Category: Interviews

Susan is the founder and executive director of the International Arts + Mind Lab, a pioneering neuroaesthetics initiative from the Pedersen Brain Science Institute at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Her work lies at the intersection of brain sciences and the arts and how our unique response to aesthetic experiences can amplify human potential. She is the co-author of Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us with Ivy Ross, Vice President for Hardware Design at Google. 

Susan is also the designer of the Impact Thinking model, an evidence-based research approach to accelerate how we use the arts to solve problems in health, wellbeing, and learning. In addition to her role at IAM Lab, she also serves as co-director of the NeuroArts Blueprint project in partnership with the Aspen Institute.

Natalia Olszewska: What’s your story, Susan? When did you start to think about the brain, art, and architecture?

Susan Magsamen: When I was little, my twin sister had a farming accident where she almost lost her leg. We were always close, and it was very traumatic for us both. It separated us because she had to stay home for a year, and I had to go out into the world without her. And what was crazy about that is that I’m an introvert, and she’s an extrovert, so our roles were reversed.

Before the accident, my sister wasn’t an artist, but she started making art partly because she was bored. She also realized that she had a deep fear from trauma stuck inside of her. And she couldn’t talk about it because there were no words to express it. At that time, fifty years ago, we didn’t know much about Broca’s area of the brain and how it can shut down because of trauma.

Gábor Bindics studied cultural management at the University of Pécs and alternative energies at the Budapest University of Technology. He worked at the National Portrait Gallery in London and founded a silent cinema in Paris. He is the founder of the Cultural Centre Dunaj and the Švihaj Šuhaj cycle courier service. He is currently leading the project of the Old Market Hall in Bratislava and working on the project of reopening the Grössling Baths.

Michal Matlon:  Gábor, you said that what interests you the most is how spaces impact social life. Could you tell us when you first realized that spaces could have this impact? What made you think about it?

Gábor Bindics: Fifteen years ago, I was living in Paris. Together with my friends, we set up a cinema in the center, near the Luxembourg Garden. We found an unused space and looked for its potential. But to see this potential, we first had to understand the space well.

An architect usually responds to such an understanding with architecture. But I was interested in how we could work with this space without adding mass. That’s when I started reading about the philosophy and sociology of space.

Marie Hesseldahl Larsen is a partner at 3XN / GXN and Head of the office’s dedicated Interiors team. Marie has extensive experience with the competition department, developing conceptual designs and large-scale competition projects – primarily for offices, as well as cultural, hospitality, and public buildings. Marie looks to integrate behavioral insights and sustainable techniques from GXN into her projects and has led the Interior design team in a range of ambitious projects in Denmark and abroad.

My Lunsjö is a behavioral specialist in the behavior design unit at 3XN / GXN. She is an architect by training, with an additional master’s degree in environmental psychology. My works closely with the 3XN architectural teams to inform design processes with her insights from the field of architectural psychology. Her aim is to increase the health and well-being of those who use the architecture by focusing on aspects such as sensorial experiences, and the influence of light and colors on the perception of space.

Michal Matlon: My, we met a few years ago at a conference in Prague. At that time, you were working for the City of Copenhagen. Tell us a bit more about your background.

My Lunsjö: I have an architectural background, but I also have a master’s degree in environmental psychology. My thesis focused on implementing research in the architectural design process and bridging the two fields.

Research is often text-heavy and not so hands-on. Architecture, by contrast, is a craft based on intuitive experience, and the way of working is more fluid. So, I make a connection between these two worlds. Now I work with Marie at 3XN, an architecture studio, and at GXN, their innovation department.

Class 2020 of the 40 under 40 lighting designers, Martina works with the goal of implementing psychological and biological responses to architectural planning. Her research ‘A Beautiful Light’ investigates the use of artificial lighting in support of restorative attention.

Currently, she is working as Lighting Designer, for the Portuguese lighting design & engineering studio WhitePure and is also part of the interdisciplinary team of Impronta, specializing in translational research from neuroscience and behavioral sciences to architectural design. Martina is involved in various educational projects like the Women in Lighting, Designers Mind and the Beauty Movement.

Natalia Olszewska: Welcome, Martina! To start, tell us, how did your journey combining light design and psychology start?

Yodan Rofè is an architect and urban planner with over 20 years of professional, teaching, and research experience. He was the founder of the Movement for Israeli Urbanism and served for five years as the Head of Urban Design at Israeli Ministry of Construction and Housing. 

His research interests include building processes and structures of informal settlements, urban form and movement, accessibility and equity, cognition and feeling in the built environment, as well as public space and street design. 

Together with Allan Jacobs and Elizabeth Macdonald, he wrote The Boulevard Book published by MIT Press. Together with Kyriakos Pontikis, Yodan edited the book In Pursuit of a Living Architecture: Continuing Christopher Alexander’s Quest for a Humane and Sustainable Building Culture, published by Common Ground Publishers.

Natalia Olszewska: I’d love to understand your connection to Christopher Alexander. Could you tell us about meeting him and his influence on you?

Anders is a real estate development and construction manager with 7 years of experience in people-first, master plan community development. He studied urban planning and development at the University of Southern California and now leads construction for Culdesac Tempe. Previously, he served as a development manager at the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles.

Anders: I read your interview with the Neutras talking about the need for more idealistic developers. I’m intimately familiar with how difficult that’s still to find nowadays.

Michal: When have you decided you are going to be one of those enlightened developers?

Anders: Growing up in metro Detroit, the home court of automation, I grew up around a place that was strongly influenced by GM, Chrysler, and Ford lobbying powers through the 20th century. The area had as little public transit as possible, buses with 30 or 60-minute headways, no rail system to speak of, and complete dedication to the automobile.

Andrea Jelić is an architect, researcher, and educator working at the intersection of architecture and enactive-embodied cognition. Her research explores how the built environment affects the lived-living body. Dr. Jelić is an Assistant Professor in Space for Healthy Organizations at KU Leuven, within research groups Research[x]Design (Dept. of Architecture) and Building Physics and Sustainable Design (Dept. of Civil Engineering).

She is an Advisory Council member of ANFA—Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture and a faculty member in the Master’s program “Neuroscience applied to architectural design” at IUAV University of Venice. Her main research interests include the interplay between spatial design, organizational dynamics, well-being at work, social sustainability, and (learning to) design for the diversity of bodies and user experiences.

Natalia Olszewska: I came across your Ph.D. dissertation on neurophenomenology and architecture during my studies. It has great depth and it’s probably one of the best works you can find on this topic today. What made you interested in it?

Dr. Nikos A. Salingaros is Professor of Mathematics and Architecture at the University of Texas at San Antonio. As an internationally recognized architectural theorist and urbanist, he was a visiting professor of Architecture at Delft University of Technology, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Querétaro, Mexico, and Università di Roma III. He holds a doctorate in Mathematical Physics from Stony Brook University, New York.

His publications include the books Algorithmic Sustainable Design, Anti-Architecture and Deconstruction, A Theory of Architecture, Principles of Urban Structure, and Unified Architectural Theory, plus numerous scientific articles. He collaborated with the visionary architect Christopher Alexander in editing the four-volume The Nature of Order. Salingaros won the 2019 Stockholm Cultural Award for Architecture, and shared the 2018 Clem Labine Traditional Building Award with Michael Mehaffy.

Michal Matlon: How did your journey start? How did you get to work with architecture and architectural theory?

Nikos Salingaros: My journey began when I discovered the work of Christopher Alexander while I was a graduate student in theoretical physics. I’ve always been close to art and architecture. I used to paint when I was young.

Alessandro Villa is an architect alternating design activity with teaching. Since 2003 he has been an adjunct professor of Interior Design at Politecnico di Milano and a faculty member at Scuola Politecnica di Design. He has also been a visiting professor at the Tongji University of Shanghai and Goenka University in New Delhi. Alessandro worked on long-term research projects focused on innovation on behalf of international companies (FIAT, 3M, Fincantieri, Beiersdorf) and universities.

In 2004 he opened an interior design practice, working on small-scale architecture, graphic design, and visual communication. He is an expert on materials for interior use, interested in senses and perceptual aspects. He also collaborates with Impronta, neuroscience for architecture and design consultancy.

Natalia Olszewska: I have known you, Alessandro, as one of the pioneers of neuro-design in Italy. You started to write about this topic many years ago. What made you interested in this new field?

Upali Nanda is a director of research for HKS Inc., a global architectural firm, and associate professor of practice in architecture at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. She also serves as the executive director of the nonprofit Center for Advanced Design Research and Evaluation.

In 2015, Nanda was recognized as one of the Top 10 Most Influential People in Healthcare Design by Healthcare Design Magazine. Most recently, she was honored with the 2018 Women in Architecture Innovator Award from Architectural Record.

We are continuing the first part of the interview with Upali which we published in March 2021.

Michal Matlon: In one of your interviews, you said we need to stop seeing buildings as passive objects and start seeing them as living organisms that can be in conversation with our brains. Do you feel this is already being applied? And is it mainly on the technological level, as in the case of smart buildings, or is it also about qualities implemented into design?

Upali Nanda: The application seems to be more through smart cities and smart buildings. However, that is not always the intent. We are now moving almost from a human-centered to a living-centered way of thinking. For any systemic ecology to survive, it has to work in an interdependent way. 

Buildings, for the longest time, have just foisted themselves within an ecosystem, and they haven’t talked to the world outside of them. They haven’t even talked to the humans inside. That’s what we’re starting to change now.