The People Behind the Work
We built Harmonic Studios around a simple belief: the right environment doesn’t happen by accident. Every space we work on starts with understanding what it needs to do for the people in it — before a dollar is spent making it happen.
Design Lead · Visualization & Project Development
Most people who draw the plans have never swung a hammer. Most people who swing the hammer can’t read the plans. Brandon has done both — for years, on the same jobs — and that combination is the thing that makes him different.
He built his construction background the hard way, working through every trade — framing, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, finish carpentry — at Otto Custom Craftsmen in Ann Arbor before running his own finish-carpentry company. There is very little in a residential remodel he hasn’t done with his own hands.
For the past four years he’s been on the drawing-board side of those same projects: 3D modeling, photorealistic renders, and construction documents with Oak Leaf Design Build and beyond. The kind of drawings contractors actually build from, made by someone who has stood on their side of the job and knows what gets missed.
Today he develops projects end to end — walking the job, defining scope across trades, estimating, coordinating, and guiding clients from first conversation to final walkthrough.
Background & Qualifications
Design Lead · Environment & Landscape Design
Britten has spent her career studying what happens to people when they’re inside a space. At the University of Michigan she built her own interdisciplinary degree — combining environmental psychology, architecture, organizational psychology, and lighting design — because no single program covered the question she actually wanted to answer: how does a built environment shape the people in it? A certification from Science in Design added an evidence layer to that foundation.
She built real spaces, not just theories. She created the Yellow Barn — a community gathering space known for its warmth and sense of safety — using intentional lighting, layout, and natural materials to make people feel supported.
Her work spans disciplines: Maxey Design Group, a design-build firm with projects throughout Kerrytown; project management and design for 1Source on student environments and signage at U of M; client relationships and interior design with Walstrom Design in Northern Michigan, where she was born; freelance collaboration with architects; and landscape and garden design rooted in a genuine love of nature — work she does with her own clients as well as through Bloom & Weed. What ties it together: a belief that every space and ecosystem, inside or out, should nourish those in it — supportive and inspiring to all who inhabit it.
The most valuable thing she brings to a project is the ability to draw out what people actually want — including things they can’t articulate yet — and a trained eye for the environmental conditions most people overlook until they become expensive: air quality, acoustics, lighting, and materials.
Background & Qualifications
Most projects need two kinds of thinking: someone who can draw out what people actually want, and someone who knows what it takes to build it. Most studios have one or the other. Harmonic Studios was built around both.
Britten leads discovery and design direction — the conversations that surface what a household or business actually needs, even when the people in it can’t articulate it yet. Brandon turns that direction into something concrete: models, renders, construction documents, scopes, and budgets that hold up when a contractor picks them up.
Between the two of them, nothing gets lost between the first conversation and the finished build — no vision that can’t be drawn, no drawing that can’t be built, no budget surprise that someone should have seen coming.
A little clarity on us
We are
We are not
A free 20-minute Discovery Conversation is the best place to begin. You tell us about your project. We ask the questions that rarely get asked. By the end, you’ll know whether we’re the right fit.