Environment and neuroscience: Creating a building for the mind
We're thrilled to be working with D'Youville University on a new academic building that will broaden the institution's healthcare programs, focused on primary care and community-based practitioners. The project will be many things once complete, but is already a dynamic expression of thorough research around the interplay between environment and human mindfulness.
Details about the D'Youville's new academic building are still emerging via local media coverage and the institution itself. However, we can share that part of the vision for this project came in the form of a challenge from D'Youville University President Lorrie Clemo. She wanted us to create an incredible "building of the mind."
Our team tackled this challenge through extensive research into the connection between environment and neuroscience ultimately authored by myself, Hanga Gyorgyi, Mark Nowaczyk and Denice Guillermo. Ultimately, this project will break new ground on how the built environment can be attuned for better human experiences via strategic aesthetics and spatial elements.
Our Storybook
To document the research that went into this project and to help visualize the impact it can have on its community and those who call it home, our team generated a beautiful Storybook filled with evocative images and poems.
We were fortunate to share the Storybook with D'Youville leaders and other key stakeholders just recently. Here are some images of the book mixed with other renderings of the project.
A Sonnet for Inspiration
We look forward to sharing more about this project and our research in the coming months. For the moment, we are excited to leave you with this closing poem to further spark imagination.
Refreshed, we return to the work,
mapping the body with all our senses:
Eyes scan glowing images,
Soft palms trace bony joints,
Stethoscope pressed to chest.
Our minds connect system-to-system,
Until all that lies beneath the skin
is illuminated.
