, AIA, designing luxury residential homes and assisting his efforts to patent innovative designs related to climate and green-energy.
In her spare time, Tamara serves her local community as Vice-President of the Board of Directors for Studio Arts Boulder, a non-profit arts education organization. She has helped bring the beloved city-run Boulder Pottery Lab under the wing of this successful community non-profit and has collaboratively led the organization’s effort to expand its services to include metalwork, glass, printmaking, and woodworking. She loves spending time with her husband and two kids, being surrounded by nature, travelling, enjoying fine-food culture, reading, gardening, and playing with her beloved black labs.
Find original art and art-design services through our sister-company Wondabox