Neurodivergent-Friendly Design: How to Build Spaces That Support Your Brain

0:00Welcome to The Hidden 20%, our neurodiversity charity on a mission to rewrite the future for people who think differently. Together with you and an eclectic range of brilliant guests, we can break the cycle of silence by smashing outdated stereotypes, exposing the myths, and sharing the most up-to-date truths about what it really means to be just different, not deficient. The best way you can help is really simple. Subscribe so you never miss an episode, and if you can, donate to our charity through the link below. Enough preamble. I'm Ben, your host. Let's get into today's episode.

0:47Pablo, I thought I'd start actually with asking you to describe your brain. I think my brain is quite balanced in a way. The right side and the left side are quite equal. Normally, that's not the case for the majority of people, I would say. But in my case, that's how it is. And I learned that people in architecture, when you had to use maths at the same time, that's more or less a neurological profile. Yeah, I really relate to that, though. I love maths and process and structure and systems and logic. I also love creativity, design. Yeah, probably you're on the same side. But I'm definitely not an architect.

1:30Why architecture for you? Why did you want to be an architect? Well, I landed in architecture because of my family. They had a construction company, a large construction company. So I thought I can do that. So that's how I landed in architecture. But I would say I fell in love with architecture while I was at uni. Let's just switch into you are not diagnosed. No. But you told me that you believe you could well be neurodivergent. Yes. We have two boys. The elder one was diagnosed with highly functional autism. So basically seeing him grow, we are very similar. So seeing him go through the same hurdles I had to go when I was growing up, I realized there's a pattern here.

2:14And I can see that things he had to go through are the same ones that I had to go through. and that's not quite the norm in a way or we call it normal. So basically it was good because I managed to forgive myself in certain areas. But more importantly, I'm grateful that I'm there for him and be able to guide him and foresee certain hurdles in the future, obstacles he might fall through. And has seeing your son helped you understand yourself more? Yes, very much. And how has that helped you? Okay, I know where I'm coming from. I'm an adult. I went through the other side. I'm doing okay. So I'm there to help him.

2:53And I'm trying to think every time he does something I don't agree or I think there's an issue. I try to see myself as a child of that age and be able to react. It's not easy. It doesn't make it easier. But it helps me to understand it. Yeah, I think that switch to kind of from judgment to curiosity is a big one. And I see that with my daughters. of just having to step back or catch myself and kind of go, I wonder why they're doing that. Putting my six-year-old daughter who's autistic to bed last night and she is constantly going over to her desk and writing notes. Yeah. And I just want her to get into bed.

3:36And what I want to say is, can you just get into bed, River? You know, come on, it's bedtime. But what she needs to do is get out of her head. She has to write some stuff down. way to unwind yeah and so it's a certain limit obviously that we can't do that all night no of course no but i do catch myself just flipping to ah she obviously there's a reason why she needs to do that yeah and i wonder why she's doing that yes and to kind of join her in her world of yeah what are you writing you know get involved yeah rather than like it's bedtime get to bed get to bed and that's yeah that's a like a muscle that's a good strategy yeah i think it's a muscle we've got to build let's talk about google you led the design for the google hq yeah the building they are currently occupying so literally near where we are right now very close in king's cross yeah can you just give our listeners and our audience a sense of that project well it's a large office building i was a principal architect at the time throughout the duration of the project from inception to conception.

4:43So the idea was how to make that massive building, basically, attractive and that can be used not just for working, but also for developing people's lives that they spend most of the time there. So the good thing about working with Google at the time that it was basically they have their in-house teams that are doing the interior designs, which are also focused on neurodiversity, design for neurodiversity. So they use a lot of the principles we use for biophilic design and university. So when we did the architecture, it was hand in hand in a way. There were a few challenges. For instance, we had this massive atrium.

5:19It's glass. We want to flood it with natural light. But on the other side, there's a lot of glass in there. There's a lot of reverberation. Sound acoustics is one of the factors we need to control from the biophilic point of view. And then there are things we cannot control. We have to make do. But there are other things we can do. So the idea was to have in the atrium on the ground floor, we wanted to foment casual meetings and encounters. So basically, how do we do that in a massive glass atrium with marble everywhere? So we went for biophilic patterns. So it's called natural analogues that make you feel cozy.

5:55Just being surrounded by certain patterns. And then we found this amazing marble from a tiny, tiny island in the Bosphorus in front of Istanbul, which is big Slavs, 3.5 meters high with a beautiful, very perfect vertical patterns of grain, black and white. It's almost like a barcode. But that replicates or mimics what is part of the biophilic design, is mimics the reeds amid tall grasses. Like our brains develop in the savannah, that's part of the biophilic hypothesis. And then basically we feel secure and comfortable among grasses. We are protected. We're not going to be eaten. Even though you're in a massive atrium and it's huge slabs of marble.

6:39That helped to justify to put certain seating areas near that. And then I have to say, even if you are in that big, massive space, full of glass, full of reverberation, scenic lifts indoors, a lot of movement and glass and reflections, we can still create a comfy, cozy space in certain corners. And it's been used. So it's quite rewarding to see that it's been used and it works. So in those days, in the 2010s, basically, for me, biophilic design was still an exploration, was still a hypothesis, was supported by a growing body of research and studies and scientific studies. Today, it's a lot more.

7:20So we've got a lot of certainty in certain areas. But then in those days, it was more like an interest. Can you explain what biophilic design is? So biophilic design is, well, we've been doing it for centuries. If you go to a cathedral, a Gothic cathedral, it looks like a forest. The columns are like trees, and we've been doing it forever. But we've been doing it a lot intuitively. In the early 80s, Edward Wilson wrote a book called Biophilia. So that's why he established the biophilia hypothesis. The hypothesis says that we, as humans, we have an innate affiliation to nature and natural systems and natural organisms.

8:02So if we are amid these natural elements, our brains settle, we are comfortable, our cortisol level goes down, heart rate goes down, and we can function better. We can develop our full potential. And then that is an important matter. So it started in the 80s and we've been progressing a lot. And then the idea is that this affiliation is physiological. It's not only psychological and it goes with evolution. The idea is that we evolve in the savannah And then we spread all over the world. But our brains are still settled on that idea, on that pre-configuration. So basically being under the canopy of trees, they give us a sense of security.

8:40We can control, we can hide if we don't want to be seen. If we are in the savanna, we are protected. And then so using those patterns that are still ingrained in our brains, they make us trigger. We call it neurological or neuro triggers. That trigger a response. Even if you are not consciously aware of them, just because being there in that surrounding, our eyes are seeing more than we think we do. Love that. So on a subconscious level. So out of all of the senses we have, probably vision is the most important one. So basically, when we look at something in our vision field, we only see exactly 5 % of what we see.

9:18The rest is all built up by our brains. They're reconfigured, reconstituted by our brains. Yes. And out of that, our brains, they only pre-select or prioritize 40 to 50 elements, objects. Okay. The rest are ignored. Okay. So you can see even when we think, oh, I've seen something is objective. Actually, the processing bits in our brains, they're already selecting and discarding things or making things up. Yes. So that is quite an interesting thing. The issue with neurodiversity, because when neurodivergent people, those processes could be different. Could be enhanced or produced. Yes, hyper or hypo.

9:57Yeah, there are some autistic people that they have this photographic memory. So they don't have this pre-selection or prioritization of 40 or 50 elements. They don't have it, they just see everything. And then they can redraw by memory a whole cityscape with a huge amount of detail. And that is so interesting. So Pablo, how does neurodiversity and biophilic design come together and how can that help neurodivergent people? There are a lot of points in common between both approaches to design. In essence, biophilic design is all about the senses and how the senses act in our brains in a physiological level, hormonal, even chemical.

10:39So that has an impact with neurodivergent people in a way because some of these senses or response and processes to those senses are exacerbated or decreased. That's why there is a confluence involved. So my interest comes from the biophilic design approach. And then because of lived experiences for myself and my kids, then it merge into one. But that's what's happening anyway. It makes me like people listening can't see my face. but I'm smiling because I adore nature more than anything. I think I first started learning or reading about biomimicry nearly 20 years ago. And I truly believe that nature is the best model, mentor, and measure.

11:26Yeah. Better than anything else. Completely agree with you. And so I'm so pleased to hear that there's this lovely overlap and synergy between nature-informed architecture and spaces and buildings and neurodiversity. And I just want to, like, unpack how we should be designing buildings that include everybody and include everybody's mind. Yeah, that is very interesting. We are lucky now that there is a, it's not a body of regulation, but it's called a publicly available specification. that's issued by the BSI, the British Standards Institution. 6463? 6463, yeah, the PAS 6463. It's been launched at the end of 2022.

12:14It's fantastic. It's a massive quantum leap into this view of how we should be designing. Pablo, what is PAS 6463? It's a publicly available specification. It's addressed to architects and designers and facilities managers. establishes guiding principles to address neurodiversity as a whole, but is supported by studies on different kinds of neurodiversity and what a building, a house, or an office, or whatever, should consider as a best practice in order to address specific needs. What did that study show or say? Well, this is a specification that aims to become a British standard. That's the aim.

13:00And hopefully one day it becomes part of the regulation. We can probably go even further. Could we probably go, hopefully one day, that's what I think it should be, the regulations about part M, which is physical accessibility, they will include sort of sensory accessibility and cognitive accessibility. We should see everything more holistically. But we are not quite close yet to that. Let me clarify that. we only have a legal framework for physical accessibility for buildings. Yeah. Yes. That's it? Yes. Wow. Yeah. Well, there are some inclusions there in the Act of Parliament about disabilities and caring for disabled people at a more extreme level, but then not for what we are catering now because basically what the interest is of catering for, the sensory aspects, our enhanced sensory capacity for neurodivergent people and so on, is because if we don't do that, then we are creating environments that are damaging them.

14:08Or us, basically. Basically, we are creating environments that produce anxiety, stress, discomfort, and we cannot develop our own potential. And then can trigger probably mental health issues. So that's what we should be careful about. We are all talking about mental health all the time. At the moment, it's true what you're saying. We wouldn't accept a building that hasn't got proper ventilation or daylight or a toilet with no ventilation. We never accept all materials that produce toxic fumes. But we are okay with more permissive other sensory aspects of this. I was coming into London this morning and because I knew we were sitting down, I'm suddenly hyper attuned to like every single building.

14:51Every single bridge, structure. i'm looking at how many straight lines there are i'm looking at the materials the shapes what really annoys you about buildings from a neurodiversity perspective that always did even before being an architect is wayfinding and clarity of entrance and that is for instance in the past 64 63 if you need to cater for it it is part of the biophilic design approach approaching a building that we don't know exactly where the entry is for some people creates anxiety and then even the wayfinding side of building which is not clear again creates anxiety and me being an architect i look into these points and what you said probably annoys me that sometimes hasn't been resolved properly wayfinding wayfinding and clarity of entrance okay to have and also So again, we can go further with why it's affecting.

15:47But with biophilic design, we know that when we have a circulation space and we do a hierarchy of spaces, we have a sequence, we have distant views. So we can predict the path ahead and then it's more clear and makes it more comfortable. What else annoys you about the design of buildings? We have sometimes beautiful buildings or beautiful spaces, but there's overload of sensory overload. They try to put too many things and it's too much. We cannot read the space. It is a sensory overload. It makes you feel uncomfortable. What are the elements that make it feel overwhelming for neurodiverse people?

16:27Basically, the two contrasting colors and shapes that are not biophilic, you see, that are not natural. When I'm saying natural, I'm not saying that we should replicate nature indoors. I'm just saying to refer to nature. to have these sort of neural triggers with patterns that are not necessarily sort of a direct, explicit reference to nature. It's not just about some houseplants. No, it's not about houseplants. But plants sometimes help. Sure, sure. They do. But to be clear, this isn't the school of thought of just bring nature inside and everything will be better. Biophilic design takes that approach a step further.

17:08It's a step further. And is informed by rather than put a tree in the hallway. That's right. Does the Design for the Mind PAS 6463, catchy name, report, does it discuss residential? And I'm just thinking, I would imagine the majority of our audience are not architects, right? And are designing offices. But many of them will be thinking about their own home or their own workspace. And I'm sure a lot of people will be working from home as well. Does that report make mention of what we can do domestically and residentially at home? The report, in principle, is addressed to these architects, designers, and more importantly, to facilities managers.

17:51Okay. Because it's not about designing something. It's suitable. So how do we maintain it and develop it further? But it can be applied to anything. Okay. It can be applied to an interior design project or a small house or a group of houses or a public building. Yes, it can be. The three big areas that I read from a summary perspective were clarity, control, and calm. So can we talk about people's homes and workspaces around clarity and what that means? Well, I mean, clarity, it could be even a room, it could be a house, but clarity would be clarity of circulation. That's what we say, the way of finding, knowing where you are, views out, that is important.

18:36and clarity goes to whether we can, but it's just to declutter and trying to not to have overload of sensors and patterns, basically. And then, yeah, that would be clarity. Control? Control could be choice as well. It's a choice to have spaces or space in the house, say, where you can, areas we can be focused and areas you can be unfocused, basically. Okay. To have that option, even if you don't use it, even if you have, say, a room, one room, one bedroom, and you live in a shared house, then at least you have a nice comfy chair by the window with a nice, say, bookshelf, for instance, to give you a pattern there.

19:16And then ideally a plant. Why not? But that's not necessary. But then being close to the window with a nice lighting, ideally warm light for the evenings, with probably a comfy chair with a tall backrest that gives you a subspace there. Even if you're using it all the time, but having the option, the choice to do it, that gives you that sort of sense of comfort and well-being. And can you create a space within a space in that sense? Yes. When we do, say, a refurbishment, one of these Victorian or Georgian houses, and the brief says, go for an open plan, large space, as big as possible, and so on.

19:53We never create a space which is completely empty. Open. Open, because it's too anodyne. You don't know where you are. There's no direction. Yes. There's no clarity. Yes. So we create subspaces. We try to give a character to each space, basically, in a way. So that's part of the clarity aspect. Yep. And then calm? Calm is decluttering. Basically, that would be one of the things you can have. And then probably that's the result of all of this. Calm, yeah, it's important. Calm doesn't mean a space which is neutral or beige, basically. Actually, from the biophilia point of view, our brains are wired up to expect complex patterns.

20:31okay so we outside we see trees bushes yeah far distance long we are comfortable with that naturally we read fractal patterns all the time and we ignore them so we are there but we expect them so if you are there we we are comfortable so it's more pleasant so that's why i say there's good design and with the tool of the past 64 63 together it's very important because we can balance in a way where it is sort of to achieve this complexity but at the same time to prevent sensory overload so the good balance needs to be reached and then the thing the past 64 63 can help to guide designers on that road yeah it makes me think we had an amazing guest on dr luke beard and and luke has this fabulously simple equation that he calls the golden equation which is autism plus environment equals outcome okay and i'm a big fan of the golden ratio and so i'm struck by how much of an impact good and bad an environment can have on or for everybody not just neurodivergent people but but everybody everybody and biophilic design from my understanding it's not just about sustainability it's not kind of no an ecological Well, it's linked to it, but it's not.

21:56If we're going for a big umbrella of well-being, so sustainability should be part of it. But sustainability should be embedded in all of this anyway. If people want to learn more about biophilic design and principles, what can they read, look at, follow? Well, there's a consultancy in New York called Therapin. They are sort of pioneers in a way. They pioneer the book from Wilson from the 80s and then they do a lot of research. You can Google it and it's fantastic what they're doing. But even on the past 64, 63, there are links to a lot of other documents. You can find information there. So I guess maybe what's going through people's heads is, wow, but we've got all these buildings and we've got offices, we've got our homes.

22:44Is this going to be expensive? How big are changes do we need to make? What do you say to that? It doesn't need to be expensive, If it is a house or even a room, I mean, we can change the materials. We can change the colors of the walls to be more pastel colors, so there's no big contrasts. But we can choose a feature wall. We can incorporate or retrofit some biophilic patterns there. And then we can use natural materials. So fabrics, wood, stone. So they are all natural materials because we are already wired in to accept them and predict. We know how it's going to feel to the tact. stone, wood, fabric, wool, say.

23:25We know how our voice is going to sound in close proximity to stone, wood, and so on. So this, again, is an affiliation to natural patterns and materials. So unpredictability is important. Text and texture is important. When you are in the new diversity world, textures are so important. So there are some people hypersensitive to certain textures. So we should consider that, even if we are not consider ourselves neurodiverse. Yes. Or neurodivergent, sorry. Yes. Yeah. What's one thing people within their student rooms or shared housing can do that doesn't cost the earth to switch up their environment and make it more neuroinclusive?

24:12I think, well, we discussed about lighting and materials and so on, but one thing they can do now is differentiate the areas where we focus or unfocus and have the options to swap between them, not to have everything merged in one area. Ideally, we should have the bed area, for instance, as an unwinding area, and we have another corner with its own character for revising or studying or working. So if we can differentiate both areas with different lighting, different space, ideally, yeah, that would be one thing we can do. I increasingly have this slightly naive, naive rose tinted ideal because i've got three kids running around and three dogs of having a reading chair and just having a chair that is not for sitting on the phone not for working not for anything else it's just a nice chair to sit and read well that's your security space a chair could be a micro space yeah i listened to you on a podcast all about lighting which is absolutely fascinating and obviously as soon as you walked in i made a point to point out the fact that we are in like bright studio lights here you've mentioned lighting a few times pablo yeah how does lighting correlate with yeah a thriving environment for neurodivergent people so yeah it's fundamental because it goes straight into our circadian rhythm so in a lot of ways this blue light we have at the moment so basically it's making more more awake awake and yeah do you say this is blue light so it's this is we call it blue light okay it's a white light it's a light of morning light okay so it's different to the afternoon evening light okay which is more red.

26:00Okay. Which is more yellowy. Okay. So that governs the physiological impact on our brains, on our reptilian brain, in a way, that triggers the production of melatonin or cortisol. So basically, we have in our eyes, which is very interesting, some retinal cells that are photosensitive, but they are not there to create image. They are primitive. So they go straight into our reptilian brain, deep inside our brains, and they're only there to detect blue light. So that light here. Okay. Because that tells us, wake up, it's time to go, time to find food, get hungry. And that governs our bowel movements.

26:43It just governs so many things, produces cortisol. And also that inner brain that creates the fight or flight response. So that is so crucial. So if we are in an environment that is not safe in a way, even if we are not aware of it, our inner brain is creating chemicals to tell us this is not safe. Let's run. It creates anxiety and creates these responses that will affect our well-being. So interesting because I need my phone on full brightness. I have my laptop on full brightness. I come downstairs in the morning. I turn all the lights on. I want them, no dim, full bright. I want to get on, see what's going on.

27:29And then my wife comes down and dims them all or turns them off. But the good thing about it with modern technology we have nowadays, we just finished a project in which it's an office building. So we integrated a system. It's not expensive, but it can change the color of the light as the day progresses. So the morning is bluer. and as the day goes down, it becomes more redder. And then so basically that replicates the circadian rhythm. That it helps us with sleep. Neurodivergent people, sometimes kids mainly, they have some problems with sleeping because they have different triggers. So they are more sensitive to certain triggers.

28:07So they don't segregate the melatonin to go to sleep. So that is an issue that can happen. So that is why it's so important to control the light. And that's what I was saying. If you have a room, you have a reading light, probably if you're reading in the evening, you can have a warm light there. So something can dim as well. Okay, something warmer. Warm light, that replicates the evening light. So you are in tune with the day and nature. So that helps you physiological to respond to the environment. I've never worked in a big office before, Pablo. But I'm thinking the images that come to mind, hospitals, as being like super bright, kind of sterile, clinical.

28:51Completely. Big office blocks, the lots and lots of light and sharpness and brightness and clinical and sterile. You don't really know what time of day it is. Is moving the light and dimming the light and changing the light actually better for productivity and performance? Completely, yeah. versus this like everyone stay awake because the lights are on really bright you will not go to sleep you will keep working stay alert the worst thing where we used to have fluorescent lights whether not only there are blue lights they have this stroboscopic effect flickering that we cannot see with your eyes but our brains do read it and it's exhausting yeah certainly even if you're in a diversion then it's even more yes it's the wrong thing because it creates stress you are uncomfortable you want to go and you don't perform so your performance you probably skip few days of work yes and then attendance is not great so it affects on the productivity what have you noticed within the architecture industry not just the design for the mind report but specifically within neuro inclusivity and neurodiversity what's going on in like the industry of architecture.

30:09I feel like from the outside looking in, there was obviously a huge shift around sustainability and the environment. Are you hopeful about what's going on with neurodiversity and architecture within your industry? Yeah, I'm very hopeful. I'm very optimistic about that. Sustainability, it was a big add-on at some point. It shouldn't have been, but it could start. And now it became mainstream in a way. So it's not a question. Yes. It's become more standard. We all have to do it. So the same thing will happen, I think, with neurodiversity and cognitive and sensory aspects for neurodiversity people.

30:47So I think it's helpful. With the past 64, 63, I think it's a huge jump ahead, and that will help. And there is an emphasis in the market at the moment, in the hospitality market, about well-being. Yes. And then well-being as an umbrella. we have biophilic design and so on. And neurodiversity addressing, you know, design for the mind. So I'm very hopeful. And the technology is getting there. So as I mentioned, the points about this lighting, it's not just lighting, there's a lot of progress on ventilation, for instance. Especially there are ventilation systems for an office or for a space like this that not only provide the ventilation needed and moving the volume of air as required for the number of people, but also they change the speed.

31:34So that's, in a way, we are mimicking how nature works. We expect to have some changes in the speed of the air. And that contributes to well-being. So that is another point that is good. And acoustics. There are so many more availability of materials, absorptive materials, that make the space more acoustically dry in a way. So the reverberation is an issue. Okay. For me in particular, it's an issue. I'm very sensitive to that. and I can't concentrate. It's an open, very reverberant space. When it's tinny and... Yeah. So sometimes I enter a space and myself, even as I'm in the profession, but I enter a space which is meant to be beautiful.

32:14I can see it's beautiful, but I don't feel comfortable. I don't know why. I don't feel cozy enough. But then I realized, oh, it's acoustics. Okay. So the acoustics make you feel like you are in an open space and it's too open. You don't feel cozy. You don't feel settled. So when I walk back into my house later today, from an acoustic and a lighting perspective and how I feel, what should I be noticing? What should I now look out for? Well, when you go later to your house, I suppose the coloring of the light, you will arrive probably in the afternoon. You will expect that your indoor lighting will be more towards the yellow side, the red sides, not the blue sides.

32:57That is a point that you could control. The acoustics, yeah, if you feel like there's too much reverberation, you can probably resolve it with fabrics, curtains, cushions, you know, wool, covers. that helps a lot of carpets or rugs that helps to absorb the acoustic or the control the reverberation time i'm just thinking i love bright lights yeah and lots of people don't like bright lights and i'm wondering if you've experienced or understood neurodivergent people who like kind of lots of crazy acoustics and different textures and i'm just wondering like how we how we design inclusively when you don't like bright light and i like bright light yeah how do how do we navigate that we have dimmers so you can use that but i think we should have different scenes sometimes you can have a av system in your house or you can press a button and the scene changes, you can pre-configure that.

33:59But overall, regardless of the intensity of the light, the lighting design is ultra important. Basically, we try always to have a combination of direct and indirect lighting, because that mimics the natural world. That's how it works. We try to avoid roof lights, because they are different to control, and they always give you the blue light throughout the day. It's like coming vertically from the sky, with no reflections to bouncing around or tinting of any color. So basically, it's difficult to control. We have it sometimes. We need to have that, but we try to avoid it. And then when we design a space with lights, then apart from the direct and direct lighting, we avoid fixed grids of lights.

34:42We try to create pools of light a certain area more randomly and lighten the walls so we can rely on the bouncing of color and tinting the light. And therefore that being indirect. Yeah, indirect and direct. What do you think about spotlights then? There's a good solution, but then there are fittings nowadays that we can control and we can avoid glare. That is an important thing. We should avoid glare. That is neurodivergent people. You don't feel comfortable if you have that near you. And then there's a technology out there. It's a new light fittings that you don't see the source of light until you are right under it.

35:18That's why I'm so optimistic about. Technology is going there. So this lighting company you mentioned, I had a podcast with, they were telling me recently they're developing a live fitting that mimics double shading. So on the wall, on the floors and so on. That makes you feel you're under a canopy. And that's fantastic. That is purely biophilic design. This company go for it. They're completely committed to biophilic design and we love that. Yeah, I love that. I feel like schools, big office blocks and hospitals and prisons are really not very neuro-inclusive. That's true. As a big, broad generalization.

36:00Schools-wise, Pablo, what are the top three things you've seen or would love to see that make schools more neuro-inclusive? Sure. I think they follow the principles of clarity of entrance, clarity of circulation, but they go beyond just a matter of performance indicators. They achieve that extra goal where it's so important for an institution. And the way they do it, they do it through lighting, natural lights, connection to the outdoors, long distance views, short distance views, materials, noble materials, natural materials, something that's predictable, wood, stone, ceramics, but they are natural in a way.

36:38And then lighting, again, avoiding spaces lit indiscriminately, just to be more focused on certain areas, to clarify the circulation of spaces and make sure there is sufficient light where the task lights and so on. But lighting is very important. Ventilation, to have natural ventilation, but also supported with artificial ventilation, mechanical, and then with variable speeds to mimic natural ventilation. And the combination of all of that, together with colors and wayfinding is very important. What I noticed as well in some schools, they use colors as a wayfinding strategy. So basically when you enter school, you see this wall in a certain color.

37:19As you go up the stairs, you can always see that wall at the back with the same color. So you always know where you are. Yeah, so simple. It's so simple. But then that distresses you, distresses you about the children and so on. Yeah, because you know where you are. All the time. So, yeah, you avoid this labyrinth situation. It's so stressful for neurodivergent kids. Yeah, and especially when you, I think about those transitions with school of, you know, when you're 13. Yeah. And you're a teenager. Going to a big school. You're going to a big school. Yeah. Yeah, and that's just a hell of a transition.

37:57Yeah. Trying to find where you're meant to be. Yes. Yeah. Hospitals? There are not that many, I'm afraid, but there have been really good studies in hospitals. When they have recovering rooms, they're much associated with an outdoor space and so on. And just to assess and they can measure, the patients can recover 10 % faster. So there is a link there. But probably it's very rare when you have a hospital built from scratch in this day and age, anywhere in the world. So it's always a piecemeal basis approach in the development of hospitals. We talked a little bit about well-being and buildings earlier.

38:36Do you think that buildings can, could heal us? Yes, I believe that. I believe that they can heal us because basically we can create spaces that are exciting and inspiring in a way. So they do. We have a space that is well connected to nature and design with biophilic patterns that create a sense of well-being. and yeah. And can buildings make us sick? Yes. Definitely. Yeah. There were a lot of examples of that. They've been even after the war we've been building emergency council states that they've had to be demolished because they were making people sick. But now we have to be careful because now the technology now we are creating these houses new.

39:21All the materials we have they are so airtight that we don't have the permeability we used to have. Yes. And then And that creates another kind of physical problems. Yeah, so we go the other way. We are going the other way. We are having these super tight, super efficient, low energy buildings. Passive house, for instance. But then, on the other hand, there are some problems that we need to look for. So we are basically disassociating ourselves from nature. We've been doing that for a long time. That's why it's so important to address this issue. And then hopefully, one day in planning, not just in the building regulations, in planning, we can incorporate biophilic design principles in urban planning.

40:02Yes. Hopefully one day we will. Yeah, there's no excuse, is there? No. So we talked a lot, Pablo, about what other people can do, what other people are doing, best practice. What do you do? I do pretty much of everything we discussed. But I have two neurodivergent kids and different kinds of neurodiversity. One is more ADHD and dyslexia. The other one is more autistic dyspraxia. So it's a combination of both. So yeah, so creating spaces for each one, they can take refuge at some point and controlling the noise and the lighting. That's something I've been very careful about. How do you balance with having two children, total kind of mix of neurotypes?

40:50How do you not end up designing for no one? Because we are all so individual and from a sensory and a cognitive perspective, so individual. And we've obviously designed so much for uniformity and conformity over the last hundred years, you know, industrialization, etc. How do you do that for your family? You've all got individual requirements, needs, sensitivities. How do you do that? Well, in our house, basically, yes, as the kids were growing up, as they grow up, they have different needs. But probably we can resolve a few things with furniture, but we were lucky enough to be able to refurbish our own house so we can create these subspaces I was mentioning.

41:37I could have done a big open plan just like that, but we created these subspaces on purpose. And so we sort of, a lot of things are given the rule by intuition, how things are going to pan out. it's not that easy to future proof how you're going to the family is going to develop but yeah with the needs at the moment we had we cater for them uh and i think we're doing well so spots don't you in your house like you do i notice obviously at home with my family i mean even with the dogs right like you you have your places where you like to sit or where you like to be yeah and then it's a matter of respecting that and recognizing it and and more is what you said at the beginning.

42:19Things happen that probably are not the right time or the right place, but you need to assume that that's what that child needs at that time. There's a specific need and then we need to recognize it and accept it and work around it. Yep. So my last question, Pablo, is you're obviously wearing one of our green dots available from our website and I'd love to give you another one. Great. And ask, yeah, who you would like to give your second green dot badge to and why. I would like to give it to Jean Hewitt, which is the technical director for the past 64, 63. She did an amazing, amazing job. And then, yeah, she well deserved it.

43:01It was Jean who I was reading had come up with the three Cs and obviously she wrote the technical narrative for that report. Having to say that, the report is backed by a huge body of experts and so on. Transport for London. For instance, yeah. but a lot of experts in different disciplines about the sensory world and so on. So, you know, experts in neurodiversity. It's very interesting. So it's very difficult, even if it's not a regulation yet or standard as such, but it's so much backed up by a lot of scientific studies that we need to follow it as a best practice. It's very difficult not to.

43:37Yeah, why wouldn't we? Exactly. Why wouldn't we? The information is there. The guide is there. Yeah, I guess I'm leaving thinking, okay oh this has reinvigorated me on my love of sort of biomimicry and nature and that as it relates to environments lighting paying more attention to the lighting i'm attracted to versus the lighting i might need or might be actually better for me than having stuff so blooming bright the whole time that's right sound and how i am pretty sensitive to sound and so how i can just notice maybe a bit more the acoustics yes of where i am and then i guess i'm just really struck by we have this physical legal framework for accessibility within architecture and that's great and i know has yeah made huge improvements but from a sensory and a cognitive perspective whilst we have the PAS report there's still a lot of work to do a lot of work to do it'd be amazing to think that the strides and progress that's been done in physical accessibility could be taken yeah through to sensory and cognitive yes absolutely right thanks Pablo your world is is super interesting thank you for having me I hope there are more architects like you who approach things from a my two favorite ends nature and neurodiversity perspective so that we can build better environments for people yes absolutely right thank you

45:23that's it for today's episode of the hidden 20 but just before you go a favor the hidden 20 is a charity and we do this to bring you the truth the latest research and the real stories that matter so if this episode spoke to you then please hit subscribe and if you can donate via the link below finally a big shout out to you all for listening and our brilliant team who make this all happen phoebe charlie kristen james john and the guys at tyx studios we'll see you next time

46:04Thank you.