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MOVING BOUNDARIES A B S T R A CT S

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN OCTOBER 2026

KYOTO, JAPAN October 12 - 16

For more information visit www.movingboundaries.org

TESHIMA ISLAND, JAPAN October 17 - 20

TABLE OF CONTENTS - Abstracts

TABL E O F CO N TE N TS October 12-16 | Kyoto International Community House Faculty Abstracts 01

Tye Farrow and Cleo Valentine From Pathogenesis to Salutogenesis: Rethinking the Brain–Body Connection in the Built Environment

Takaya Kurimoto The Inner Landscape of the Japanese Mind as Reflected in Japanese Gardens

Anjan Chatterjee The Neuroaesthetics of the Built Environment

Upali Nanda Bridging Neuro-Architecture Research and Practice: Perspectives From Two Decades of Experience at The Intersection

Natalia Olszewska Restorative Design: From Cultural Intuition to Scientific Evidence

Sarah Robinson Japanese Gardens and Felt Space

David Dorenbaum & Ryōsuke Ōhashi & Charles-Antoine Barbeau The Kyoto School of Philosophy, Architecture and The Space of Mind

October 17-20 | Espoir Park Hotel, Teshima Island Faculty Abstracts 08

Satchin Panda Designing the Built Environment to Align with Human Biology

Christine Bruckner Details of Lightness: Structuring the Space Between

Natalia Olszewska, Christine Bruckner, Satchin Panda and Tatiana Berger Designing for Human Rhythms: From Cultural Knowledge to Biological Evidence

All Faculty and Participants: Open Conversation

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

TABLE OF CONTENTS - Abstracts

TABL E O F CO N TE N TS October 12-16 | Kyoto International Community House Participants’ Abstracts 12

Ana Mirea Childhood Memories and Their Influences on Our Architectural Choices

Martina Huelves Who Designs the Designer? Shadow, Self-Knowledge and the Inner Space of Creative Leadership

Robyn Landau Designing for the Brain and Body: Neuroaesthetics in Real-World Spaces

Erica McLain Personalized Neuroaesthetic Design as a Psychometrics Problem

Ksenia Lyashenko Immersive Environments: From Phygital Installations to a Framework for Well-being

Trupthi Panickor Beyond Pedagogy: The Role of Architectural Space in Managing Cognitive Load in Classrooms

Roxanna Chan Neurodesign in Retail : Translating Concept into Commercial Reality

Eve Furman Between Body, Architecture, and Desert: Arava Land and Maison de Mei

Marta Czachorowska Workshop: The Architecture of Muscle Memory

Heather Barker Workshop: Designing for Wonder: Neuro-Architecture and Experiential Intelligence (xi) Features within Design Happenings

Monika Codourey Designing Conditions for Lived Experience A Living Lab Approach to Future Environments

Rebecca Madgin Felt Experiences of Place: Building a Multi-Disciplinary Framework for Placemaking

Marie Christine Llorca From Normative to Reclaimed Spaces: Action-training for Apprentice Training Center Teachers to Deploy Multimodal Pedagogy

Stephanie Acker Making It Home: Beauty, Agency, and Spatial Transformation in Refugee Camps and Settlements

Frederick Marks Affordances Found in Japanese Gardens, Shrines and Temples

Susan Melsop Means and Methods to Enlightenment Affective Learning in Sacred Place-Making

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

TABLE OF CONTENTS - Abstracts

TABL E O F CO N TE N TS October 17-20 | Espoir Park Hotel, Teshima Island Participants’ Abstracts 28

Valentina Fesenko and Gergely Hory Workshop: Environmental Preferences: A Reflective Workshop on Teshima

Brian Feagans What Relationships Deserve Our Care?

Martina Frattura Do Crowds Change the Way We Read Study Spaces?

Pooja Vajjha Architectural Harmony Proportions, Acoustics and Human Experience

Ehab Mokhtar Encoding Harmony: How Islamic Architectural Intelligence Pre-Solved the Neuroscience of Human Experience — The H2OLISTIC Framework as a Practice Translation System

Valentina Fesenko Multisensory Perception as Architectural Knowledge

Elena Pavlova Design Is What Happens Between People

Joanna Azzi Practice SOMA From Gut to Hut. Designing Spaces That Think, Feel, and Heal

Alec Mahar The Embodied Bowl: Stadium Geometry, Standing Rails, and the Architecture of Collective Experience

Disha Singh Architectural Artefacts – Encouraging the Messiness of Overlapping Narratives

Gergely Hory Stories on Public Space: Action-based Interventions, Education and Research in the East- Central European Context

Sonia Muhammad Voicing the Unconscious: Assessing the Mental Benefits of a Biophilic Park Design Using a Virtual Reality Tool

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

LEARNING TO DESIGN FOR HEALTH | DAY 1

Monday, October 12 From Pathogenesis to Salutogenesis: Rethinking the Brain–Body Connection in the Built Environment

Tye Farrow

Architect, Scholar, Sr.Partner, Farrow Partners Architects, Toronto, Canada

Cleo Valentine

PhD, Neuroscientist, Researcher, RISE, Cambridge Univ.

This lecture explores how architectural environments shape stress, health, and human potential. Drawing on advances in neuroscience, immunology, and architectural research, Tye Farrow and Cleo Valentine reframe stress as a dynamic continuum, ranging from chronic overload and physiological dysregulation to eustress, a positive and generative state that supports resilience, engagement, and meaning. The session is structured around four conceptual axes: Distress to Eustress, Pathogenesis to Salutogenesis, Do No Harm to Human Flourishing, and Research to Practice. These axes provide a framework for understanding how everyday design decisions translate into biological, cognitive, and behavioural outcomes that are often invisible, yet measurable. Building on emerging empirical evidence, including neurophysiological and computational studies of architectural form, the lecture explores how specific environmental conditions such as visual patterning, spatial geometry, material expression, and multisensory stimuli influence nervous system regulation. Particular attention is given to how high contrast, repetitive, and poorly resolved environments can contribute to allostatic load, while more coherent and hierarchically organised environments can support perceptual efficiency and restoration. At the same time, the lecture moves beyond a deficit based model of harm reduction to consider how architecture can actively cultivate salutogenic outcomes. Through case studies across healthcare, education, and civic environments, the speakers examine how design can support dignity, coherence, safety, and psychological wellbeing, while also creating conditions for curiosity, creativity, and social connection. Positioning architecture as both a biological and cultural interface, this lecture argues for a shift in practice from mitigating negative outcomes to intentionally designing for human flourishing. It calls for closer integration between research and practice, and for a redefinition of architectural responsibility in the context of public health, climate, and rapidly evolving urban conditions.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

LEARNING TO DESIGN FOR HEALTH | DAY 1

Monday, October 12 The Inner Landscape of the Japanese Mind as Reflected in Japanese Gardens The scenery of a Japanese garden functions as a psychological catalyst, asking the observer to see beyond the surface. Stones become mountains and ponds become seas through a process of symbolic substitution. These ‘inner landscapes’ align with ancient Japanese sensibilities, further enriched by the spiritual influence of Buddhism. This lecture examines the Japanese view of nature and its historical manifestations in garden design. Takaya Kurimoto

Landscape Architect, Japanese Garden Designer, Connecticut, U.S.A.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

BRIDGING NEUROARCHITECTURE RESEARCH AND PRACTICE | DAY 3

Wednesday, October 14 The Neuroaesthetics of the Built Environment

Anjan Chatterjee

PhD, Author, Professor of Neurology, Perelman School of Medicine, U.S.A.

We are an ancient brain trapped in a modern environment. Our brains evolved to solve problems in settings very different than the environment that most of us inhabit in a post-industrial world. If we wish to design environments to foster human flourishing then it behooves us to take seriously human neuroscience and psychology. I will discuss the problematic mismatch of our brains living in an unnatural world and consider how aesthetics offers a partial solution. Aesthetic considerations in architecture, in the western tradition, date back to the first century with Vitruvius. Contemporary neuroaesthetics investigates aesthetic experiences through a biological lens. I will show that our brains respond automatically to our environment and that we harbor hidden behavioral and brain responses to architecture based on core neuropsychological dimensions of coherence, fascination, and hominess. We are typically unaware of these responses, the weightings of which vary across individuals, educational expertise, and the influence of nature. I will also review our attempts to extend our findings into the wild and how we contend with trade-offs between laboratory control and ecological validity. Beyond our empirical work, I plan to discuss ways to think about the relationship between neuroscience and architecture. Neuroarchitecture is such a new field, that we lack consistent norms in how the term is used. I will offer a distinction between neuroscience and architecture versus neuroscience of architecture. Finally, I will point to the “seductive allure of neuroscience,” a well-recognized phenomenon that lends itself to marketing misuse.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

BRIDGING NEUROARCHITECTURE RESEARCH AND PRACTICE | DAY 3

Wednesday, October 14 Bridging Neuro-Architecture Research and Practice: Perspectives From Two Decades of Experience at The Intersection The architecture profession is at an inflection point. We have more computational tools than ever in a practice that is moving at breakneck speed. Yet, we see very little true innovation in how architecture addresses the needs, care and emotions of the lives it contains, and the living ecosystem that it depends on (and needs to protect). I will argue that this gap comes from a profession that has not spent enough time deeply understanding the users it builds for, the communities it builds with, and the clients it serves. Upali Nanda

PhD, Architect, Professor, Global Sector Director Innovation, HKS Architects, U.S.A.

For two decades I have had a career based in practice, dedicated to research and strategic advisory. I will share how the commoditization of the profession stems from the distance from the end user, and a lack of understanding that the built environment is a vehicle for health, wellbeing, productivity and change. While research has increased over the last few decades showing how design links to health and business outcomes, we have still not deeply understood why- and certainly the public at large lacks this understanding. I will speak about how neuroarchitecture and neuroaesthetics allow us to go a level deeper to understand the why, and articulate how design innovation depends on research rigor. What ideas would we unpack if we understood at a level deeper than ever before? When we dig deep, we can go far- but is there enough conversation between designers and researchers to get us there? What gets lost in translation between the peer-reviewed journal article and the client-constraint driven practice of architecture, interiors and urban design? Through some real-life projects seeded in practice I will share wins, losses, and lessons learned. I will also continue the thread Anjan builds on neuroscience and architecture, and neuroscience of architecture, to advocate for architecture for neuroscience, as a key element of building for brain health and brain skills in a time where being human, and designing for humanity, is the biggest challenge we face. Anjan and I will wrap the session up with a dialogue, with the audience, on how we can build a field, work in meaningful coalitions, and achieve meaningful impact, at the intersection of practice and academia, neuroscience and architecture, research and design.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

RESTORATIVE DESIGN | DAY 4

Thursday, October 15 Restorative Design: From Cultural Intuition to Scientific Evidence Japanese spatial traditions have long expressed a refined sensitivity to nature, ephemerality, and emptiness. Concepts such as ma and wabi, together with fluid boundaries between interior and exterior spaces, illustrate an architectural approach that frames human experience through subtle relationships with natural processes. While these traditions emerge from cultural and aesthetic sensibilities rather than scientific frameworks, they provide a compelling point of departure for discussing restorative environments in contemporary design. Natalia Olszewska

Dr. Co-Founder, Impronta, Author, Professor NAAD, Neuroscientist, Krakow, Poland

In recent decades, research in environmental psychology and neuroscience has begun to investigate how architectural environments influence cognitive and physiological processes. Theories such as Attention Restoration Theory and Stress Recovery Theory suggest that exposure to natural environments can support cognitive recovery, reduce mental fatigue, and facilitate physiological restoration. These insights have informed contemporary approaches including biophilic design and other nature-integrated spatial strategies. This lecture examines restorative design as an interface between cultural spatial practices and the emerging scientific understanding of human-environment interaction. Particular attention is given to how architectural environments function as long-term exposure contexts that shape human experience and adaptive physiological regulation over time.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

RESTORATIVE DESIGN | DAY 4

Thursday, October 15 Japanese Gardens and Felt Space Japanese concepts of space prefigure findings of the cognitive sciences in their understandings of affect, atmosphere, movement and immanence-this talk explores the processes of resonance between bodies, plants, the elements and buildings in the context of Japanese gardens. And explores how these methods and principles emphasize and celebrate the uncertain boundaries between seemingly separate things. This study suggests how the time-honored principles honed and practiced particularly in Japanese stroll gardens can enrich and re-vitalize contemporary design practice. Sarah Robinson (remote)

Architect, Author, Philosopher, Italy, Faculty at Aalborg University, Denmark

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

ARCHITECTURE AND THE SPACE OF MIND | DAY 5

Friday, October 16 The Kyoto School of Philosophy, Architecture, and the Space of Mind There is a wisdom to be found in philosophies of nothingness such as those developed by the Kyoto School. They invite us to approach architecture not as an exterior structure but as a field of lived relations. Nishida Kitarō’s idea of basho — a place where self and world arise together — loosens the familiar oppositions of inside/outside and subject/object, and allows us to think of space as something that shapes us as much as we shape it. Kyoto, with its quiet retreats, its intervals of ma, and its attunement to thresholds, offers an ideal setting for this exploration. David Dorenbaum

MD, Psychoanalyst, Psychiatrist Author, Professor, University of Toronto, Canada

Ryōsuke Ōhashi

PhD, Philosopher, Former Professor of Philosophy, Kyoto, Japan

Charles-Antoine Barbeau Resident Physician, Scholar Montreal, Canada

We are fortunate to have Professor Ryosuke Ohashi with us. His intellectual path — from Kyoto to Munich, from Japanese to European traditions — and his lifelong engagement with phenomenology, aesthetics, and the “logic of place” will ground our conversations. As former director of the German– Japanese Cultural Institute and of the Nishida Kitarō Museum of Philosophy, he has helped sustain a dialogue that is both rooted and open. The museum in Kahoku City, designed by Tadao Ando in collaboration with Professor Ohashi, is itself a meditation on space: exposed concrete, open-air courtyards, and a contemplative “sky garden” set within a wide landscape that prompts the kind of reflection Nishida deemed essential. A second thread comes through the work of Iain McGilchrist, whose writing on hemispheric modes of attention offers a contemporary lens on how we encounter the world. Charles Antoine Barbeau Meunier, a psychiatrist completing subspecialty training in child and adolescent psychiatry at McGill University, has developed a compelling dialogue between McGilchrist and Nishida. He shows how both thinkers move us away from narrow, reductionist models of mind toward a relational, non-dual understanding of experience — an approach that subtly informs the spaces we create and inhabit. A psychoanalytic thread will also be woven into the discussion. From this angle, architecture becomes more than a physical structure: it becomes the place where the real, the imaginary, and the symbolic intersect, where desire leaves traces and thresholds acquire meaning. Topological images — crossings, twists, the Borromean knot — help illuminate how space can hold tension, absence, and layered significance. These ideas help shed light on the interplay between psyche and form. We are in the process engaging with an architect who will join us; details will be shared as the event approaches. This session is conceived as an open conversation rather than a formal lecture. A philosopher, a neuroscientist, a psychoanalyst, and an architect will reflect together on how built form and consciousness mirror, influence, and sometimes unsettle one another.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

DESIGNING TO ALIGN WITH HUMAN BIOLOGY | DAY 7

Sunday, October 18 Designing the Built Environment to Align with Human Biology Every human being shares a fundamental aspiration—to perform at their best physically, mentally, and emotionally, across every stage of life. Yet, despite unprecedented advances in medicine, technology, and living standards, modern societies are facing a paradox: we are living longer, but not necessarily healthier or better. At the core of this paradox lies a hidden mismatch— between how we have designed our environments and how our biology is programmed to function. Satchin Panda

PhD, Neuroscientist, Author, ANFA Board Member

Human health is governed by circadian rhythms—ancient, genetically embedded biological programs that synchronize sleep, metabolism, hormone release, repair, and cognitive performance to the 24-hour day. For most of human history, these rhythms were reinforced by predictable environmental cues: the rising and setting of the sun, patterns of food intake, and cycles of activity and rest. Cultures around the world developed rituals— often unconsciously—that aligned with these rhythms and supported lifelong well-being. But progressively, we have systematically dismantled these cues. The harnessing of fire first allowed humans to stay active into the night. The industrial revolution, followed by electric lighting, transformed this into a 24hour society. Today, we operate in environments where light is always available, food is consumed around the clock, and work and social demands ignore biological timing. These changes have fuelled economic growth, innovation, and global connectivity—but at a biological cost. A growing body of research shows that relatively simple, scalable interventions— particularly around light and timing of food intake—can restore circadian alignment and dramatically improve health outcomes. Light is one of the most powerful signals to the brain: bright, blue-enriched light during the day enhances alertness, mood, and performance, while exposure to light at night disrupts sleep and biological timing. Similarly, when we eat may be as important as what we eat. Restricting food intake to a consistent daily window can improve metabolism, increase resilience to disease, and enhance overall health—even without changing diet quality. These insights point to a transformative opportunity. What if we designed our homes, workplaces, schools, hospitals, and cities not just for efficiency or aesthetics—but for biological alignment? What if buildings could actively support sleep, metabolism, and cognitive performance? What if the built environment became a partner in sustaining health across the lifespan? This presentation will explore how circadian biology can inform the next generation of design—where light, timing, and daily rhythms are intentionally integrated into the spaces we inhabit. By aligning the built environment with human biology, we have the potential not only to improve individual health, but to redefine performance, productivity, and longevity at a population level.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

HUMAN SCIENCES AND THE FUTURE OF ARCHITECTURE | DAY 8

Monday, October 19 Details of Lightness: Structuring the Space Between Dr. Bruckner invites us to see architecture as the shaping of environments that support human health, deepen reflection, foster connection, and lift the spirit. Drawing on her foundational years of study and practice in Japan, she will share how Japanese architecture shaped a practice rooted in the expansion of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing.

Christine Bruckner

PhD, Architect, Director at M Moser Associates Hong Kong

Through evocative Japanese concepts which reference soft and symbolic boundaries and impermanence, Dr. Bruckner will reveal how space can be experienced beyond enclosure as a layered, living threshold between inside and outside, body and atmosphere, presence and change. Grounded in her Ph.D. research, “Details of Lightness: Akarumi to Karumi”, this lecture will illuminate how light, material, and detail can create moments of brightness, weightlessness, and uplift. Dr. Bruckner offers a rare lens through which to experience the country’s architecture and culture, serving as an essential and orienting introduction to Moving Boundaries in Japan.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

HUMAN SCIENCES AND THE FUTURE OF ARCHITECTURE | DAY 8

Monday, October 19 Designing for Human Rhythms: From Cultural Knowledge to Biological Evidence Natalia Olszewska

Dr. Co-Founder, Impronta, Author, Professor NAAD, Neuroscientist, Krakow, Poland

Christine Bruckner

PhD, Architect, Director at M Moser Associates Hong Kong

Satchin Panda

PhD, Neuroscientist, Author, ANFA Board Member

Tatiana Berger

Architect, Professor, Founder and Director of MB, Porto, Portugal and San Diego, U.S.A.

Proposed key discussion points between Satchin Panda, Tatiana Berger, Christine Bruckner and Natalia Olszewska 1. Rhythm as a foundation of health Human beings are rhythmic organisms. Sleep, metabolism, attention, hormones, mood, and recovery all depend on timing. The question is: what would architecture look like if rhythm became a central design principle? 2. Architecture as biological exposure Buildings are not neutral containers. They shape light exposure, movement, rest, sensory load, social interaction, and stress over long periods of time. Architecture should be understood as a continuous physiological and psychological environment. 3. The paradox of modernity Modern life has disrupted many conditions that once supported health naturally: daylight, darkness, seasonal variation, bodily movement, communal rhythms, and contact with nature. We now need science to prove the value of things older cultures often understood intuitively. 4. Nature as regulation Natural systems support restoration, attention, emotional balance, and physiological regulation. The issue is how to integrate nature meaningfully into daily environments. 5. Restoration as necessity, not luxury Recovery is not optional. Spaces that support rest, calm, attention recovery, and nervous system regulation should be seen as essential infrastructure, especially in cities, schools, workplaces, and healthcare settings. 6. From evidence to practice The challenge is how to translate scientific knowledge into real architectural decisions: light, materials, thresholds, daily rhythms, spatial sequencing, outdoor access, density, and patterns of use. 7. Beyond aesthetics and sustainability Health in architecture should go beyond how buildings look or how efficiently they perform. The deeper question is whether environments support human resilience, adaptive balance, and long-term well-being. 8. Theory versus implementation A key part of the discussion should address the gap between ideas and practice: regulations, budgets, developers, habits, and superficial “wellness” branding. How can health become embedded in design rather than added afterward?

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

HUMAN SCIENCES AND THE FUTURE OF ARCHITECTURE | DAY 8

Monday, October 19 All Faculty and Participants: Open Conversation Contemporary research in circadian biology, neuroscience, and environmental psychology increasingly shows that human health is shaped by long-term exposure to environmental conditions. Light, rhythm, sensory stimulation, patterns of activity and rest, and access to natural systems influence cognition, emotional regulation, metabolic health, and physiological recovery. Yet many contemporary built environments remain poorly aligned with the biological rhythms through which human beings evolved. This discussion brings together perspectives from neuroscience and architectural practice to ask how health can become a more fundamental principle of design. While many historical spatial traditions intuitively supported environmental attunement through changing light, material atmosphere, seasonal awareness, and a closer relationship with nature, the central question today is how such insights can be translated into contemporary practice. Particular attention will be given to architecture not as a static object, but as a continuous physiological and psychological exposure that shapes human experience over time. The conversation will examine how concepts such as circadian alignment, restorative environments, and nature-integrated design may inform future practice – moving beyond aesthetics toward a more urgent question: how might we design environments that support health, resilience, and adaptive balance across the lifespan?

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

PA R T I C I PA N T S ’ A B S T R A C T S 12-16 October

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

HUMAN SCIENCES AND THE FUTURE OF ARCHITECTURE | DAY 1

Monday, October 12 Childhood Memories and Their Influences on Our Architectural Choices Because we perceive and experience the world through our senses, our experiences from childhood become deeply embedded in our minds and bodies. We carry these experiences with us throughout our journey through life, often without being consciously aware of how they continue to shape us.

Ana Mirea

Architectural Designer at Wilkinson Eyre, London, U.K.

Participants will be asked to complete a 12-question questionnaire exploring their childhood environment, experiences, and current architectural preferences. Much of our perception, behaviour, and decision-making operates outside conscious awareness. The purpose of this exercise is therefore to invite participants to reflect on a fundamental question: Why do we choose what we choose? The purpose of this study is to explore whether there are correlations between the places and environments in which participants spent their childhood and their current architectural preferences and choices. Wilhelm Worringer (1881–1965), a German art historian and contemporary of Freud, Jung, and Adler, proposed that our aesthetic preferences may be connected to qualities we perceive as lacking within ourselves and which we unconsciously seek to experience or attain. Applied to architecture, this raises the possibility that the spaces and architectural qualities we are drawn to may reflect aspects of our own experiences and psychological needs.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

BRIDGING NEUROARCHITECTURE RESEARCH AND PRACTICE | DAY 3

Wednesday, October 14 Who Designs the Designer? Shadow, Self-Knowledge and the Inner Space of Creative Leadership

Martina Huelves

Strategic Consultant, Researcher Valencia, Spain

Design culture has developed a sophisticated language for human experiencefor emotional resonance, sensory atmosphere and spatial wellbeing- yet it has paid surprisingly little attention to the inner experience of the human beings who practise it. Designers are trained to listen to others and to project wellbeing onto the spaces they create, while the conditions of their own working lives, their relationship with their body and emotions, and their capacity for genuine creative renewal remain largely unexamined. The result is a profession in which many practitioners design connection for others from a place of increasing disconnection within themselves. In 1933, Jun’ichirō Tanizaki wrote that beauty lives not in what is fully illuminated, but in what is allowed to remain in shadow. This presentation borrows that insight and turns it inward, proposing that one of the most important shadows in design practice is the one designers inhabit themselves: the unexamined inner and embodied life from which every spatial decision quietly emerges. The caterpillar does not become a butterfly by accelerating. It enters a dark, contained and apparently unproductive space, and it is precisely there that transformation begins. Designers also need spaces of pause, containment and renewal, yet contemporary design culture often leaves little room for them. Many practitioners move from project to project carrying exhaustion, sensory overload and emotional disconnection, while continuing to design wellbeing, care and atmosphere for others. This presentation asks what happens when designers begin to listen to the conditions from which they create. Drawing from somatic intelligence, ecotherapy, environmental psychology and the philosophy of conscious design, it explores how reconnecting with the body, nature, silence and playfulness can restore presence, creative confidence and the possibility of flow. Grounded in the Workplace Natural Intelligence™ methodology and informed by questionnaires and conversations with designers and interior designers about their own processes, environments and emotional experiences, this presentation examines the relationship between personal wellbeing and professional practice. It asks how designers can cultivate the inner conditions required to listen deeply, observe without judgment and welcome clients with authentic hospitality. Ultimately, it proposes that meaningful design does not only emerge from what designers know, but from how they are able to inhabit and care for themselves while designing for others.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

BRIDGING NEUROARCHITECTURE RESEARCH AND PRACTICE | DAY 3

Wednesday, October 14 Designing for the Brain and Body: Neuroaesthetics in Real-World Spaces Neuroaesthetics is increasingly reshaping conversations around health, culture and the built environment. Research continues to demonstrate that our environments actively shape physiology, emotion, cognition and behaviour. One of the strongest emerging insights is the impact of embodied and emotionally moving experiences on the brain and body, influencing emotional regulation, memory, social connection and long-term wellbeing, reinforcing that the spaces we inhabit are tied to how we feel, act and relate. Robyn Landau

Researcher, Designer, Co-Founder, London, UK

Kinda Studios operates at the intersection of neuroscience, culture and technology, translating this growing body of research into real-world applications across intentional spaces and public experiences. As a bridge between academia and the creative industries, Kinda develops scienceinformed programmes exploring how art, sound, multisensory design can support emotional regulation, connection and wellbeing. While significant translation is already taking place, there remains an opportunity to further embed these insights into everyday cultural and public environments in ways that are experiential, accessible and measurable. This becomes increasingly important within the context of rising chronic stress, loneliness and dysregulation. Alongside this, sits the growing need for real-world evidence demonstrating the wider public impact of intentional environments. Academic studies continue to provide critical foundations for understanding how spaces influence the brain and body, yet there is increasing importance of ecological-valid evidence. Embedding physiological and neural measurement tools enables new forms of evidence that can reinforce and extend academic insights, while helping inform policy, funding and public health conversations. Creative health therefore becomes preventative health infrastructures with the potential to support more responsive models of care. Recent advances in neurotechnology are enabling this shift. Mobile EEG, and physiological measures now allow researchers and designers to explore how people respond to environments in real time. Beyond measurement, they offer new opportunities for public engagement and self-understanding, helping individuals better recognise their states. When integrated thoughtfully into experiences, neurotechnology can support more responsive design systems while fostering greater agency and literacy around brain and body health. This presentation will share a selection of Kinda Studios’ recent work exploring this in practice. ‘Your Inner Symphony’, developed as part of the Barbican’s Feel the Sound exhibition, captures real-time physiological responses to sonic environments through embedded biosensors.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

BRIDGING NEUROARCHITECTURE RESEARCH AND PRACTICE | DAY 3

Wednesday, October 14 Personalized Neuroaesthetic Design as a Psychometrics Problem Neuroaesthetics has built a durable account of how environmental attributes act on the nervous system. Interiors are where it is hardest to apply, because response to architectural interiors is dominated by individual differences rather than shared preference (Vessel et al.). Applying a finding to a room therefore requires a model of the person who will occupy it. I argue that this occupant model is the intake layer on which translation depends, and that building it turns design practice from a consumer of findings into a source of the evidence researchers need. Erica McLain

Designer, Founder Dallas, USA

The intake layer is harder than it looks. Self-report on aesthetic preference returns what people believe they should like. Most have never been given the quiet or the permission to examine who they are, and what mattered in childhood goes unarticulated. An honestly answered question can still miss the truth. An instrument built for this purpose cannot be validated against stated preference, the contaminated variable. It has to predict involuntary response. In August 2026, I field-tested that criterion at a Dallas gallery event. Registrants completed a brief, anonymized self-report instrument built on a three-band sensory scale rather than the binary of neurotypical and neurodivergent. I had never met the participants and had no visibility into their assigned profiles. I then revealed two award-winning New York interiors, one minimalist and one maximalist, and collected unprompted reactions before offering any framework. More than a third of the room reported discomfort with the minimalist interior, the first voice calling it soulless, while a sensory-avoidant respondent called that same interior soothing. Reactions sorted by assigned profile. The sample was self-selected, the outcome measure was verbal, and there was no control condition. I will present it as a prediction check, not a study. Two commitments carry the work past demonstration. Every item is bidirectionally constrained: answerable by a layperson without training, and resolvable to a physical attribute detectable in an ordinary photograph of an interior. Scoring weights are set by the evidential maturity of the underlying literature, so that well-characterized levers such as fractal perception outweigh early findings, and weights are revised as the literature moves. The presentation delivers the instrument design constraints, the failure modes the field test exposed, a validation architecture keyed to involuntary response, and the limits, including data protection and making no medical claim. It closes the loop: every cycle run in practice produces paired records of person and setting, which is the evidence this field needs returned to it. That problem sits between environmental psychology, neuroaesthetics, and assessment design, and it will not be solved inside any one of them. It takes a village and a half.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

BRIDGING NEUROARCHITECTURE RESEARCH AND PRACTICE | DAY 3

Wednesday, October 14 Immersive Environments: From Phygital Installations to a Framework for Well-being I will present the evolution of interactive systems: from creating emotional experiences through physical engagement in space to designing adaptive environments for well-being. Using a premium office case study, I will demonstrate a living ecosystem that synchronizes in real-time with weather, music, and human presence. My goal is to initiate the creation of a multidisciplinary framework to transform artistic intuition into a proven tool for designing the healthy architecture of the future. Ksenia Lyashenko

Creative Producer, Researcher, Founder, Rishon Lezion, Israel

From Interactive Installations to Living Ecosystems With 13 years of international experience in interactive design, my expertise lies in creating phygital environments where technology serves as a tool for emotional engagement. Our project, Quantum Trampoline, is a prime example: a physical action – a jump – generates a digital universe around the person. This experience taught us that a seamless environmental response to human action can radically transform one’s well-being and perception of space. Evolution of Approach: Designing for Well-being Today, the demand for well-being in architecture is a functional necessity to create environments that support a person’s resourceful state. We see this as a qualitative evolution of the industry: shifting from active stimulation and “attention-grabbing” toward designing an empathic atmosphere that ensures a sense of psychological comfort and safety. Methodology: Curated Agency and Stakeholder Engagement We propose a methodology that restores a sense of agency over the environment while maintaining aesthetic integrity: Structured Co-authorship: The owner manages the system through a secure interface, selecting from a library of professional modes. This transforms them into a “curator of atmosphere” who adapts presets to business needs, eliminating the risk of incorrect settings. Non-Directive Presence: The environment does not dominate the user. It offers a choice: remain in a state of “visual silence” or enter a zone of active resonance with sound. Users determine their own level of interaction, returning a sense of control to the individual. My goal at Moving Boundaries is to initiate a dialogue on establishing evaluation criteria for immersive environments and introducing professional standards for working with such spaces. We must move beyond “artistic taste” to a systematic understanding of how to unite the efforts of engineers, artists, and neuroscientists to create proven tools for well-being in the architecture of the future.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

BRIDGING NEUROARCHITECTURE RESEARCH AND PRACTICE | DAY 3

Wednesday, October 14 Beyond Pedagogy: The Role of Architectural Space in Managing Cognitive Load in Classrooms

Trupthi Panickor

Architect, Designer, TEDx Speaker, Albuquerque, USA

Emerging research in neuro-architecture demonstrates that classroom environments not only support learning, but also play an active part in memory formation, cognitive performance, and attentional control. Despite extensive research on John Sweller’s Cognitive Load Theory, educational architecture continues to rely on typology, precedent, and intuition rather than cognitive evidence. While cognitive principles are well established in instructional design, their spatial translation remains underdeveloped. This disconnect has consequence: many contemporary classrooms are not just suboptimal, but they are cognitively misaligned with the demands of learning. This paper reframes educational environments as cognitively differential systems calibrated to learning modes. It advances the premise that learning is mediated by attention and working memory, both of which are highly sensitive environmental conditions, and seeks to establish a framework for aligning spatial design with cognitive demands. The study draws on interdisciplinary research in environmental physiology and neuroscience, including works by Stephen Kaplan and Roger Ulrich, alongside emerging EEG base classroom studies. It synthesizes these findings to examine how spatial conditions shape attentional stability and cognitive load. Evidence suggests that environments with clear visual hierarchy, reduced stimulus competition, and coherent orientation support sustained attention. In contrast, competing focal elements and fragmented spatial cues increase extraneous load by disrupting attentional control. When instructional focal points compete with high salience elements such as windows or poorly organized visual fields, attention fragments, increasing extraneous cognitive load and degrading information processing. These are not minor inefficiencies but structural conditions that can systematically undermine learning. The paper proposes a Cognitive Mode - Spatial Alignment Framework, operationalized through four spatial levers: (a) Attentional clarity, (b) Spatial orientation (c) Environmental modulation, and (d) cognitive transitions. Together, these reposition spatial variables as precise cognitive instruments rather than stylistic choices. By framing architecture as an active generator of cognitive load, the research challenges typology-driven design and calls for a shift towards cognitively aligned learning environments that support attention, reduce unnecessary mental effort, and enhance educational outcomes

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

BRIDGING NEUROARCHITECTURE RESEARCH AND PRACTICE | DAY 3

Wednesday, October 14 Neurodesign in Retail : Translating Concept into Commercial Reality Retail environments are among the most frequently experienced human spaces, yet they remain largely designed for brand expression and operational efficiency, not for how the brain processes, feels, and decides, which ultimately drives consumer behaviour. This session presents a synthesis of cross disciplinary perspectives spanning neuroscience, architecture and design, and brand leadership. Informed by a series of curated one on one expert conversations to explore a central question: Roxanna Chan

Store Development Strategist Toronto, Canada

Can retail environments be intentionally designed to influence cognitive and emotional states and should they be? Rather than presenting definitive answers, this work represents an earlystage inquiry into how neurodesign may translate from concept into practice. It critically examines both the potential and the limitations of applying neuroscience informed principles within real world retail environments. Three themes emerge from the synthesis: Alignment: There is growing recognition across disciplines that spatial and sensory environments influence attention, emotion, and behaviour more deeply than current retail design frameworks account for. Tension: A significant gap remains between scientific understanding and practical application, particularly in measurement, credibility, and the risk of overclaim. Opportunity: The absence of a shared framework translating neuroscience into design decisions and commercial models represents a critical missing link. This session positions neurodesign not as a resolved methodology, but as a developing layer of inquiry, one that sits between human science, spatial strategy, and business decision making, and has yet to be fully operationalized. Grounded in expert perspectives and informed by the commercial realities of global retail development, this work begins to outline the strategic questions and cross disciplinary relationships required to move toward a practical and scalable approach. Most importantly, it reframes retail environments as behavioral systems, not just designed spaces, opening a broader discussion on performance, responsibility, and human impact at scale. If we can design retail spaces that influence how people think and feel, who is responsible for doing it well and how do we begin to make it measurable?

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

BRIDGING NEUROARCHITECTURE RESEARCH AND PRACTICE | DAY 3

Wednesday, October 14 Between Body, Architecture, and Desert: Arava Land and Maison de Mei This presentation brings together two architectural projects in the Arava Desert that are deeply personal to me, although I engage with each from a different position. Arava Land, launched in 2014 by creator and architect Oren Toupotte is a boutique desert resort centered on hospitality and retreat, where I also live, take part in everyday hospitality by preparing breakfasts for guests, and facilitate sensory-based workshops for couples through the wellness program I founded. I observe how guests experience and relate to the place. Eve Furman

Independent Artist-Researcher Tzukim, Israel

Maison de Mei, which we are creating together, is conceived as a cross cultural architecture building where everyday life will unfold alongside embodied practice, intimate retreats, exhibitions, musical gatherings, and shared evenings of cooking. Together, the projects explore how architecture can enter into dialogue with the desert landscape, cultivating a sense of calm, connection, renewal, and restoration. The design process behind both projects has been entirely analogue, without the use of computer-based design tools: all architectural plans, sketches, and notes have been produced by hand. I explore the mutual influence of three processes: how the embodied perception and everyday use of space shape architectural intention; how this intention guides ways of moving, resting, interacting, and engaging in rituals; and how repeated practices themselves reinterpret and transform the space over time. Architecture is approached here as a living environment that is simultaneously created through experience and, in turn, shapes that experience. For the forum, we are creating a documentary film specifically for this presentation, capturing both places at their current stages. In the film, Oren and I will share their stories, intentions, core values, architecture, experience of building and our personal connections to them. The film will be rich in visual material: footage of the spaces, their shapes, construction and design will be interwoven with architectural plans and sketches. I hope it offers viewers a brief but immersive encounter with these places and invites dialogue and feedback on how architecture can support solitude, shared experience, rituals, and restoration while remaining responsive to the desert landscape.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

RESTORATIVE DESIGN | DAY 4

Thursday, October 15 Workshop: The Architecture of Muscle Memory

Marta Czachorowska

In stroke rehabilitation therapy, mirror neurons are activated by performing exercises on the healthy side of the body in order to stimulate the affected side. The most effective results are achieved when working with patterns rooted in a patient’s past experiences. This may include activities such as boxing training from their youth or dances they practiced as teenagers. Therapists use indepth interviews to select appropriate materials and tools. These are often not abstract, geometric, designer objects, but rather simple, familiar items such as an iron, a wine glass, or even a puddle to step over. This is why we appreciate Italian design, such as Alessi, where a bottle opener becomes a parrot or a human figure, and a fruit bowl resembles a flower.

Architect, Lodz, Poland

Can similar methods be adapted to the design of spaces for seniors; spaces that support health and promote positive ageing? Is it possible to identify shared generational or even cultural codes within a specific age group? And is it worth searching for them? In senior living environments, residents are often within a similar age range (70–90), which creates a basis for exploring shared references—such as the “flower power” generation, the moon landing, or cultural icons like Jaws, Jurassic Park, ALF, manga aesthetics, or disco culture. Could evoking such memories inform the direction of interior design? In some fiction books rooms are created to reflect specific eras for example, the 1960s with geometric patterns. Could cultural coding be meaningfully incorporated into the design of interiors for seniors? Can muscle memory, such as the memory of riding a bicycle, inform better spatial design? Could strong scenography evoke memories of youth and, through mirror neuron activation, support healthy ageing? Perhaps seniors feel better not in stereotypical laceand-doily interiors, but in environments reflecting their own youth such as punk rock aesthetics. Workshop Structure The workshop aims to identify and synthesize shared social and cultural codes within groups differing in age by no more than 10 years (groups of up to five participants). It will also explore whether these codes differ across cultural contexts (e.g. Central Europe, Western Europe, the United States, Japan). Participants will work toward defining a shared aesthetic code that evokes positive memories, whether rooted in childhood, adolescence, or broader cultural phenomena. These motifs will then be incorporated into a rapid interior design concept, potentially generated with AI tools. During the workshop, interiors and archival images of places, people, and everyday scenes from the past will be projected to stimulate emotional and sensory responses. Participants’ reactions, such as heart rate and tendencies toward movement, interaction, or playfulness, will be observed through simple appbased measurements, helping to identify emotionally resonant spatial and visual codes.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

RESTORATIVE DESIGN | DAY 4

Thursday, October 15 Workshop: Designing for Wonder: Neuro-Architecture and Experiential Intelligence (xi) Features within Design Happenings

Heather Barker

Architect, Theorist, Educator, Researcher, Long Beach, USA

We investigate the “Features” (installations inviting sensory engagement through light, sound, and movement) of Design Happenings, the Immersive Design Research Lab’s experiential mode of design-action research. The goal of Design Happenings is to design for wonder - as a catalyst for generating higher-order experiential knowledge. Design Happenings are a form of actionresearch, situated in the city, as participatory events where artists, dancers, designers, and constituents co-create features to elicit a state of wonder. Each feature employs common materials, yet is designed to defamiliarize, intentionally disrupting the cognitive and sensorimotor status quo to provoke reflection and rapt attention. To “peek inside” the brain during these aesthetic experiences, we utilize a Neuro Architectural Analysis Framework (NAAF) that integrates mobile EEG (MoBI) within an evaluative system that includes environmental sensors and design-ethnography. Using g.tec Unicorn Hybrid Black wireless headsets, we capture time-resolved neural indicators in situ, bridging the analytical gap between the built environment and the “felt” experience. This investigation focuses on how encounters with artistic “features” modulate specific neural patterns: the disruption of beta-band oscillations, signalling a readiness to process novel information, and the emergence of theta-band activity related to cognitive control and environmental engagement. This work aligns constituents’ experience of intelligence, personal meaningmaking, and observable neuro-architectural data. We are developing a tool to bring this together – “wonder map” to better explore the subjective and transformative impact of designing for wonder in the built environment. The goal of this research is to position mobile BCI as an additional tool to better understand human creative experience as an outcome stimulated by art, design, and architectural spaces.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

RESTORATIVE DESIGN | DAY 4

Thursday, October 15 Designing Conditions for Lived Experience A Living Lab Approach to Future Environments Architecture is not only the design of spatial form. It shapes the conditions through which people move, sense, communicate, collaborate, learn, care, and live together. As future environments become increasingly intertwined with technology, services, and evolving social practices, architects need methods that address not only form and function but also perception, interaction, human factors, and lived experience.

Monika Codourey

PhD, Architect, Design Researcher, Zurich, Switzerland

This presentation reflects on my work as an architect and design researcher, and as Head of the Living Lab at the Swiss Center for Design and Health (SCDH) — a national competence center exploring how design can contribute to health, well being, and quality of life. Together with an interdisciplinary team spanning architecture, sensory design, interaction design, service design, and design engineering, we develop platforms, methods, and formats that help stakeholders make future environments tangible, testable, and discussable before they are built. Healthcare is a particularly complex learning field. In the Living Lab’s diverse test rooms, the Extended Reality Simulation Area, and the OP test room, spatial concepts are explored alongside workflows, communication, collaboration, the usability of medical technologies, sensory qualities, and human-centered interaction. These settings allow us to examine environments as integrated systems of people, space, technology, process, and experience. Insights from healthcare are relevant beyond hospitals. They can inform learning landscapes, workplaces, and integrated living environments for active seniors. In the context of Moving Boundaries, this presentation asks how architecture can move beyond static spatial solutions toward environments that are more responsive, relational, and supportive of human life.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

RESTORATIVE DESIGN | DAY 4

Thursday, October 15 Felt Experiences of Place: Building a Multi-Disciplinary Framework for Placemaking This talk will introduce the conceptual framework ‘felt experiences of place’ developed in the UK Research and Innovation/Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Place-Based Research Programme, a long-term strategic investment that advances how feelings and experiences can be embedded within placemaking policies and practices (Madgin and Howcroft, 2024).

Rebecca Madgin

PhD, Professor, Programme Director, Glasgow, Scotland

‘Felt experiences of place’, is defined as the way we feel in and about places and the felt relationships we have to and within place” (Madgin, 2022). This definition is designed to be broad so it can hold together academic traditions that have studied different aspects of our relationship with place in depth, yet often in isolation. Core components of the framework include attachment, belonging, atmospheres, sensory reactions, and positive emotions such as awe and pride and within this we seek to put key research fields including environmental psychology, urban studies, urban design, history of emotions, and increasingly neuroarchitecture into conversation with one another. This talk will first outline the conceptual framework and then focus on the methodological approach we have developed with non-academic partners and tested in real-world contexts (Madgin et al, 2025). The core thread running through the talk is how we can build a multi-disciplinary, mixed methods, approach to ensure that the retrofit of existing buildings, and delivery of new places is informed by rigorous understanding of how we can design with and for positive felt experiences of architecture in a place-based context.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

RESTORATIVE DESIGN | DAY 4

Thursday, October 15 From Normative to Reclaimed Spaces: Action-training for Apprentice Training Center Teachers to Deploy Multimodal Pedagogy

Marie Christine Llorca

PhD, Founder, Educational Consultant, Toulouse, France

Context and Problem Statement. In Apprentice Training Centers (CFA), spaces are rarely perceived by trainers as active pedagogical levers. However, their organization powerfully influences postures, group dynamics, and the capacity to experiment. This project rests on the hypothesis that to transform these practices, one must first change the way one views the plurality of places— from formal (classrooms) to informal (hallways, gardens, halls, cafeteria…)—by experiencing one’s relationship to space differently. The goal is to promote multimodal pedagogy by teaching teams to “hack” their spaces to turn them into learning partners. Theoretical Framework. The system mobilizes pedagogical space design (Paquelin, 2021), multimodality (Llorca, 2023), and the psychology of space (Moles & Rohmer, 1998). It relies on the concepts of affordance (action potential suggested by an object) and nudge (gentle encouragement through spatial layout). Methodology: From Wandering to Prototyping The approach goes beyond simple technical observation to engage in an exploration and creation cycle structured into four key stages: Sensory Wandering (Déambulation sensible): The starting point of the process, this one-hour attentive walk allows for a sensory and emotional mapping of the site. Guided by a specific grid, participants note their first impressions and the awakening of their senses (smells, sounds, light) to identify the hidden pedagogical potential of the spaces. Collaborative Work on Usage: After the visit, teams pool their perceptions to identify “living intervals” (intervalles vivants) and zones to be reclaimed or diverted. Micro-prototyping and Modeling: Participants use physical modelling or relayout projections (e.g., the “Modul’air” project) to test furniture flexibility, the integration of biophilia (plants, natural materials), or the creation of “comfort zones”. Documentation via Collaborative Wall: A digital tool allows for the continuous documentation of intentions, encountered resistance, and engaged microtransformations, fostering a collective memory and the sharing of successes. Results and Perspectives. The analysis shows a diversification of practices : the integration of “break corners,” the pedagogical use of gardens, and the reorganization of rooms into “active settings”. The emotional and perceptive experience of the participants becomes a decisive driver for changing pedagogical postures.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

RESTORATIVE DESIGN | DAY 4

Thursday, October 15 Making It Home: Beauty, Agency, and Spatial Transformation in Refugee Camps and Settlements

Stephanie Acker

Executive Director, Nonprofit Organization, Florence, Italy

Over 120 million people are currently displaced. Seventy percent live in protracted situations—five, ten, twenty or more years—in environments designed for temporary emergency use, not for human life. The neuroscientific and environmental psychology literature is clear: the built environment shapes stress regulation, emotional state, social connection, and health. In refugee camps and shelters, environments are often overcrowded, provisional, and treated as temporary, even when they are not and actively erode wellbeing, fragment community, and send a daily message to the people living in them that they do not matter. What interrupts this? And what role can beauty play? Across displacement contexts worldwide, refugees do not wait for better conditions to begin making beauty. They plant gardens in plastic containers and along the edges of shelters. They paint murals on corrugated walls. They carve gathering spaces out of unused ground. They burn incense, arrange objects with care, hang photographs, sew patterns into fabric, and reconstruct the rituals of hospitality and celebration in the middle of crisis. This presentation draws on research establishing the role of beauty and beautification in how refugees remake home, and on field evidence from a community-led spatial transformation initiative active across nine displacement contexts, including camps and settlements in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Malawi, Ethiopia, Türkiye, and Syria. The initiative works through refugee-led organizations to map existing community assets, co-design shared-space transformation plans, and implement those plans through direct community participation. Outcomes are tracked across five domains drawn from the NeuroDesign/NeuroArchitecture Index (NDEX): mental health and wellbeing, social capital, agency and self-efficacy, creative and cultural expression, and spatial quality. Community consultation findings, initial outcome data, photographs, and community voices will be shared. A consistent pattern has emerged across all nine contexts: when asked where beauty exists in their environment, displaced communities do not describe what is missing. They describe what they have already made. This presentation asks what happens when those efforts are taken seriously and systematically supported, what the community-led process itself produces in terms of agency, dignity, and place attachment, and what these patterns suggest for designers, architects, and health professionals working at the intersection of human sciences and the built environment, and for the shelter providers and policymakers who shape the environments in which 120 million people spend their daily lives.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

ARCHITECTURE AND THE SPACE OF MIND | DAY 5

Friday, October 16 Affordances Found in Japanese Gardens, Shrines and Temples Western tradition in the early twentieth century experienced a profound transformation with the emergence of phenomenology and enactive theories of cognition articulated by thinkers such as Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. By the 1970s, the concept of affordance was introduced by James J. Gibson emphasizing that there is environmental information in extended spatial and temporal patterns that draw preferences from those who navigate these spaces. Frederick Marks

Visiting Scholar, Research Collaborator, Los Angeles, USA

Non-Western frameworks have long proposed forms of embodied imagination closely linked to spiritual practices and have introduced in gardens an absence of environmental stimuli that itself serve as a generative force. This void, known as Ma in Japanese, fosters a contemplative experience and imagination through emptiness. It has ancient roots in Shintoism and Buddhism dating back to the 6th century. The application of affordance has also been given a renewed importance in Japan with the 21st century theory of Shikake, meaning a trigger to start a certain action or to change a person’s mind and behaviour and encourage positive action absent of direct commands. This presentation will show images of sacred architecture and historic gardens that communicate a design language, both explicit and implicit, for eliciting human responses with a likely predicted outcome.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

ARCHITECTURE AND THE SPACE OF MIND | DAY 5

Friday, October 16 Means and Methods to Enlightenment Affective Learning in Sacred Place-Making

Susan Melsop

Associate Professor of Design Columbus and Boulder, USA

This presentation describes a case study in architecture education, which leverages theories of phenomenology to introduce graduate students to Buddhist principles of mind-body-spirit synchronicity and practices of mindfulness. By offering an architecture design/build course, titled Sacred Architecture of Japan, Means and Methods to Enlightenment, students were provided an opportunity to engage with a cross cultural study of sacred spaces of Asia and apply their understanding of phenomenology of architecture in an embodied spatial experience. The pedagogical intention was to draw upon contemporary theory and Buddhist philosophy as a way to deepen understanding of both and to apply these ideas to the construction of a fullscale building project. Questions of perception and phenomenology are often thematic inquires in architectural theory, while studio based projects often produce architectural considerations for existentially transformative experiences. However, the experiential impact and transformative affects of these designs and spatial constructs is often untested at full-scale. Ontological in nature, the course proposed a cross-cultural study; its aim was to bridge a gap, which often exists in architectural pedagogy between theory and practice. The task of the course was twofold, 1). To introduce students to sacred spaces of Asia and the varied manifestations of Buddhist belief in built form and, 2). To empower students to move beyond the abstract speculations of phenomenology and to participate in direct experiences of heightened sensory awareness through a construction experiment. To do this, emphasis was placed on perceptions of consciousness, tactile-haptic experiences and embodiment of Buddhist principles. The study of the mandala as a cosmic diagram and a progression through space influenced the program of ritual, while traditional Japanese construction, methods and materials informed ideas about structure and aesthetics. Proportions for the structure were based on those of tatami mats, while user experience was influenced by a morphological study of the mandala and the ritual-architectural event of circumambulation. Ephemeral in nature, the fullscale construction was an enclosed sacred space with a moving fulcrum path and sliding shoji screens. It served as a sacred space to viscerally interact with and move through. The collection of qualitative data for the pedagogical experiment revealed that the structure effectively served the students as a heuristic device to study the effects of heightened sensory awareness and the embodiment of Buddhist philosophies.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

HUMAN SCIENCES AND THE FUTURE OF ARCHITECTURE | DAY 8

PA R T I C I PA N T S ’ A B S T R A C T S 18-19 October

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

DESIGNING TO ALIGN WITH HUMAN BIOLOGY | DAY 7

Sunday, October 18 Environmental Preferences: A Reflective Workshop on Teshima This short workshop is proposed as a concluding practical reflection for the Moving Boundaries programme on Teshima Island. It is conceived as a way to bring together the key themes of the course, including neurophenomenology, restorative environments, body-conscious and somatic design, biophilic experience, memory and placemaking, wayfinding, grounding in nature, and the broader question of how places support human and environmental wellbeing. Valentina Fesenko

Architect, PhD Candidate Budapest, Hungary

The workshop will invite participants to observe Teshima not only as a landscape or cultural destination but also as a lived environment perceived through the body, the senses, memory, movement, atmosphere, and social context. Rather than separating theoretical discussions from direct experience, the task will encourage participants to connect the ideas explored during the course with their own embodied encounters on the island. The assignment will be introduced at the beginning of the Teshima part of the programme. Over the following days, participants will individually observe and document places on the island that evoke strong environmental preferences, both positive and negative. These observations will later become the basis for a collective workshop discussion.

Gergely Hory

PhD., Architect Budapest, Hungary

The final session, lasting approximately one to one and a half hours, will take place near the end of the stay on Teshima. It will include small-group conversations followed by a shared discussion with all participants. The aim is to compare how different people perceive, value, and interpret the same island environment, and to understand which spatial, sensory, atmospheric, cultural, or ecological qualities shape these preferences. The outcomes may later be developed into a short reflective publication connected to Moving Boundaries. This publication could offer a situated record of how an interdisciplinary group of architects, designers, researchers, and practitioners experienced Teshima through the lens of environmental preference, multisensory perception, and life-centered design.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

DESIGNING TO ALIGN WITH HUMAN BIOLOGY | DAY 7

Sunday, October 18 What Relationships Deserve Our Care? Architects today draw upon an expanding body of knowledge about how buildings influence human experience. Research in neuroscience, environmental psychology, building science, and sustainability offers extraordinary insight into how people heal, learn, belong, and flourish. Those matter. But they’re not the first question.

Brian Feagans

Architect, Strategic Design Advisor, Bangalore, India

Every project begins by asking: What relationships does this project hope to cultivate? Only after answering that question can architects determine what knowledge will best help strengthen those relationships—and ultimately give them physical form. Building upon the Moving Boundaries conversation about moving from evidence to practice, this presentation argues that an even earlier design question comes first. Through the design of a children’s behavioral health center in California, it demonstrates how identifying the relationships a project hopes to cultivate becomes the foundation for every subsequent design decision. A child arrives frightened, disconnected from home, and uncertain about whom to trust. Before turning to research, we first ask: What does this child need most from this place? A connection to morning light. To the living landscape. To trusted caregivers. To a sense of safety. To belonging. Once those priorities are clear, research in the human sciences, together with building science, sustainability, and the unique qualities of place, helps shape the architecture that supports those relationships. The presentation offers a practical framework for organizing design decisions around the relationships a project hopes to cultivate. Those priorities ultimately shape orientation, thresholds, movement, landscape, and the everyday places where care is experienced—creating an architecture that is the physical form of care.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

DESIGNING TO ALIGN WITH HUMAN BIOLOGY | DAY 7

Sunday, October 18 Do Crowds Change the Way We Read Study Spaces?

Martina Frattura

Lighting Designer, PhD. Student Bergamo, Italy

This study investigates how the aesthetic and functional perception of university study spaces is shaped by the presence of other users and by the combination of materiality and external view. Drawing on research in architecture, environmental psychology, and neuroaesthetics, the project examines whether spaces characterized by natural materials and views of nature are perceived as more pleasant, welcoming, and suitable for studying than spaces with artificial materials and urban views. It also explores whether the presence of one student or a small group of students alters judgments of aesthetics, privacy, usability, and approach tendency. The study uses 72 realistic AI-generated images of indoor academic environments, systematically varying two factors: material/view condition and user presence. Participants, recruited online, will complete a single session in which they rate each image on aesthetic pleasantness, desire to use the space, and perceived suitability for study. In addition, eye-tracking and facialexpression data will be collected through the iMotions Online platform, alongside a brief personality questionnaire and questions about participants’ background and expertise. The study aims to clarify how environmental features and social occupancy interact in shaping the experience of university interiors, with potential implications for the design of learning environments that support comfort, functionality, and well-being.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

DESIGNING TO ALIGN WITH HUMAN BIOLOGY | DAY 7

Sunday, October 18 Architectural Harmony, Proportions, Acoustics and Human Experience

Pooja Mahathi Vajjha

Architect, Educator, Researcher, Hyderabad, India

The concept of Harmony was created through musical tones that sounded well together, represented mathematically as epimoric (n+1/n; 2/1, 3/2, 4/3, etc.) and multiple (mn/n; 2/1, 3/1,4/1, etc.) ratios by Pythagoreans. Vitruvius adopted these ratios into architecture, and later, they were followed till the 18th century as architectural proportions. Despite their origin in music, these ratios were not theorised using sound as a medium in buildings. The connection between music and architecture was often considered symbolic. Using sound as the medium, we may rediscover how humans respond to proportionate vs non-proportionate spaces. In proportionate vs. non-proportionate spaces, we may behave, respond, and emote differently due to the difference in acoustic phenomena. To know whether we respond to the spaces differently, this research asks the question: Do spaces built using music proportions have a harmonious acoustic connection between them, and can we recognise harmony in architectural spaces if we use sound as a medium? If so, do we behave, respond and emote differently in these spaces? This research would contribute to understanding how we respond to sound in spaces, and whether and how proportions are important in architecture. The results of the three preliminary studies conducted in various rooms in Auroville, India and at CEPT University showed that in each room exists one or two dominant frequencies similar to those of a musical instrument and in proportionate rooms, the frequencies that remain the longest are harmonic to each other when compared to non-proportionate rooms. These frequencies that stay the longest also cause the reverberation. Using this knowledge, we can also rate the rooms according to their harmony in terms of their proportions. The materials in these rooms did not make an impact on the harmonic response. This study can be further carried out to test the human perception and behavioural response.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

DESIGNING TO ALIGN WITH HUMAN BIOLOGY | DAY 7

Sunday, October 18 Encoding Harmony: How Islamic Architectural Intelligence Pre-Solved the Neuroscience of Human Experience — The H2OLISTIC Framework as a Practice Translation System

Ehab Mokhtar

Architect, Founder, Cairo, Egypt

After three decades of architectural practice, I kept encountering the same failure mode: spaces that were technically accomplished and commercially viable — yet somehow incoherent. Occupants felt it without being able to name it. I became convinced that coherent human experience in space was not a talent. It was a structure waiting to be named. I found that structure not in contemporary design theory, but in Islamic architectural tradition — specifically in the Sultan Hassan Mosque-Madrasa in Cairo, built in 1356. This building integrates four schools of Islamic jurisprudence into a single spatial composition: four distinct human purposes, unified without conflict. Its coherence is not aesthetic — it is systematic. The builders were solving the same problem: how do you honour the full complexity of human experience in a single spatial act? That question became H2OLISTIC — a four-territory framework mapping every design decision across two axes of human reality: how people process experience (Logical <--->Emotional) and how context operates (Static<--->Dynamic). Their intersection produces four territories that must cohere simultaneously in every project: IDENTITY (cognitive clarity and spatial purpose), BELONGING (emotional resonance and tribal signal), PERFORMANCE (functional truth across real conditions and time), and SENSORY FLOW (the choreography of the lived journey from arrival to departure). A decision that optimizes one territory at the expense of another is rejected — not rationalized. The framework is fully deployed at OZ I A Cairo — a lifestyle co-working destination in Sheikh Zayed — where every decision, from site boundary to spatial sequence to service choreography, was made through the H2OLISTIC lens. IDENTITY was established before a single line was drawn. BELONGING was encoded in the architecture of threshold. PERFORMANCE was stresstested against the operational reality of a full building across every hour and condition. SENSORY FLOW was composed as a temporal journey, not a static arrangement. The result is not a building that references Islamic heritage aesthetically. It is a building whose organizational logic descends from the same integrative discipline as Sultan Hassan — applied to a coworking member in 21st-century Cairo. A companion biometric feedback tool is currently in development to begin instrumenting what practitioners have long felt but rarely been able to measure. This presentation is not a research report. It is a practitioner’s account of a problem, a discovery, and a system.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

DESIGNING TO ALIGN WITH HUMAN BIOLOGY | DAY 7

Sunday, October 18 Multisensory Perception as Architectural Knowledge This presentation explores how multisensory perception can become an operative source of architectural knowledge. It begins with the understanding that spatial experience is not only visual but also embodied, relational, and variable: it involves movement, memory, attention, atmosphere, cultural background, and individual sensory differences. However, this complexity is difficult to transfer directly into architectural design and education, which still often rely on abstraction, representation, and visually driven methods. Valentina Fesenko

Architect, PhD Candidate Budapest, Hungary

The presentation proposes translation as a way to work with this complexity in practice. Translation is understood not as a simple application of scientific knowledge to design, but as an interpretative process through which uncertain, embodied, and situated experience can inform spatial decisions. In this process, architects need specific capacities to operate between perception and design: intuition, empathy, attention to difference, and the ability to make judgments under conditions of uncertainty. The presentation will discuss how these capacities can be learned and taught through structured engagement with real environments. Through multisensory workshops, students are invited to observe, move, compare, restrict certain senses, reflect collectively, and gradually understand how perception changes across bodies, roles, and situations. In this way, architectural education can shift from treating experience as an afterthought toward using it as a starting point for design thinking.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

DESIGNING TO ALIGN WITH HUMAN BIOLOGY | DAY 7

Sunday, October 18 Design Is What Happens Between People

Elena Pavlova

Architect, Interior Designer Moscow, Russia

What happens when architectural theories meet real people? As a practicing interior architect with more than 10 years of hands-on experience, I’ve learned that even the most elegant evidence-based design strategies can fail when they don’t account for the complexity of actual people. In design, we often speak about space, comfort, and wellbeing as if there’s one perfect formula that works for everyone. That’s true on paper, but real life is far more complex and unpredictable: every person involved — clients, architects, builders, users — brings their own history, sensitivities, desires, and way of explaining what they need. This is a talk from practice about designing from people to people. How do we combine the unique perspectives of everyone involved into architecture that feels deeply personal and works perfectly? I will explore the communication gap at the center of design work — the gap between what a person feels, what they can express, what a designer understands, and what finally gets built. Through my own projects, I will show how design is not only about form, function, or aesthetics, but about listening, interpreting, and translating between very different human worlds. I will also briefly share the three-layer approach I use in my practice, developed through residential and public projects, and show through real projects how it helps turn subjective experience into concrete design decisions. The first layer creates functional and beautiful architecture; the second layer responds to personal comfort, memory, and sensory triggers; and the third layer reflects identity, values, and the meanings people attach to their environment. Through real stories and real projects, I’ll share my practice and open questions about how design becomes truly personal when we listen across the gap between different human worlds — and how much we can create together that none of us could create alone.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

DESIGNING TO ALIGN WITH HUMAN BIOLOGY | DAY 7

Sunday, October 18 Practice SOMA From Gut to Hut. Designing Spaces That Think, Feel, and Heal The Philosophy Behind the Name “From gut to hut” is not a metaphor — it is a methodology.

Joanna Azzi

Interior Architect Abidjan, Ivory Coast

The gut carries a dual meaning at SOMA. It speaks to the intuitive feeling we experience when we enter a space that is truly right for us — that immediate, wordless knowing. But it also refers to the biology of the gut microbiome itself. A healthy gut microbiome shapes how clearly we think, how well we feel, and how vividly we perceive beauty. It is our inner sanctuary, and it is inseparable from the spaces we occupy. The microbiome of our buildings — the bacteria, fungi, and living organisms present in our walls, materials, and air— directly influences our inner ecology. Through thoughtful material choices, airflow strategies, and living design elements, SOMA actively supports a healthy microbial environment in every space. Taking care of our gut is taking care of our inner architecture. And taking care of our spaces is taking care of our gut. The hut is the space itself — wherever you live, work, heal, learn, or rest. I believe every hut, however humble or grand, deserves to support the people inside it at a biological, neurological, and emotional level. Building a bridge between design and wellbeing is no stroll in the park, but I firmly believe it is within reach. My own health journey stands as the most compelling testament to how profoundly our environments shape our bodies and minds. In a world where chronic illnesses, inflammation, and toxins increasingly take hold, we owe it to ourselves to illuminate the vital role of conscious, healing spaces. Therefore, I chose to begin as both consultant and designer—to devote time to studying each project deeply and to help architects and clients move forward together. Under the weight of relentless deadlines, too often professionals struggle to truly understand a client’s health profile, aspirations, and needs; my practice seeks to change that by listening first and designing with care. At SOMA, neuroarchitecture is not mere theory—it is practiced daily. Every design decision is grounded in evidence and guided by a profound respect for the body’s intelligence. Our approach weaves Western neuroscience with ancient Eastern systems such as Ayurveda, Feng Shui, and Vastu Shastra, recognizing that timeless traditions arrived at the same essential truths long before modern science could quantify them.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

DESIGNING TO ALIGN WITH HUMAN BIOLOGY | DAY 7

Sunday, October 18 The Embodied Bowl: Stadium Geometry, Standing Rails, and the Architecture of Collective Experience This presentation explores how stadium geometry shapes the collective experience of live sport. Stadiums are typically designed around capacity, sightlines, and operational efficiency. Yet the seating bowl can also be understood as an architectural instrument that influences perception, bodily activation, and the emotional intensity of a crowd.

Alec Mahar

Architectural Designer Dallas, U.S.A.

Recent research in neuroarchitecture, environmental psychology, and embodied cognition suggests that spatial conditions can influence attention, arousal, and social behaviour. In the context of live sport, these effects are amplified through crowd density, chanting, and synchronized movement. Bowl rake, proximity to the field, enclosure, and standing rail systems all play a role in how spectators experience immersion and connection. The central hypothesis of this presentation is that steeper bowl rake, closer proximity to the field, and standing-support conditions increase physiological arousal, collective synchronization, and perceived immersion. Drawing on my direct experience as a member of the seating bowl team for the new Cleveland Browns stadium, I will reflect on how these ideas emerge in practice. Using the same computational tools and workflows employed in stadium design, I will discuss how geometric variables can be studied alongside potential measures of fan response, including heart rate, vocal intensity, and self-reported excitement. The presentation proposes that stadium design is more than a technical exercise in seeing the field. It is a form of experiential architecture in which geometry, posture, and collective behaviour come together to shape memory, emotion, and the lived experience of place.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

HUMAN SCIENCES AND THE FUTURE OF ARCHITECTURE | DAY 8

Monday, October 19 Architectural Artefacts – Encouraging the Messiness of Overlapping Narratives Challenging the notion of historical facts as an ‘absolute truth’ not only transforms our understanding of the past but also colours our present reality with questions about how new information alters it. The built environment, especially in cities, is a living, evolving entity, where the past is connected with the present and influences the future.

Disha Singh

Architect, Academic Chandigarh, India

The presentation draws on archival information gathered during my foray into government files about the two government college campuses in Chandigarh. The narratives provided by varied archival sources allow a shift from the architect-centric discourse to one anchored around social cognition. The result is a mapping of the messy overlaps of the political context, architectural philosophy, nationalistic aspirations, cultural values, and economic and material constraints. Thus, the moment in history becomes an anchor point that creates a contextual understanding of the negotiations and outcomes of this ‘messiness’. I am using the example of a specific design element – a mural / metal sculpture installed on one of the main facades- to showcase the layered and non-linear processes that shaped it into a living reality. The historical narrative that is created allows this sixty-year-old artefact to be viewed not just as an artist’s creation but as an architectural element shaped by its political, cultural and material context. Additionally, the deliberate selection of an architectural element, conceived by an individual distinct from the designated architect, complicates the notion of authorship and the historical significance of the building. This creates a layered history that assimilates continuities and ruptures and allows reflexivity of how the past framed the present and impacts the future.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

HUMAN SCIENCES AND THE FUTURE OF ARCHITECTURE | DAY 8

Monday, October 19 Stories on Public Space: Action-based Interventions, Education and Research in the East- Central European Context Is it possible for a temporary space located on the asphalt desert of an urban parking lot to change the perception of a busy downtown street? Can a climbing wall mounted in front of the street facade of a museum as an alternative entrance alter the experience of an art space? Can we get any closer to the understanding of a neighbourhood’s life if we consistently try out its available services as if we were on an expedition towards the everyday?

Gergely Hory

Ph.D., Architect Budapest, Hungary

Gergely Hory (1989) is a practicing architect and assistant professor at the Department of Urban Planning and Design of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. He holds a Ph.D. in architecture. Through his professional activities he aims to identify the capabilities of everyday and unconventional human use and appropriation to change and transform public spaces. During his presentation Gergely gives an overview about his practical, theoretical and educational projects and experience by embedding them into the social, spatial and recent historic context of East-Central Europe. The presentation discusses contemporary local debates about the formal and informal use of public space, the challenges of educating architects of the future, and the potential and significance of constantly questioning the usage possibilities of the built environment in which we live.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

HUMAN SCIENCES AND THE FUTURE OF ARCHITECTURE | DAY 8

Monday, October 19 Voicing the Unconscious: Assessing the Mental Benefits of a Biophilic Park Design Using a Virtual Reality Tool

Sonia Olivia Muhammad

Designer, Researcher, Strategist New York, U.S.A.

This thesis, defended under the Politecnico di Milano Masters of Urban Planning and Policy Design program, sought to uncover the user preferences and psychological benefits of a biophilic greenspace design with the use of a virtual reality tool. The case study is on the design of Enota Park, a greenspace along the Beltline in Atlanta, Georgia, USA., and uses the exp-EIA method (the virtual reality tool) to allow the public to experience the design in virtual reality supplemented with a psychological survey. The data from the virtual reality experience is analysed to understand the emotional and restorative appraisals of the design overall, while relating these results to the biophilic design attributes present in the design. The thesis also aimed to showcase the viability of the exp-EIA method as a public participation tool to strengthen communication between designer and user. Finally, as the case study site uses nature-based solutions to achieve the Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES) Rating System standard, the biophilic attributes of these nature based solutions are used to showcase the multifunctionality of sustainable landscapes that extend beyond their material benefits and into the human health and well-being benefits.

MOVING BOUNDARIES JAPAN - OCTOBER 2026

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