Ann Sussman and Kelsey Bradley: Cognitive Architecture – Stone Age Brains In A Modern World: What Neuroscience Can Teach Us About Making Places People Love

Speaker 1

Why is Oslo, Norway have no cars in the city center? They find that makes their city even more desirable, more internationally accessible, and healthier. Infrastructure is really counteracting what we need to thrive as a species right now. Perception matters more than we realize. The car companies, the business world knows that. The people designing our cities do not.

Speaker 2

Welcome to the Building Culture podcast, where we explore holistic solutions to crafting a more beautiful, resilient, and thriving world through the built environment. I'm your host, Austin Tennell. If you are in the market for high quality windows or doors, whether residential or commercial, new construction or remodels, I highly recommend you check out Sierra Pacific Windows, who we use at Building Culture on a lot of our projects, as well as if you are in the state of Oklahoma, check out One Source. windows and doors and want to thank them for sponsoring this podcast. Today, I get to share a conversation I had with Anne Sussman and Kelsey Bradley of the Human Architecture and Planning Institute. Anne is the president and board chair and Kelsey is the executive director. And Anne has also wrote a couple of books, Cognitive Architecture being one of them. This was a really exciting conversation. And it's high level, but what they're doing at the Human Architecture and Planning Institute and Anne's other work is they're combining evolutionary biology, neuroscience and architecture and using modern technology from eye tracking, heart rate variability, sweat gland measuring, and seeing how human beings respond to different types of environments. And their discoveries are really fascinating. And in some ways they validate what people have been saying anecdotally for long time about the kinds of environments that can create, that we feel comfortable in and can create human flourishing. But now we're bringing real science and data to it as well that I think lays a great foundation for the future. And one of their primary points that I think is just so important is that we think of ourselves as thinking creatures and we're conscious. But And we are thinking creatures and we're conscious, but we're actually really not as rational as we like to think. There's a whole lot going on in the brain that never makes its way into the conscious mind. think it's, I don't know if I'm quoting this wrong, but I think it's something like 95 % of our things going on and reactions are unconscious and only like 5 % makes it into the conscious brain. And so it's really helped to have data to start measuring some of these different types of unconscious responses.

Speaker 2

because once again, we're only experiencing like truly thinking consciously experience a very tiny sliver of reality, but there's all these other things happening that are actually affecting us very deeply. And so I think this is a really like human episode, but it's also like scientific as well. And it's very high level because as you can imagine, this is a massive topic. But the goal here was to have a conversation to talk about in broad strokes, some of their work. and some of the findings of that work and really to get people like you and me interested in exploring more. And so I'd highly recommend and Sussman's book, Cognitive Architecture, and also going to the happy T H E the happy H I P I dot org to check out some of their work. And there's even free courses you can take online from the happy dot org human architecture and planning Institute. So I hope you enjoyed this episode and get as much as out of it as I do. I'm a huge fan and supporter of the work that they're doing and I think it's really important and I hope that their message really starts to get out there. Hope you enjoy. Thanks. Okay, and Kelsey, so nice to have you on the podcast today. Likewise, we're happy to be here. Thank you all for reaching out.

Speaker 2

Yeah, I'm really excited to talk about all of your work. And as we were just talking about right beforehand, I feel like this could be a multi episode podcast to even, you know, scratch the surface of it. But in order to just kind of start somewhere, why don't we just start with. Anne and Kelsey, your your your background and how evolutionary biology and neuroscience and architecture, how did all those things come together for you guys, who you realize there's a connection here? that's worth exploring. have a very succinct story, so I'll start. Hi, everyone. My name's Kelsey Bradley. I'm the executive director of the HAPI, the Human Architecture and Planning Institute. I have an undergraduate degree in architecture, and I'll be starting a master's in urban planning in the fall. how architecture, ecology, biology, evolution, all these things came together for me as I moved into an urban context recently. And I realized After about six months, I was pretty much non-functional. And then discovered I had undiagnosed PTSD that was being triggered by my environment. And it was kind of at that moment where a big light bulb went off and I realized, my gosh, the environment is impacting me so dramatically. I can't be the only person. And so that's... That's very interesting. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Great. And do you have an answer to that? You're an architect by background originally an architect.

Speaker 1

licensed architect, but I didn't get my license until I was, well, a couple of decades ago, by 40. But I lived in Europe for five years in my 20s, and I could never understand why the American tourists would only in Paris, only go to the old parts of Paris. They rarely hung out in the new parts, and that really intrigued me. So ended up going back to the States. going to architecture school and was really weird. architecture school, I got my masters at UCLA, but they never talked about the human experience. Then I realized, wait a minute, something's wrong. So I met an urban planner and he said, you your ideas are really interesting. And one thing led to another, and we ended up writing a book together, Cognitive Architecture. And it's all about how the biology really matters on how you understand how you experience space. And what happens, those tourists in Paris, Their biology is telling them to hang out in the old parts of the city. That's what's going on. And so we founded a nonprofit, the Human Architecture and Planning Institute, to introduce architects and planners and the general public to how human biology, how we work as animals. Because basically in the 20th century, there was siloization of academia. And the idea that we're an animal is something we really don't study. And to really design for people, you really need to study how they're animals. What's amazing to me and scary is how the car companies really study this. I heard an interview with the lead designer for Lincoln Car, and he was told that because of COVID, he had to come up with a new design for the Lincoln and his answer. When you get into the new Lincoln, quote, you will feel hugged by your mother. It's like, what? That's how the car companies think? And yeah, and they are when you start in, because I'm in Boston, Boston's a big biotech hub. I got involved with biotech, eye tracking, facial expression analysis, using the key tools to understand people that the car companies use. And so the public needs to understand how the major businesses, including Apple, Steve Jobs hired a,

Speaker 1

PhD neuroscientist in 1975 to help design Apple computers to make them really fit people. He did a very good job. Anyway, I've talked too much, but yeah. you No, no, we're here to hear you talk because I think there's so much to unpack here. I do think it's like the right time. It's an interesting time to be coming back to this idea of how the human habitat has profound effects in our daily lives. You know, we already kind of know certain things about, economically, whether it's sustainable or not or environmentally. But then there's the actual very, very, human element. And a lot of people use the terms human scale now. But I think with kind of the science behind it and the neuroscience behind it, the psychology behind it, and lends a whole lot of depth and legitimacy to that. So let's kind of jump in there. mean, one of the things that popped out in my mind that you said is how our brains are really stone age hardware or something like that operating in a modern world. Can you talk about that? Is there something you want to say, Kelsey, about that? But I think that's the dilemma. The business world knows we're a social primate. But social primates, were kind of, in the 20th century, we didn't talk about our animal nature, whereas the business world commodifies it. If you go to business school now in Massachusetts at UMass Amherst, UMass Business School, you're going to have...

Speaker 3

I'm Mila Anne Reis.

Speaker 1

an eye tracking lab to follow how your eyes move, to follow your sweat glands, to follow your facial expressions. So you really will understand before you publish it, Austin, how people respond to your ad. It can't just be Austin like the ad. No, no, no. We'll get the stats on the human experience. And the big paradigm shift that was understanding we have an emotional brain that thinks. when I went to undergrad and grad, nobody talked about emotions. Do you know, Austin, if you go to Harvard Business School now, In 2016, they put out a series on emotional intelligence. It's now 28 booklets. You'll read a booklet on empathy. You'll read a booklet on resilience. You'll read a booklet on happiness. Happiness? You read about that in grad school? At Harvard? What? I mean, so understanding the 21st century, they realized the business world, realized that emotions have currency. there's an expression I learned in the business world from reading a business article. Attention is currency. attention to an ad, cereal box, walking down an aisle, that's what they'll buy. So the business world really understands human experience. And that's very interesting, whereas humans were not really taught about it. And the big paradigm shift is understanding how non-conscious experience, this is really a 21st century thing, non-conscious experience, whether or not you're sweating, whether or not, you know, how you're feeling, that's going to determine your thinking. We have a feeling brain that thinks. So in a lot of our 20th century education was framed around a false paradigm. And we have a thinking brain that occasionally has emotions. No, that's false. We have a feeling brain that thinks. they know that in the business schools and they understand that. And I think it's something the general public needs to understand that the business world's using to manipulate them to consume more. Let's look at some... go ahead, Kelsey.

Speaker 3

was going to say another way of looking at that is we experience our world before we think about it. So if you're looking at we are creatures, so our senses, they impact us first and then we rationally, cognitively think about how it's impacting us. So, you know, to use myself as an example, walking down a busy city street, I'm not thinking, that was a loud noise. that person looks threatening. no, my body is reacting. And so these two ideas really, they're part of the same and people just understanding that we are not these rational above animal creatures, we're an animal ourselves and we respond like other animals in our own unique human way. Yeah, it's really, I said this recently on a few podcasts that I feel like we're moving. There was the enlightenment and kind of this like hyper rational thinking and material, like materialism, only what we can see that's reality and that's it. And I think there's an awakening. You could say a lot of people recognizing there is a whole lot going on that we don't like see or touch or can measure and kind of conventional scientific ways, which I think you guys are starting to really tap into in a scientific way, which is extremely exciting. Um, so let's actually kind of dive into some of the work that you've been doing. I mean, you've been doing this for, I mean, over a decade now, right? Like in the neuroscience and all that area. Um, so would you like to talk, present, like talk about some of your work and some of the things you are tracking, you mentioned eye tracking and stuff like that. And there's so many different ways you go. So I'll let you kind of take it and talk about what are some of the interesting things that you've been measuring and what have you been finding? Well, yeah, what's fascinating when you see our eye tracking is one of the tools that's a new lens to see reality and When you do eye tracking it tracks how your eyes move without your conscious awareness You really see people differently without conscious awareness your brain immediately looks for something red It's not random a stop sign is red all over the world. It's not random at all. It's how the brain works and Also humans immediately look for faces

Speaker 1

non-consciously. And so it's not random. Corporate logos are a face. You know, I recently learned that the Quaker Oats logo, they didn't have a guy that looked like that. They made up the face. Kentucky Fried Chicken, the founder really did kind of look like that. They make up faces. It's not random. Amazon logo has a smile. That's not random. More of the brain's infrastructure, more of your neurons are devoted to face perception and reading expression than anything else. We're a social primate. We exist for mirroring. We couldn't have survived in the savanna. And that's the thing you start using this biotech, it's kind of ironic. You realize, my gosh, our whole nervous system, our whole sensory system evolved for survival in the savanna. And when you're born from Mother Nature's perspective, you're still there. A lion might pounce, an eagle could soar at any moment, and that's what your nervous system. There's all this science now, including information theory. It says that for every second 11 million bits, a bit is a unit of information come into the brain from the body and brain. 11 million. And, where's 11 million, 11,000, I 7 million now to 10 million are, are, are non-conscious 10 million are visual. 1 million is touch 50 are, are conscious 50 are conscious. So it's your unconscious direct shoe into your brain. 10 million are visual. Cause the reason your brain is so big and bulky is 30 % of those cells are visual processing. We're hugely visual. As we've evolved, our sense of smell has gotten reduced, but our visual perception is very acute. So I walk into my kitchen, my cat thinks I'm an idiot because I can't smell the mouse the way he can. So we're highly, highly visual. And the video world and the TV world and the ad world knows that.

Speaker 2

Yeah, boy, this I recently heard Tony Robbins say this, but he said, we don't experience life. We experience what we pay attention to. And you're like that, you the amount that you just said, whether we like experience one percent less than one percent of all the things actually going on, which is just a really fascinating things. We feel like we're in control and aware of everything going on. But unless it rises to the level of. pay attention to this, 99.9 % doesn't make it. So one of the ones that I know that you've talked about is, for example, Thigma Taxis, and you're talking about our brain and Savannah and all that. So we like to, for example, as humans, hug walls. If you go inside a restaurant, sit with your back in, so if you're walking down a wide street, you like to be protected. And maybe there's something else you would like to talk about, the Thigma Taxis, but. What other little elements like that have you kind of discovered about the human habitat, about how our bodies and minds and emotions are responding to our physical world around us? there's so many things. So we respond to different shapes, colors, sensory experiences, and kind of the culmination of how these things come together is really what shapes how we feel in our environment. So like I mentioned in Anne's book, we feel happier around curvilinear shapes, and we feel more maybe agitated. And these are obviously almost imperceivable. level, a very unconscious, a non-conscious scale. But, you know, angular shapes might make us slightly more reactive, whereas the curvilinear shape would make us a little bit more comfortable. Different colors, already mentioned a red stop sign. You know, if it's a nice blue stop sign, we might be a little calmer about it if not react. And, you know, there's so many sensory things, you know, earlier today, Anne and I were talking about cobblestone streets.

Speaker 1

but

Speaker 3

Even if you're in a car, the sensory experience is actually going to slow you down. Same thing if you're walking on a brick sidewalk as opposed to a flat pavement one. These really small sensory things, there's really a lot of them. I think it'd be great if you want to listen because I think these are super interesting for people. You're like, like, you know, so feel free to go on for a little bit. I'll just say it really kind of comes down to a lot of things are sense-based. you know, how we like light and shadow things you would learn in architecture school, but they can be implied in a lot of different ways. And there's so much in terms of the natural world and how we react to things. So, and already mentioned a totally blank facade. That's not how we're hardwired to engage with a space. We're hardwired to engage in lush environments where there's a lot of variety of native species. you know, like, yes, yes, we really respond well to fractal patterns. you know, if you're organized complexity.

Speaker 2

Say a fractal pattern, like I think I know what that means, but we just go ahead and define it to make sure I know. So fractals are a repeated shape that creates a larger shape. So if we think of a fern, the tiny leaf is a small shape and then it's thousands of times into the whole structure. And so we are, our brain is actually finding to respond positively to fractal patterns, which are ubiquitous in our natural world. Yeah. Our brains are fractal. the nerves are fractal. So when you think about that and then you look at a modern building that's maybe completely glass, our brain is just not designed to see that. So there's kind of a disconnect between how we experience the world and how we're building on. This is this gets into like fun and dangerous territory but in a fun way but just this idea of beauty because you know the argument is well is beauty just a completely objective or a completely subjective thing and you know I don't know what your answer be my answer is like it's some of both most people tend to agree on the most beautiful person or whatever it is but there can still be disagreements but you know this starts getting into

Speaker 2

modernism and traditional architecture and stuff and actually providing like how people are responding to things. you even, and I think you hinted at this earlier, but just how some of the founders of postmodernism, modernism, Corbusier and stuff had some issues going on. Can you talk about that a little bit and kind of your thesis? other podcast. That could be a, that could be a moving series. Let's do it now. But we don't talk about how war gave us our world and war gave us our world. And, and, and the need to build again after war is huge. You have to have compassion for what they did, but we do now know that people with different, with certain brain differences, like people on the spectrum, people with post-traumatic stress disorder, they actually perceive reality differently. And so And so what they created reflected their brain disorder. actually did show picture Walter Ropius, the founder of the Bauhaus, who taught at Harvard for like 20 years, you know, after after World War One. What I showed pictures of his house to a professor at Harvard Medical School. And he said, every picture you showed me is post traumatic stress disorder. The house he built in Lincoln, Massachusetts, when he was teaching at Harvard. And it's very modern. You can't quite find the front door. There is no detail. But post-Frederick's death disorder was something that wasn't even a word until 1980 in the doctor's manuals. And only in 1990s, I think they were able to actually scan it with magnetic resonance imaging. Because what that does is that shows soft tissue. And you can see how the brain shrinks. You lose the cells that allow you to easily process visual detail. So you can see why. Wow, I didn't know that. Can you say that one more time? In PTSD, you lose the...

Speaker 1

So with soldiers after going to Vietnam, they notice their brain shrunk and the cells die because if you don't sleep at night, your cells can't clean themselves out and so they'll die. And then your brain shrinks and you lose the ability to process detail easily, which is what the human brain evolved to do. Yeah, it's all connected. And so then it makes its way into design. It's tripping it up. Exactly. Reality is a construct between your eye and your brain. You your cat does not see the red bowl of milk. It will see it as a grayish bowl of milk because cats don't have the red photoreceptors that allow them to see red. Reality is a construct in your brain. Something with PTSD, non-consciously, their brain is going to take in stimuli differently because of their experience. Yeah. Wow. more finely tuned to threatening stimuli as opposed to regular stimuli. So they'll find threat maybe where there isn't.

Speaker 1

So you'll have, grow pieces, windows in his house are all so nobody could ever see inside his house from outside. Well, hi. And, yeah, it's, it's really interesting. So we didn't, I think in some ways all disciplines like this. And then in the 20th century, we didn't talk about emotions very much. We didn't want to, we just wanted to rush and be modern. And in a way you can see why World War I was horrible. 20 years later, World War II, even worse. We wanted to build this new Yeah.

Speaker 1

world. My father's first job in the 50s was making plastics. I mean, we were so excited about the potential. A lot of this new technology not realizing, now I'm going to go to the beach and pick up plastics. mean, it's like, it's, we didn't think holistically and embrace our animal nature the way the business world does. And we are animals and our brains and bodies work like that. And we need to study that. mean, one of the, Yeah.

Speaker 1

The is to become a licensed architect in the United States, there's no biology or psychology requirement, even though you're designing primate habitat. That's crazy. You try to design an enclosure at a zoo, Austin, you're going to have to work with a biologist or you're not going to get the job. Trust me. I completely agree. That's such a strong, strong, strong statement. How do you not study precedent in terms of the greatest cities and towns the world's ever produced that people spend billions to go to? Like that doesn't happen in architecture school. And then also this idea of, not literally studying psychology, sociology, human emotions as part of the architecture program. As you say, like you literally are designing the human habitat. So for me, there's this great responsibility. know, sense of responsibility and civic duty, you know, to do that. We need to do evidence-based design and that's not what we're doing. And often in architecture, when I did work as an architect, I'm still a licensed architect. the last time, what I found is that last time I worked, this is about over 20 years ago, what I found is there wasn't the money for the post-occupancy evaluation. So architects don't even study how successful their buildings are. They don't have time, they don't have the cash for it. So they want to go on to the next one. And you know, CAD has now come in and people are just designing things without even visiting the site. They'll just plunk it in.

Speaker 2

Yeah. So if you, you know, the modern world, kind of a suburban, endless suburban sprawl, it's not necessarily a modernist in terms of like style, in terms of design. So we were kind of talking about that a second ago. But it's also the deconstruction of what an actual city or neighborhood is, you know, to all those little pieces. So if you were to drop, you know, a human being into. a typical new strip mall, suburban strip mall with the Chick-fil-A and the Starbucks at the front and then the bigger stores at the back and a sea of parking and a confusing exits to get there. What does your brain start doing? What happens? Your brain, your body, what are the implications of that on us? It's threatening. That's the first thing. You get plopped in the middle of the parking lot. It's threatening because cars are threatening to humans. You know, it's an object that is coming towards you. You can't control it. You know, maybe it's coming fast out of your peripheral vision. Your brain says, lion. And then also we're looking at a lot of not very engaging facades. There's not a lot of nature to help calm. It's just a lot of threatening things, a lot of different noises. It's a threatening environment. And I also think I have this idea too that I've seen in my lifetime now, people consume more now than I think they used to. There seems to be more waste, more consumption, more Amazon packages coming. And I think because people feel disconnected more now, they're going to consume more. And the supermarkets even have more stuff in them. And it's like, and the size of carts, the size of the carts, they didn't used to be like, you know what I'm talking about.

Speaker 2

You know, yeah.

Speaker 1

And it's like, it's what's happening is that, you know, if we really lived in a way where we could feel connected with each other, where we could walk to get a cup of coffee, where we'd meet people casually, we wouldn't need to be consuming so much. Right. Yeah, it's like the dopamine hit, you know, with the light. We need that. it provides a very short boost, but it's not sustainable or fulfilling. You know, so you were talking about it's an immediate threat. What kind of things are you guys measuring, you know, when you're looking at it? Because we've kind of talked about a couple or like hinted at a few of them. You know, are you measuring HRV or, you know, resting heart rate or? skin temperature or something like that. you say it's threatening, what is our body doing and how do you know if a body is like threatened or comfortable? This clinical biometrics and there's non-clinical biometrics. So we use a lot of non-clinical biometrics that includes spatial recognition software, eye tracking, sensory sweat glands. And so we're able to use that technology to just kind of quantifiably see what the human experience is. And so obviously if someone is having an enjoyable time, heart rate will stay nice and low. They might have a positive facial expression and you can see where their eyes are looking.

Speaker 3

non-consciously. So you can kind of take all those pieces together to create an image of how that person is feeling as opposed to maybe a more threatening environment where you're seeing heart rate go up, maybe sweat glands are activated. They're looking maybe directly at the cars instead of other people or things, faces, things that we know are soothing to people. yeah, it's kind of taking together some of these metrics to create a picture. And when I mentioned clinical biometrics, a lot of that is brain scans. So we don't have that. We don't use that technology. But they do use that in some other settings so they can see what parts of your brain are lighting up. So if you're dropped in the parking lot and your amygdala lights up, well, we know, OK, they're having a stress response as opposed to a different part of the brain that is not reactive, not as reactive to stressful stuff. response.

Speaker 2

Yeah, gosh, that brain stuff's really interesting. When you start introducing that, like what part of the brain turns on and off in different environments. Well, we're animals and we're not, we're not as intelligent as we think. And mommy nature though designed us for survival. So she wants to tell us how our eyes are supposed to move. do you want to know this? Austin, you need to know this. The first three to five seconds a person looks at anything, it's exactly the same as a monkey. Yes. Really? Pattern or something when you're looking at something the way your eyes move around It's a roaring lion's mouth.

Speaker 2

Wow. I'm going to share a little trick we use at building culture. So if you're designing a house, you have to have egress windows or egress in any bedroom, for example. And the problem with that is egress windows are very large, especially if it's a double hung window or something like that. And because of design constraints, sometimes we want a smaller window if it's in a dormer or just for the hierarchy of the elevations. Well, a really cool trick that we use with our Sierra Pacific windows is we'll take something from their urban casement line and we'll put what's called a piano hinge on it. And so rather than a of a normal casement that kind of slides open where only part of the window is open, this is almost like a door hinge. And so the entire window opens and you can meet egress with a two foot by four foot window, a 2040 window. It's the smallest possible egress window anyone makes. And that's a nice little design trick. If you're as nerdy as I am, you will actually think that's really cool. So check out Sierra Pacific Windows. And if you are in the state of Oklahoma, check out OneSource Windows and Doors. We at Build New Culture use both of them regularly. It would now be a good time to show the... You want to pull up? So for anyone listening, try to, if you can be on video for Spotify or YouTube, it's worth checking this out, but I'll also put something in the show notes. I can share here.

Speaker 1

So it's all about how our time were in this new age and 19th century engineering, chemistry, physics. Imagine 20th century plastics was invented. Who knew? And 21st century, just a completely new time about understanding people. And so this is the kind of technology they now use in business schools to show in 15 seconds how someone actually looks at, in this case, it's an image of Villa Rotunda. This is the architect. Palladio, he was very influential in the design of the White House. years later, she doesn't know her eyes are moving 45 times. But now the business school people, the car companies, they all know that because they use this tech. For everyone listening, we're looking at like a building and then watching the eye tracking movement over 15 seconds and kind of the direct, where their eyes are looking over 15 seconds. And it's really interesting cause it's constant. You you think of your eyes as like seeing, cause you can see the whole building and you're like, I don't know if you call that your periphery. You can kind of like look at the whole building, but you actually have to like look in individual places to really understand it. And it's just fascinating to watch the pattern of how we do that. Yeah, now everybody looks at the world differently. So what the business world does and what the science world does, what they do is they then will get 30 or so people to look at something and then they'll do the stats. Where do people look first, second, third, fourth, fifth? What blew my mind as an architect looking at this building and realized, my gosh, the reason this building is so famous, it's not just the design, it's the statues on it. Because non-consciously as a social primary, we're hardwired. Orca.

Speaker 2

Hmm.

Speaker 1

to seek out people by having all the statues on the building, people just have to look at it more. And I know we look, you talk about, look for that in architecture itself to like tick out the actual statue, but like we try to recognize faces within architecture, right? Right. We already always look for things that are face like and the building is face like, but also having the people around it. Yeah. it even more famous. you statistically, if you took all the statues off the building, the brain would not let you look at it as long. The way it actually works. So this was the setup that we had a couple of years ago. And these are the clients that using the same tech, it's iMotions, Honda, BMW, GM, Tesla, they're all using it. Yeah.

Speaker 1

And the big idea is something Freud said, the mines and iceberg, it closes one seven of its bulk above water. Well, he interviewed hundreds of people, right? And he realized, my God, they didn't realize how their non-conscious was directing them consciously. And that's what the business world knows. That's what they're, the way they design everything from the Kellogg's raisin brand box to a car is all based on this fact that most of the public is not aware of. What are some of the things that have been like most significant findings to you that you wish you could just kind of like shout to the world around and put billboard up? That's a good point. This I got from a website. 95 % of our brain activity is beyond conscious awareness. That guy, he's writing that on a website, how to design a website. You have to design a website knowing that non-consciously, if you put a big red dot on your website, people will go immediately there. If you put a big face on it, people will look right at it. It's not random Starbucks around the country. What do they have? They don't even write Starbucks, but they'll always have the logo of the girl's head. Let's

Speaker 2

Yeah. It's not random, it's science. And basically, if you read a book by Eric Kandel, he's a Nobel Prize winner, a retired Columbia professor, neuroscientist. He writes this book, The Age of Insight, all of our conscious thoughts and actions are unconscious first. That's it. And in a book he explains he loves art. He explains how art works. It's really, really very interesting. And this is fascinating too. Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor. Yeah.

Speaker 1

She had a stroke while she was a neuroscientist working at Harvard. She had a stroke and she watched in her 30s her brain go offline. And then she gives this TED talk that's been viewed over 25 million times. Although many of us might think of ourselves as thinking creatures that feel biologically, we're feeling creatures that think. That's a huge paradigm shift for my 20th century education and even your 21st century education. My education in architecture was basically identical to Anne's, other than new tech, lead, things like that. But the basics of architecture, they have not really changed in how they're taught. I was also not taught any psychology, any biology, anything like that. This is new thing. So I was at a supermarket a couple of months ago. my God, you get the science of emotions of the supermarket? mean, even combining those two words, science and emotions, you really didn't see that in the 20th century. That's the 21st century paradigm shift. and this is a Harvard Business School. yeah, The resilience. In mindfulness, happiness. Yeah, David Brooks is there at Harvard, too, right? Isn't he like a leading happiness? Yeah, this is the high.

Speaker 1

And this is

Speaker 1

Right, right. So, but again, this came, I think this was published 2016. Again, part of the 21st century paradigm shift. You go to Harvard Business School, you have to study empathy. What? That's not even a word I knew. No one mentioned empathy going to college or grad school. Did they mention empathy with you? Nope. Nope. They were not concerned for them. So I actually read the book on empathy. It's fascinating. It's all about, it's very well written, as I recall written by women. And it talks about how they've done the studies, bosses who are seen as more empathetic and emotionally aware, they lead more successful companies. Really? People want to follow them more.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Wow. Is that amazing? They've actually researched that. Now imagine if we applied that to architecture and buildings. Yeah, it would be interesting if you had like a happiness rating for your building. So excited. It just seems like a really exciting new foundation to build kind of like the new architecture of the 21st century, which we're really in still in 20th century, like architecture, I would say. like thinking there's movement, thankfully, but I feel like this has got to be combined and play like a critical foundation of what is the future? Because the way I think you guys would agree with this, you mentioned Steve Jobs already, but he He was very big on, I don't care about hardware for hardware sake, like start with the human experience, start with the user experience and then back into the hardware. And so that's really what we're doing here. Cause I think a lot of, a lot of people, think generally speaking, if you say this is, Hey, we want to design for human flourishing. That's the why. And then everything else falls in line underneath that. But then the question is, well, what is human flourishing? And you know, you can, I think religion has a lot of answers there.

Speaker 2

you know, that they've been saying for thousands of years that, sometimes science is even kind of backing up now. But I think this is a whole new realm of information to understand the effects of the physical environment on human well-being, which is, which is just really exciting to me. Cause I think it will bring a lot of, uh, uh, It could bring a lot of new people into the movement, I guess you could say, and convince a lot of people. Like you said, even businesses are studying this stuff now. And I see the younger generation, particularly young men, very interested in talking about emotion. When I grew up, that wasn't a thing. And that's part of the pivot, too. know, accepting people are different, talking about stress out loud, talking about going to see your therapist over dinner. That's not what people used to do when I was a kid, you know, or even I was in college. You know, it's a paradigm shift, understanding the human experience and designing for all ages. Yeah, yeah. Right.

Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah, which we do not do. You know, I think we've talked a couple of like, there's tremendous anxiety in kind of today's culture. There's, you know, all these kind of underlying mental health issues and things like that. And of course, yeah, I mean, there's social media and people, the average team spends on average 4.8 hours a day on social media. That's not good for you. We know that, but also how in your mind is the built environment in that human habitat that we built for sales contributing to all of these kind of like bad outcomes that we all agree are problems. Have you seen in your research pretty like clearly like, oh, here are some of the things that work and just don't work. What, what, yeah. I think it's definitely there. can see that, well, there's this thing the non-conscious directs you, right? And there's the things we say in English, they say out of sight, out of mind. Like you're not gonna even think about meeting in front of a building that's all glass, because your brain won't even want you to look at it. It's really fascinating. It's out of sight. Perception matters more than we realize and how... Our perception is antique, it's not modern. And that's the kind of dissociation. The car companies, the business world knows that. The people designing our cities do not. And it's that. So you also mentioned Austin community. Sorry, you mentioned religion. Religion is amazing at community and bringing people together. Our infrastructure does the opposite right now. Don't create welcoming spaces for all ages where people can come together and feel like they're part of a community. It's very difficult to feel like you're part of a safe, welcoming community when you can't walk anywhere, right? Or there's no

Speaker 2

Hmm.

Speaker 3

place for you to sit comfortably or your high school student can't get anywhere because they can't drive yet and maybe you're working and so they're stuck at home and they're lonely so what are they going to do? They're going to look at their phone for four and a half hours. You know, we haven't made it easy whereas if we had a bike lane for them to be able to take themselves safely to the park or I don't know laser tech, I don't know what kids are doing these days but whatever they want to do. Not have to have a planned drop off at 2 p.m. play date, you know, for an hour and a half that your mom or dad drove you to very rigidly and pick you up from, yeah. Yeah, it just, gives children and we haven't even talked about the elderly, but you know, gives children an opportunity to have a little bit of freedom and independence, which is really important for their development and their sense of wellbeing, their mental health, all of these things. So I, I know Anne agrees because we talk about this all the time, but our infrastructure is really counteracting what we need to thrive as a species right now. At least modern. And we're talking too about this, this kind of gets off topic, but that it's harder to enter areas. There are just so many now, you know, even the school or I teach, there's now a guard at the door. It used to be anybody walk in. Now you have the guard at the door. What? It wasn't like that 20 years ago. Now it's like everywhere. can't just walk into a school. Do think part of that's a scale thing I've wondered just because schools have gotten like so big, which is also kind of an outcome of suburban sprawl where you have to centralize the services and then there's a thousand kids and then you can't know everyone and then, you know.

Speaker 3

I think there's a lot of things that play into this. I don't want to bring up controversial things, so I'm going to skirt around that. But I do think that we have some schools, mean, there's some high schools that are very, very large. And it's very different if you have like your rural school with 100 kids. mean, that's very different than an urban school with 1,500 children. that could be playing a role. But there's a lot of factors that play here, specifically with the schools. I'm just going to tread lightly. Yeah. So in terms of like say some like spatial things, do you have any data that kind of shows the height that people like in urban, you know, four stories, six stories, 30 stories or street widths or sidewalks or things? Easier when things are like not above four or five stories, because the natural way for the human to walk is to hold our head down. All the snakes, right? And so we're used to walking with our head always, but generally a 10 to 15 degrees. We usually don't walk backwards. Usually don't walk with our end like that. So just like high rises puts us a little bit at ease because it makes us have to look our head up. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2

Right. I always think like that for I've always kind of been in the realm of I don't have data to prove it, but I'm like, I just don't really see the need for really any city to be above, I don't know, four to six stories. And I don't mean no building should be above that. I just mean the human scale really is in that fortified. And you get incredible density doing that, like Paris, for example. of old Boston, like Newbury Street, back bay area that are very, they're really wealthy now, where they actually close them off to, Newbury Street, close off to all cars eight months a year on Sunday only. But that's where people want to walk. They don't want to walk around high rises. They want to walk around the five, six story buildings that are brick, 90 foot wide street. They feel seen, they feel comfortable. Also the height of a tree, generally speaking, that four to five story, I would think. There's got to be something evolutionary there, I would think. That's so interesting you said that. That's very interesting. The width of the storefront is also very important. know, people gravitate towards more narrow storefronts where they can kind of take it all in.

Speaker 2

Oh yeah, yeah. That quaint perfect storefront that you can just, you How wide is that, I'm curious. Is there kind of a number or a range when you say like 18 feet or is it kind of a little bit mushier than something that specific? It's a little mushy in urban planning, they tend to call it fine grain. So it's a somewhat arbitrary term, but I think what you're referring to is, you know, I don't know, somewhere within like this. Well, you have to understand human perception is relational. So we're built for seeing each other. So it's not random. put this book, this book on this picture on the cover of my book. It looks like I actually went to school. I went to high school in that building. Yeah. And I dropped out of a modernist high school to go here, you know, because you'd see, you feel seen walking in. And so our perception is relational because social species and we're building things that are a relational that you don't know where to look. Wow.

Speaker 1

And that makes us not feel quaint or comfortable at home. I mean, the person who really gets that, I think, was Disney, because he created Disneyland realizing his daughters growing up in California in the 50s, they couldn't play in the street. But he used to be able to in the turn of the 20th century, he could play in the street. So he created what? Disneyland Main Street, 52 different building elevations, each one face like, each one ornate detail, no higher than three or four stories, you know, with no cars. Just the tram, right? and did you know by, it opened, think in 1955, it was the most visited site in the United States by 10 years later. And Disneyland Paris opened in the 1990s by 2016 was the most visited site in Europe. my gosh. That's wild. What's so amazing about Disney though too is he's doing what planners and what architects aren't trained in. He sent his Imagineers around Europe to find what the places, this is a quote, where people are happiest. Hmm.

Speaker 3

So he kind of brought together all of the most appealing elements of our built environment and put it all together. But he was able to because his metrics indicated, I want people to come here, love it, spend money, never want to leave. And he didn't have to factor in things like transportation on a wider city scale. But it still shows what's possible and people really gravitate to and love on a very universal level. Yeah, so we're not taught to look at happiness. doesn't, meant, either that's mentioned in the architectural licensing. gosh, beauty's not even mentioned, I mean... Beauty's not mentioned. Beauty's not mentioned. Happiness isn't mentioned. What? Whereas the business world, Disney made millions realizing what we were losing. He monetized. I think it cost, what, $140 to get an app. It used to be, everybody used to be able to walk in the street in the turn of the century, in the turn of the 20th century or in the 19th century. The street was for people. We lost the street to cars and we never talked about that. Well, in Europe, talking about that. I don't know if you know this. In Paris, they announced, I think two months ago, They're taking the cars off 500 streets in

Speaker 2

Wow. Imagine if Dallas did that. I, as we said right before coming on here, recently drove, you know, through Texas and the scale of kind of destruction in terms of building is really immense. Scary. you know, most of, so, you know, I'm guessing you guys run like in the New Urbanist movement, like largely speaking with that kind of group and crowd. mean, that's how I think I came across your work originally. Is there any of the information and data? I mean, because most of the stuff that you guys are saying, I'm kind of like nodding my head going like, yeah, you know, and it's nice because it's more like scientific validation of things we kind of like intuitively know, just whether it's through looking at the past or whatever. Has there been anything that's almost like contradicted any of the tenets of new urbanism, whatever we would call those, or something that's even just surprised you where you were like, huh, that's not what I was expecting the data to show.

Speaker 1

Well, the data, I think, just shows that we're more animals than we realize. what's shocking, though, is the gap between where even the new urbanist movement is and where the car companies are. Right, right. They're really designing for primate animal brain. the scary thing is, is they're the major purveyors of all of their major purchases of all these biometric tools. Someone told me that in 2026, a new car in Europe will have to have on its dash cam a camera that's measuring your facial expressions. So if you have a stroke, the car will drive to the side of the road and call 911. So I got a prototype of that car. I got into it to to experience it and of the car mirroring me. And what happened really blew my mind. I fell in love with a car because it was looking at me and I would go and it would go like that. And it was just mirroring me so much. felt so close to this artificial thing. And just seeing how clever it was, emotions really matter. Disney gets that. The car companies know that. The insurance companies know that too, that if you're drunk, Wow.

Speaker 1

you'll probably have a crash, right? This is they really follow your experience. So they're right there. We need to bring the architecture world in. We need to show Congress for New Urbanism and the urbanists that now you have the science to show why their intuition is right. Yeah. Where would you say you are in kind of your work right now? You know, you've been kind of putting this when did you write your book? So this one came out, the second edition came out in 2021. Courses out, two of them are free. We have a bundle of courses out. They're AIA, American Institute of Architects certified courses. They're seven half hour online classes with a quick 10 minute test at the end, just teaching about how the non-conscious directs you. It's called the Human Architecture and Planning Institute, the happy. Happy certification. Certification, share assist certi-

Speaker 2

Yeah, I saw it on your website. I'm thinking about doing it myself just to, yeah, to have that and to learn. I think we need to really, I think it's urgent. You don't just want the business world knowing this science. You want the artist knowing this. And you want the school designers knowing it. And I don't know if you know this, in greater Boston a year and a half ago, a woman died having an asthma attack trying to get into the hospital because she couldn't find the door. Hmm

Speaker 1

And the ugliest building in my town is the hospital. And I actually talked to a hospital member about that he said, well, you know, because of COVID we went into the red and now we're just, mean, they're just thinking finance, you know, we're not quite in the black yet. So we can't design a safe crosswalk. What? Or just design a beautiful hospital. remember still remember passing up this beautiful building in Venice when I was there and just like peering inside. It's been like, this is stunning. Looks like a palace. was a hosp a functioning hospital that I was I was blown away because it was the first time. mean, gosh, that was I think it was like twenty eighteen and it's still stuck in my mind. Like I get that we need to use materials that can be cleaned and all of that, you know. And but but. Why don't we build our hospitals to be beautiful and for places for people to like feel good and recover? Because they feel like places to go and die, which is, you know, just gave my, you know, we had two kids, they've got a one year old and a five year old and we had both of them in the hospital and holy cow, that's a depressing place, you know, birth new life. yeah, like amazing, you know. Barcelona.

Speaker 1

You know, it's now a world heritage site. It's no longer a hospital. Hospitals used to be beautiful, but you have to understand what happened. I think there was a rush to throw out the past after World War I and World War II. We did want to forget everything because it was too much, too difficult. Not realizing, no, we need beauty. We need safe walk to school. And what you've been telling me too is your relatives, the kids can't walk to school anymore. Beautiful, yeah.

Speaker 2

yeah, no one walks. There's graphs on it. It's crazy. But think that- one walks. cool. Yeah, I mean, there's actual policies in place. Like my relatives, they're young, five and eight. They are able to walk to school. It's less than a mile. They wouldn't have to cross a street. But there is this school policy that they're not allowed to. You're freaking criminal. That's criminal because they now know the science that not walking is less ready to learn.

Speaker 2

yeah, mean there's so many things there of like even the even I think just 7,000 7,000 steps a day reduces all cause all cause mortality, but like 40 something percent. That's only 7,000. I just saw the stats here that your chance of getting dementia is increased by 40 % if you don't walk at least 4,000 steps a day. Yeah. Which is most Americans. And it's not, this is what's interesting about all this is that it's not people's fault in that. I don't mean people can't, people do have to take responsibility for their own lives. You know, we all do. but it's like to do the right thing, to walk 7,000 steps, to, to eat well, to whatever takes so much tremendous effort. And like, I think part of our job is to make the good choices easy. You know, remove the barriers. You can't force people to make good decisions, but you can take away all the barriers we are throwing in people's faces to keep them, you know, kids from being able to just run around freely. or not, but it's just like when my dad was making plastics in the 1950s, whatever, you weren't talking about the externality. The externality of designing that school where the child can't walk to it. extra 90s, they're not going to be as healthy. They now know, oh, colorectal cancer is now increasing for people under the age of 20. They don't know idiopathic, but it might be connected to not moving.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3

I was in Phoenix for a period of time and every street was an eight lane highway and it felt really dangerous just to cross from one subdivision to the next. so no one walked. It really felt too dangerous to do so. So I really resonate with like, we've just created an environment where there's a lot more barriers. it's And not only that though, a neuroscientist once said something to me about a car that we don't talk about either. So a car, he said, is an envelope. It seals you. We're designed to be together. We're designed to be in a room with each other. We're designed to be in a cafe, but we're designed to be talking. That's what we're about. So, but the car takes you into, puts you in your own separate little sphere, not with anyone else. It's exactly opposite what nature wants you to be with. Yeah.

Speaker 2

And we perceive people in cars not as people, as like objects. You can like get so mad at that car, literally in real life. There's an anger. You'd never be a person if you were just Right, that's in the same degree. No, no, we could go on and on,

Speaker 2

Well, this is, you know, like I said at the beginning, this is really kind of just introducing some of the high level concepts. I would like to schedule something else where we do kind of go into detail on, you know, maybe an area of researcher working on or who knows, just really, I think there's a lot of different areas to explore. But just kind of to wrap things up a little bit, where where are you guys kind of in the movement process? Like, who's listening? Who's excited about this? Who are you trying to get to listen next, you know, that hasn't listened or you haven't talked to yet? Like, it universities? Is it legislators? Is it architects? Is it schools? Is it, you know, who are you? Because it's such an important message. Like it is so important and big. And just kind of curious where you are in terms of like, if I call it a movement, I mean, I feel like that's what you're doing is you're really working on a movement, which I support. Yeah. What's kind of a snapshot in time right now? What does the next 10 years look like? I'll talk about right now and I'll end the next 10 years. I think right now we're really focused on getting the message out to everyone, but in particular architects and designers, people who are really at the forefront of creating our world. We want them to know that this science is here and they can bring it into their designs and it can benefit people. we're happy for anyone to listen. So

Speaker 3

But we just came from the AIA conference. We really want architects and planners and designers to understand that this is here and they can have access and use it. I think you're absolutely right. think the design industry is kind of amazed. And I think young people, I the new generation is very interested in it. And I just see this paradigm shift happening there. Because I also think that more grants are coming for well-being. And because they're realizing American longevity is plummeting. And what we built in the 20th century isn't sustainable. Car centrism doesn't work. And as a baby boomer, those are people born between 1946 and 64. There are 70 million of us. They're called the Silver Tsunami. There have never been that many aging Americans in our history. And it's going to be a little difficult. I'm not sure you want 30 or 40 million 85-year-olds driving. And there's not the residents for us. There's not the... Yeah.

Speaker 1

the transit for us, you know, and it's going to be a problem. So we really designed in the fifties. We didn't design for how. You know, how humans actually work, right? Through their life cycle. That's what you want to do. It's going to be a traumatic. And so we need to we need to look at that and we need to change. And I think we need to be curious about, you know, why is Oslo, Norway have no cars in the city center? Why is. Yeah. Speaker 1 (01:00:06.894) Paris taking cars off 500 streets. And they find that makes their city even more desirable, more internationally accessible and healthier. Right. all countries in Europe are higher longevity than the United States. We need to face that, guys. Yeah, I think that starting with the architecture industry is a really great starting point. think that the one I would add right after that is people just working in the government at even local levels, like public works and trash and fire and engineering and traffic, like all of those people. Cause I found that, you know, planning departments are already starting to shift their mind on a lot of this stuff. think the new urbanists have started to be successful in kind of planning. The planning community is starting to understand some of the basics of this. But if you only have the planning at a city, that's not enough. There's just one department of a bunch of others. And it kind of goes back to that, like the vision of creating a city is human flourishing and everything falls underneath that of how big our fire trucks are and how big the utility easements are and all those kinds of things that we do need to work out. but I hope that message can keep trickling, trickling out and down. I will certainly be sharing. So the best way, mean, obviously on your website, the happy website, the happy.org, believe you've got a free course. If you go to genetics of design dot com genetics of design.com it has all our course links there Speaker 2 (01:01:38.51) Genetics of design. Genetics of Design.com, our courses are there as well as our most recent studies. Cool. Once you do start doing this eye tracking though, you do see people differently. And when you start getting familiar with facial expression analysis, you'll read people differently too. Yeah. gosh. That's interesting. Is it something that you can do? like if I wanted to do it for one of our projects, how do you do the eye tracking? Is it something people wear or is it like they're sitting in front of computer looking at something? There's all kinds. do something. There's stuff online right now. I think we're to take it down tomorrow. There's a five minute eye tracking online study you can do with any laptop that has a webcam. It takes five minutes and the webcam will measure how your eyes move and your facial expressions and records it to the cloud. I'd love to do this in some of our kind of upcoming projects, especially as we build this more like complex urban infill. think it would just be really interesting to understand the project. Speaker 1 (01:02:36.376) You could understand how it's, honey, AI is here too. You could understand how people respond before it's even built, but a lot of people aren't aware that tech is even there. Oh, that's so cool. Even at the schematic design phase, can initial planning, sketching. Really? Wow. yeah, remember, we're all about the make the first three to five seconds we look at anything. It's just like a monkey. Now a plug in for Photoshop called 3M Visual Attention Software. And basically you upload any image, it'll tell you whether people look at it or not. In the design, you can see, that increase the number of views where people look? Speaker 2 (01:03:05.794) Wow. Speaker 2 (01:03:10.99) Well, and Kelsey, this has been such a great just, you know, intro to this. So thank you for your time. And I recommend everyone go get your book and go to your website. And I hope to have you on again soon. So thank you so much for your time and keep doing the really important work you're doing. I really believe like it is exceptionally important at this moment in time. So. Thanks, let's bring the world together. And let's Yeah, sounds great. All right. Bye.