My father kept a 1949 MG motor car like a secret wish.
A promise made, a promise delayed. A machine that never moved – except in his heart. It sat in the garage for years, untouched but not forgotten, a silent witness to all the things he meant to do. He worked. He raised a family. He swore he’d fix it.
Life swore otherwise.
When he moved to Florida, it went with him. In the empty space left behind, my mom encouraged me to move in and start my own design company. So at 22, with no job or money, I did.
My father died in September. And the car waited for me. Still locked away, still untouched, still holding dust and years of good intentions that never quite made it to the road.
Before I accepted it, I had to ask: Was it even possible to make it run? Or was it just a relic of an unfinished dream? Most importantly, did anyone still make brake cables for British motor cars?
Was that door just closed?
The thing is, I don’t believe in unfinished dreams. I believe in getting things done.
COLLINS Treehaus is built on that belief. It’s not a place; it’s a proposition. A nature reserve in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, with acres of forest along the windy Atlantic shore, where old things find new purpose. The houses, hills, and gardens date back to 1876 – built to last, built to be used by our people, our clients, and our friends.
Beyond the property, we’ve also inherited a chapter of design history. In 1939, this peninsula became home to former Bauhaus designers escaping Germany – Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer. Buckminster Fuller built his first practical geodesic dome up the street. They transformed this coast into a laboratory for tomorrow, where design and architecture was reimagined to thrive with nature.
Our wish is that Treehaus becomes a home for a lot more of that. For thinking. For making – together. For cutting through the noise and finding something new. Something better. And then doing it all over again.
Why?
Because great ideas don’t happen in isolation. Even Henry Thoreau, champion of solitude, walked into town for dinner. Real creativity happens in conversation, in collision, in the messy, difficult work of making something with others. And when it works, it doesn’t feel like effort. It feels like music.
I grew up in a house full of music. Not the polished kind – not something rehearsed – but the sound of people coming together, filling a room with whatever they had. My Irish grandmother played the accordion. My sisters and I attempted the piano. My aunts and uncles sang, badly and loudly. It wasn’t about being good; it was about being there. About making something, in that moment, with the people around you.
COLLINS Treehaus is not a retreat – it’s a return. A return to the kind of place that makes more things seem possible. A big house that isn’t a house, but an invitation. A reminder that there’s always a bigger, stranger, more interesting world waiting – if you’re willing to step into it.
Which brings me back to my father’s MG.
It runs now. We restored it over the winter.
No longer a monument to memory, but a machine that moves. It’s in our garage, here, as a reminder: at some point, you just have to get in and go. Or you’ll sit forever, waiting for a perfect moment that never comes.
A new future isn’t something you wait for – it’s something you design. Great ideas don’t arrive neatly wrapped; they have to be chased, argued over, built with many hands, and then set loose in the world.
Or, as my creative partner and co-founder, Leland Maschmeyer, says: “To make futures so irresistible, they become inevitable.”
So.
If you’re ready to imagine, talk, plan, draw, write, read a thousand books, hike a path to the sea, swim wild surf or just hop in a 1949 MG and move – really move – my dad always left the key in the ignition.
And the door is open.
Brian Collins is co-founder of COLLINS, a multi-award winning transformation consultancy with offices in San Francisco and New York City.
