The architecture of happiness: Why some homes just feel right

HousingWire

On this episode of Power House, Zeb Lowe sits down with architect and researcher Ann Sussman to explore a provocative idea: many modern homes and neighborhoods are fundamentally out of sync with human biology.   Drawing on neuroscience, architecture and urban design, Ann explains why our brains are wired for faces, detail, walkable environments, and how blank facades, oversized roads and car-centric development can quietly contribute to stress, isolation and disconnection.   From Disneyland's Main Street to Amsterdam and Nantucket, the conversation explores why some places feel instantly welcoming while others never quite do. If you build, finance, design or sell housing, this episode may permanently change how you see the built environment.   Related to the episode:   ⁠Zeb Lowe’s LinkedIn⁠  https://www.linkedin.com/in/zebulon-lowe-a02353a4/  Ann Sussman's LinkedIn  https://www.linkedin.com/in/ann-sussman-a1a34a14?utm_source=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=member_ios  theHAPI.org  https://www.thehapi.org/   Want more from Zeb? Don’t forget to subscribe to LendingLife.  https://www.housingwire.com/newsletter/   The Power House podcast brings the biggest names in housing to answer hard-hitting questions about industry trends, operational and growth strategy, and leadership. Join HousingWire’s Zeb Lowe every Thursday morning for candid conversations with industry leaders to learn how they’re differentiating themselves from the competition. Hosted and produced by the HousingWire Content Studio.

Transcript

00:00Today's guest is Anne Sussman, licensed architect, researcher, author of Cognitive Architecture,

00:05and president of the Human Architecture and Planning Institute, the HAPI. Anne's argument,

00:11backed by neuroscience and a pretty uncomfortable read of architectural history, is that the American

00:17built environment has not been designed for human beings for decades, and the consequences are

00:22showing up in loneliness rates, public health data, and a generation of younger buyers walking

00:28away from home ownership in ways that should keep all of us up at night.

00:42All right, Anne, thank you for joining me.

00:44Thank you for the invitation.

00:46Yes, ma'am. I tell you, I could not be more pleased to have you on to speak with me

00:52and educate me

00:53really more of what I think to be one of the most important and least discussed, maybe even the least

01:00recognized or understood issues in the housing industry at large. I say least understood, but I

01:07don't know if that's the right phrasing, because I think what you and I are going to talk about today

01:10is something that everyone knows at a subconscious level. They feel it, but maybe have not quite put

01:19their finger on it or understand exactly what it is, which is kind of the philosophy of design and

01:23the intent behind that in the built environment. So to get things started, do you mind sharing with

01:33the audience just what it is exactly that you do and why you feel your work and this topic is

01:38so

01:38important right now?

01:40Oh, that's so cool. Well, so yeah, I'm Anne Sussman. I have a license in architecture, and actually what

01:46I'm doing is what I never learned in school. We call it the 21st century paradigm shift,

01:53understanding our human animal nature and how things start subliminally. That's what it's really

01:58about, that the non-conscious directs you, the unconscious directs you. It's a little scary,

02:03but the car companies and the tech companies know this. So they're designing for your primate

02:08subliminal behaviors you don't even realize you have. We see the world like an animal because we are one,

02:14and our brain is preset evolutionarily. It's decided there's really specific things we have

02:20to see. And the car companies and the business world know this. The most important thing for the

02:25human brain to see is another face. It turns out that more of our biology, more of our brain,

02:31more of our neurons are about face perception than anything else. And you can see it's not random that

02:36the Starbucks logo is a face. Kentucky fried chicken, it's a face. Amazon, it's a smile.

02:43It's not random. It's they know that's what we're built to see quickest, and that's what we're built

02:48to focus on as a social species. So it's a completely, and when you, and it really applies

02:53to housing and architecture as well. Because when you look at, that's what's fascinating too. When you

02:58look at, I make my students do a postcard test. And when you look at the postcards they sell

03:04in Boston or wherever, often the buildings on the postcards are face-like, you know?

03:10Right. Right. Well, that's what actually, I mean, that's, that's the main thing that I mean,

03:15I had you on to talk about for, for, as the, its impact in housing and, uh, in architecture. You

03:20know,

03:20you, uh, you are a licensed architect. You got a master's degree. You went through all the training,

03:26passed the exams, you built a, a career. And like you said, that the, the most important thing

03:31they didn't teach you, um, going through that process. So at what point did you realize that

03:36the profession itself had gotten something fundamentally, uh, wrong? And, uh, where along

03:44your journey did you realize that? What was that realization? And then how did you, uh, what,

03:50I guess, right turn did you make to kind of course track?

03:54Well, it's a really good question because when I went to architecture school, biology was never

03:57discussed, you know, at all, you know, but I went to architecture school because I'd lived in Europe

04:02for five years in my twenties. And it was really interesting to me to watch Americans come to,

04:06come to Paris where I live. And they always hung out around the old parts of Paris. They wouldn't

04:10go to the new parts. And I'm thinking, why, you know, why is that? And I just started to be

04:15really

04:15interesting. Um, just the human experience, what human experience is. And, um, and you don't really

04:23study that in architecture school. You don't do evidence-based design. Um, and human experience

04:28really matters. You know, um, it's not random that Disneyland main street, which I think it's

04:34on three continents now, Disneyland, there's one in Paris, there's one in Asia, there's one in

04:39Florida, there's one in, in California, Disneyland main street is like 52 different face, like building

04:46elevations, very, very innate three stories. It's not random. They're not all glass buildings on

04:51Disneyland main street. They would never build that. They, they built these very highly detailed

04:57articulate building facades. And each one is face-like even the fair. Why do you think that

05:04you were earlier, you were talking about the, uh, you know, business schools are serving this

05:09tech schools are tech companies or something. So why is the, uh, the, the architecture and home

05:18builders, why, why are they not adopting this? Cause there's, I mean, that's, what's interesting

05:22about this, which I want to, this is such an, uh, kind of an expansive and deep topic to,

05:27to, to parcel through, but there's a business case for it. It's not like what you're doing

05:32or what you advocate for is just like hippie dippy nonsense where there's no business case

05:36for it. It's just like, feel good, you know, sunshine and, and unicorns. Like there's an actual

05:41business case for designing homes and designing communities that make people happier, that are

05:48fundamentally attractive to people and decrease loneliness, decrease so much of the, just the,

05:55the, the, the social and societal rot that we are experiencing right now. There's a business case for

06:02it. Oh yeah. So why is it not, why is it not adopted? Cause other, like I said, other industries

06:07are adopting this. Oh, no, it's a little scary. Like the car companies I think are the biggest

06:13purchasers of the biometric tools like eye tracking, facial expression analysis. They really want to

06:18really understand the customer and not only for the ad for the cars, but they, they actually study

06:23the front end of the car. What, what is the mood, the front end? And there was an article once

06:28in

06:28the wall street journal, how in 2007 or something, cars got angry because they really study the front

06:33of the car, you know, they really want, they want, because they understand that buying, purchasing

06:39isn't always logical. It's biological, it's non-conscious. And, you know, and then you

06:44purchase because of what's happening subliminally. So it's the subliminal behaviors. That's what the

06:49business world studies completely. If you go to business school now at Suffolk University, you have

06:54to do an eye tracking test study to get a two year master's in marketing. UMass Amherst now business

07:02school has an eye tracking lab. Worcester Polytech has an eye tracking lab.

07:06Do you think that there, and not, not to go into any crazy conspiracy theories or anything,

07:12but if you kind of look at, there was a documentary many years ago that I watched,

07:15it was called the, who killed the electric car, right? And you know, the, the, the possibility

07:19of an electric car wide, you know, adoption, mainstream adoption of electric car was available

07:24back in the late eighties, early nineties, something like that. And then you, you saw that

07:29it was the larger, uh, the gas and oil companies and in conjunction with the large auto manufacturers,

07:38they kind of worked together to snuff that out because there was already an infrastructure

07:43built in place for gas powered vehicles. And so my question, do you think that there's

07:49an element of, like I said, there is a business case for designing homes that are more hospitable

07:56for humans? Do you think that there's a bit of like reluctance because there's a business

08:02case for, there's reluctance or hesitancy to make that transition because there's already

08:08an, an infrastructure in the, either the, in the architecture space or in the, in the design

08:12space, in the building, in the home building space that allows for this mass production of

08:18the same type of thing. Right. That's, that's your, you're going to go down the conspiracy

08:23rabbit hole. No, I'm not sure it's a conspiracy theory, but it's, um, it's basically the better

08:29you understand the customer, the more money you'll make and understanding. And there was

08:33a reason, you know, Disneyland worked so well that, that people, their faces everywhere.

08:38And especially on, on the cartoon characters and whatever the sculptures, and then the buildings

08:42are face-like too. And they're all, and there's highly detailed. We're built for attachment

08:47to other people. And we love looking for our brain. That's the amazing thing about the brain.

08:50When you start setting it in like microseconds, it can detect a face. That's the first thing we're

08:56built to see. Now, so it's really important. So houses, or you go to Amsterdam, Amsterdam has lots

09:05of modern buildings. They're never on the postcards. The postcards are all the canal houses that look

09:10fat face-like. You know? So what are elements that, that, of, of design? What should homes and

09:18communities be designed like? I mean, what, what are those? Well, it's, it's difficult. The home

09:24building, the home building industry is difficult because it's one thing, it's one thing, the house

09:27interior, that's where you're going to live, but it's another thing, the house and what it looks

09:31like on the street. Will someone want to walk by the street? Will it be, will you, will you want

09:36to walk

09:36out of your house? Will it be easy to walk to? Because you realize architecture is really just,

09:41not just about building facades. It's really about movement. Architecture is, can you, can you get,

09:46go get tea? Can you get to the library? Can you get to your church? Can you get to your

09:50school?

09:50How are you going to get there? And traditional communities before the car were designed for that

09:55walkability, right? And now in post-World War II, we just went car-centric and we designed for cars and

10:02isolated houses. It doesn't quite work. And it's going to be a disaster. I mean, I'm part of

10:06the baby boom. There are 70 million of us born between 46 and 64. And there never have been that

10:13many aging Americans in a history. It's called civil tsunami. And we don't have the housing for

10:18them. And we don't have the transit for them. And we haven't built, and often they built the senior

10:23housing in places where people can't walk anywhere. Even though they now know if you don't walk 4,000

10:29steps a day, they can predict when you'll get dementia. You're built for walking.

10:34We're built for walking. So housing matters, but also housing infrastructure. What is it next to?

10:40What does it feel like walking down the street? Will an older person feel safe? Will a toddler feel

10:45safe? You know, it's walking matters.

10:49When you were trying to discover this question, or the answer to the question, like Copenhagen,

10:54right, or Paris, why do you immediately feel at home in these spaces? Even though you've never

11:02lived there. And you and I had spoke previously, and I have a very similar story and experience of

11:07my own. Whenever you set out to answer the question, how long did it really, how long do you feel

11:13like

11:13it took to find a real answer? And where did that answer come from? Was there, in this journey,

11:20this search, was there an aha moment? Well, I think the reason why, well, I realized something

11:26was wrong because I remember when I went to Copenhagen, I felt I could walk so easily there,

11:31but I wasn't even from there. And I don't speak Danish. It made no sense. It made perfect sense.

11:36They've worked on really making the cars safe for pedestrian and bicyclists first, but cars second

11:41for the past 40 years. And, you know, it makes perfect sense. I guess what happened is I am in

11:47Boston.

11:47It's a biotech center. And about 12 years ago, I found this, found out about this biotech company

11:53called iMotions, and they do eye tracking, facial expression analysis. And then when you start running

11:58one or two of these studies, you realize, oh my God, we really are animals. And our mother nature is

12:03preset where we're going to look before our conscious awareness. And you realize, and you realize

12:09traditional, most American suburbs, they put you in kind of a vigilant state. You don't feel calm

12:14walking down them. You want to just sit in your house. It doesn't make for walking. So great design

12:20is not only great house design, but it's great community design, because people aren't meant to be

12:24alone. We're meant to be working together. We're meant to be seeing each other. So I'm not sure I

12:31answered your question, but I realized that, you know, there's no biology, no psychology requirement to

12:35get a master's degree or a license in architecture in the United States, even though you're designing

12:39primate habitat. And the business world is just completely, I think Steve Jobs, I read, hired his

12:45first PhD neuroscientist in 1975, because he realized the computer industry was siloized, not thinking

12:52about the computer experience. So his idea was to combine the neuroscience expertise with the computer

12:58expertise to build, you know, your iPhone. Yeah. Before we get into the science specifically,

13:06can you relay the, the, the human story behind, I mean, I think that we worldwide or Western society,

13:14at least you really start to see this deviation from old world design, traditional design into

13:19after world war II and with the, the, the rise of, of the modernist and, and modernism,

13:28unpack that story a little bit. What happened to the modernist architects and how did that end up

13:36shaping basically every major city in the Western world? Yeah. Well, you know, design culture, it's,

13:43it's, it's, it's, it's industry makes changes and industry architecture is a combination of design,

13:50history, new, new technologies, you know, because of world war one, the Germans became experts at

13:58ferro concrete construction because they built so many trenches and bunkers. And now with, with

14:03brutalism, you've got ferro concrete construction everywhere, you know, you know, and, and the big

14:08tech changes that happened, you know, we were running to embrace a modern world, especially

14:15after world war II and car centrism happened. And we did it not knowing, I once went to a lecture

14:21at

14:21Harvard by an evolutionary biologist, Dan Lieberman. He says, the male body evolved to walk 12 miles a day.

14:27The female body evolved to walk nine miles a day. So we're built for walking. And if you don't do

14:33that,

14:33you get obesity, depression, you know, lower longevity. They now know America is, I don't

14:38know if you know this, I think we're 44th in longevity. It's the lowest longevity of any developed

14:43country expected to be 66th by 2050 or something we're plummeting. And I think there are many reasons

14:50for it, you know, no national healthcare, there are all kinds of reasons. But one reason is where we don't,

14:55we're not designing our world, the way we places that really encourage human flourishing.

15:01So it's, and it's, so it's just, and it's really a compounding, I guess, tragedy of errors, right?

15:06Where it's, you have, not only is it the fact that we're not moving, we don't live in environments

15:12that encourage us to get up and take the hard number of steps today, but also we, also the,

15:18the, the, the, the homes themselves lend itself to isolation, isolation, right?

15:23We don't have, we don't have shared spaces that, that, that encourage you to, to actually get out.

15:30You have no, no community space where you can go meet up. It's funny in Boston, because of the

15:34World Cup, they actually made these in, in, in certain cities like Cambridge, areas where you

15:39could walk around with a beer to bring people together, you know? And, and in some towns,

15:47they're making common areas where you can all watch the World Cup outside to bring people together.

15:51And you're starting to see that more. But yeah, the, the way we built after World War II, we really

15:57promoted cars not knowing it's biologically not what we're supposed to be in. We're supposed to be

16:02walking, communicating, meeting up, seeing someone walking their dog, you know? That's what we're supposed

16:08to be doing.

16:09So, yeah. I mean, I think the, like the American suburb is, is kind of held up or has been

16:14held up

16:14traditionally as the fulfillment of the dream. You know, you have your own house, you have your own yard,

16:19space, privacy. And I think now you could argue it with, at very least with the, the, because the

16:26suburb, suburbs themselves have evolved over the last 30 years. And so a suburb in 2026 is not the

16:32same suburb that, you know, of 1986 or 1991 or something like that. Very, those are very different

16:39spaces. Where do you, the, the suburbs themselves now, how do you recommend or what do you see as a,

16:48as a, a corrective measure for, for those spaces?

16:53Oh my gosh. That's huge. You know, because I think for suburbs to work, you need to make

16:57them more walkable and bikeable. Yeah. And, and, and that means you putting in sidewalks,

17:04making more green spaces, having places where people can meet up at a cafe.

17:09You know, just having, you need, you need that walkable space. We're really not meant to be

17:14driving. We're supposed to be walking, but the terrifying thing, even where I live in a historic

17:18town of Concord, Massachusetts, parents are afraid to let their kids walk to school.

17:25Cars have gotten bigger. There are, you know, 800 car crashes a year here or more. And, and, you know,

17:33I think in the past five years, we've had three deaths in car crashes. It's just, it's too dangerous.

17:39And as the population ages, it's going to get worse. So we're not, we're not designing biologically.

17:45I think there's the, the problem with modernism and the car centers is when there's the sense

17:50we're above nature, not that we're of nature. Yes. Uh, you and I spoke in our, uh, in our,

17:57our introductory call a couple of months ago. And I, one of the things that I really enjoyed about

18:03our, our initial conversation, I really enjoyed. I, I, I listened to you. I heard about,

18:09I found out about you through Austin Sunnell and building culture and my, I have a background

18:16and I have a master's in English and philosophy. And, and, uh, I put myself through school building

18:21homes. I've had a construction background. I was a, I was a lender. I, you know, I'm in this space

18:26now

18:26in the housing industry from a media perspective, but, um, I, I tend to view things through a more

18:35literary lens. And, uh, one of my favorite poems was a love song jail for proof rock by TS Eliot.

18:42And the whole premise one, that entire poem is him kind of meandering through a city, a modern

18:49built environment and how out of sync he is with his humanity. And that, and this came up in our

18:56call

18:56and I was like, yeah, the, in that poem, the, the, the plight of the, of modern man is that

19:01our, our,

19:03our technology has outpaced our humanity. It's exactly right. We are living in, and we're living

19:10in environments and we're continuing to create environments that are not for us yet. They are

19:15made for us under the, with the impression that we are progressing. We are regretting that. Yeah,

19:22that's exactly right. Our technology is way ahead of our biology. And in some ways,

19:27the really wealthy people know that. So on, so the really wealthy areas, historic districts,

19:34or like the Island of Nantucket off the coast of Massachusetts, they passed a historic by-law,

19:39I think banning all modern architecture in 1972. It has no street lights, all traditional housing,

19:46and a house now is $4 million, the starting price. And it's now, it's, it's now just for the

19:53wealthy. And when you walk, people walk down the street holding hands, only cobblestone streets,

19:57all brick crosswalks, cars go seven miles an hour. This, the town, the towns there are for you.

20:04It's not for cars. It's not for, and so like the wealthy get what people need. And now it,

20:10it, when I was a kid, the middle-class family could go there. Now it's like

20:17like encapsulate, I've seen a couple, like a handful of memes that just encapsulate this so

20:20perfectly. Um, uh, and, and one of them, it was a, uh, it was a stone. It was a small

20:28stone, uh, not even a bridge, just a crossway, which that, uh, connected two pieces of, uh, uh,

20:36land over a small Creek. And below it was, uh, I was like, it was along the lines of like,

20:40they stole beauty from you and sold it back as a luxury. Right. Exactly.

20:45And, um, I saw, there was an article I was reading just the other day and it was, uh,

20:51you don't see them that much anymore. A couple of years ago where you had the, the smart appliances,

20:56you know, this, the refrigerators with the huge like computer screens on them basically. And the,

21:03again, the idea of, of progress and, uh, and technology as, um, as, as a, as a signifier of

21:11how we could, should continue to, to, to build our, our, our homes and how, you know, now that is,

21:18I mean, no, no one that is truly, um, uh, wealthy has that in their, in their home, right? That's

21:24like a,

21:25that is an assumption of, of a high end, uh, a high end purchase for your home. And, um,

21:33you know, I, okay. So I'm, I can go off on this forever. I'm going to go back to one

21:37of the things

21:37I, uh, originally was discussing with you, which is, uh, the, this sense of, um, belonging, right?

21:46Like, you know, old town districts, historic neighborhoods and people, you know, when you

21:51describe these places where people feel, people describe visiting places where they feel alive,

21:57they can't quite, they don't quite know why that is. Yes. Um, okay. So beyond the, I mean, I know

22:03that

22:03the, the, that you studied this through the, uh, the eye tracking and, uh, the facial recognition of

22:08the build, all of that, but why is the body responding to those places, uh, that the brain consciously

22:15registers? Yeah. That's so interesting. Well, so the brain is, the brain is, remember we evolved in the

22:20savannah and the brain we have, I've read, hasn't changed for 40,000 years and architecture is only

22:28about 7,000 years old. So we're, we're, we're built for maybe 10,000 years old. We're built for living

22:33in the wild. And when you live in the wild and a lion might jump in at any time, your

22:38body has to

22:39respond before you exactly know what jumped in. So, so what they explain is that the heart rate,

22:45your breath rate, your, your sweat glands, your pupil dilation, it's all responding before you

22:51even know consciously what you're looking at. Your body's already responding. It has to,

22:56so you're designing for the non-conscious body. It's already responding. And that's,

23:00I guess I got to repeat myself. The fact that car companies really know this. I read, I saw this

23:06amazing interview from a car designer. I might've showed you this. I think he was the lead designer

23:11for Lincoln. He was told because of COVID to come up with a new design idea for the car. And

23:16he said,

23:16okay, when you get into the new Lincoln, this is the quote, you'll feel hugged by your mother.

23:22Yes. Yeah. He's not talking about, you know, acceleration speed. No, he's talking about the

23:26non-conscious. I mean, do I need to feel hugged, hugged by my mother? I'm over 60, right? Do I

23:31need

23:31to feel that? No, yeah, you do. You still need to feel that. And he's designing for your primate,

23:37primal instincts. So what things do we respond to at a design? So like I, I took a course a

23:43while

23:44back. It was called the Premise of Beauty. And one of the things that the professor was talking

23:49about was texture. And beauty is not, beauty is not smooth. Beauty has texture. You know,

23:57beauty is not long, straight, not, you know, perfectly, you know, perpendicular, intersecting lines.

24:03Beauty is... Beauty is not blank. Beauty is not blank, yeah. Beauty is not blank. It's so interesting.

24:10And so, yeah, so tech, so I think when you study the human brain, you learn that vision is our

24:17major thing. We're very, very visual. And they even think our sense of smell is going down,

24:21is declining. We're hugely visual. And after vision, touch is very important. So again, the Apple

24:26store designed by PhD neuroscientists, you walk into Apple, what do you see? People. And then what do you do?

24:33There's these big tables, like dining room tables, and you're invited to touch the new iPad. Why?

24:39That's called the endowment effect to survive on the Savannah. When we touch things, we would take

24:44it home and go eat them or share it. So they're using, they're using the most primitive primate

24:51habits to sell the most sophisticated technology in the world. Do you get what they're doing?

24:57So you are maybe even looking for an iPhone tablet, but you suddenly touch it and they know

25:01non-consciously you'll feel, oh, it's mine. And so that's why they do it. They combine,

25:09they recognize we're animals and they embrace it to sell the most sophisticated tech in the world.

25:15It's insane. And without the people realizing it, that's what's scary to me.

25:22Can you, um, you, you had mentioned earlier, we were talking about the modernist, uh, uh, architects.

25:29Um, can you relay or reshare, uh, you told the story on, uh, on building culture there,

25:37the, uh, the post-traumatic stress disorder, um, like what emerged from their designs due to the

25:44conditions in which they live through. Right. Well, that's the thing too. So we're hardwired.

25:49There's a reason, you know, um, we like looking like face, like houses is what we normally want

25:55to see. And the reason we love detail, no matter. Okay. Pause there. Okay. Cause you said that several

26:00times. Can you explain what that means? What do you mean to face, like a house that has a face,

26:04like has like face, like features? Well, well, when you ask, it's really weird. I ask people,

26:09I've asked about over 500 people as draw a house. Like you're a five-year-old, if you're five,

26:12no matter where people, and tell me where you grew up and no matter what country they're from,

26:16people draw a house that looks like a face, bilaterally symmetrical, usually with two windows,

26:24eyes, and then a door in the center. Uh, and it doesn't matter if they come from India. It doesn't

26:28matter if they come from Kuwait. It doesn't matter if they come from Canada. It doesn't matter if they

26:32draw the same thing. Why? Because the, because it's in your brain that they know, but the infant already

26:38has that pattern in the brain. It's the most important thing for us to see. We don't see

26:42reality. We see the reality that allowed us to survive on the savanna. And so not seeing spaces

26:47is really important. And then why did buildings become not face-like and modern? Well, lots of

26:52reasons, new tech, curtain wall construction, new ways of making steel, all that stuff happened 19th,

26:5920th century. But what also happened was war, war, um, they now know, they didn't really know this till

27:06the late 20th century. Post-traumatic stress disorder. It wasn't even a word doctors knew

27:11until 1980. The doctor's manual put it in there and called PTSD now. Um, and they didn't realize,

27:22oh, the brain is really changed if a vet, because they couldn't understand after Vietnam, why the

27:26vets weren't, weren't snapping out of it, you know? And, and now they, that the brain has completely

27:32changed. And then the magnetic resonance imaging, which allows you to scan soft tissue. Um, that

27:38didn't come really online till like the 1990s or so. It wasn't 1995. They actually took a vet and

27:44scanned his brain and they were stunned. His brain had shrunk. What? So he loses the ability to see

27:51detail because 50% of your cells in your brain are about vision. You lose the ability to see detail.

27:56And then you become, and, and you become, you stay non-consciously in fear. You don't even realize

28:02that. So these architects that had survived World War I. One. Like Gropius, they had changed the way

28:09that they saw. Yeah, changed how they say, and that they designed. I showed pictures of Walter

28:15Gropius' house. Harvard hired Walter Gropius in the 30s to teach modern architecture. Gropius founded the

28:21Bauhaus, you know, the modern movement. And they hired him not knowing he had post-traumatic stress disorder.

28:26Because it wasn't, it wasn't even a word doctors knew until 1980, right? And, um, so Gropius' house

28:32is all blank with no detail at all. The, the front door is hidden. And, um, I showed it to

28:38a, uh,

28:39professor at Harvard Medical School and he said to me, every image of this house is post-traumatic

28:43stress disorder. So that they, they could tell. So PTSD, so modern buildings like they become so blank

28:48and you can't find the front door. Why is that? Well, the people who came up with the, um,

28:53the, the, the, the basic pattern for it didn't see the world neurotypically.

28:59Yeah, I think, uh, that was a real revelation for me because I, I, I joked about being conspiracy

29:04minded earlier, uh, in, uh, in our conversation because I kind of, I just felt, I just assumed

29:10that this ugliness and this design was, it was a choice.

29:14That there was a soul crushing agenda that just imposed upon modern society. Um, I mean,

29:21it makes total sense for, to hear you, you know, and then, and then, but also it wasn't

29:25just people who were in the war, you know, the whole culture got PTSD. Everybody wanted to run

29:30from the past, you know, and often in your family, I didn't find out about certain things

29:35about family till after my parents died. Nobody wanted to tell me, you know, people wouldn't,

29:39it was the idea of, you know, you suck it up. We don't talk about it. You know, it was

29:43a different

29:44time. I think now the younger generation is very much into sharing what, what's confusing them,

29:50what, what has pain. But in the past, the 20th century, we wanted to run from the past,

29:54build something new, you know, cars without seat belts and leaded gas. Let's go for it. You know,

30:00not knowing that we're actually killing ourselves and the environment by doing that.

30:04Right. Yeah. That was a, that was a calling card for, uh, for Ezra Pound, who was one of the,

30:08in the literature world was, uh, uh, uh, pioneer from the, in the modernist movement and his calling

30:14card, it was make it new, make it new. And when you study post-traumatic stress disorder,

30:19you see, that is also a thing. You don't want to look at the past that you see that they

30:23understand

30:24now biologically, the brain actually does shut down and doesn't let you look at the past.

30:29Unless you, and they, cause they didn't know how to treat it. Now, now they realize you have to treat

30:33it.

30:34Um, and there's a great quote by a Buddhist teacher, Daisaku Akita, a successful vision

30:40of the future is not possible without an accurate knowledge of the past. And our, and our past is

30:45often quite painful. So you can understand the break with, with, with the past architecture,

30:49we're going to build something modern. And plus you had all this new technology that came. I think

30:54post-World War II, there was also the, uh, curtain wall construction came and then, then you could build

30:59these buildings where, where, where the walls no longer support the structure. It was a completely

31:05different way of technology.

31:06Well, I mean, we started building, we started building the world out of plastic and then,

31:09and then, and plastic. Oh my God.

31:11Don't use these, you know, yeah. Macroplastics are, there's,

31:14My husband just got me a microplastic test. You know, now microplastics are everywhere.

31:20We're killing the oceans with microplastics. You know, it's talking the other day. There's,

31:24there are more microplastics in a glass bottle than there are in an actual plastic water bottle,

31:31which I don't even know how that, I don't, I don't even know how that works, but yeah,

31:34it's everywhere. But, but at the time it was this, you know, it was this innovative and a way to

31:38reshape the world or remake the, you know, remake the world. And you don't really realize the

31:42consequences of those until, which is the thing whenever you write, whenever you are, when you're,

31:47when you're at this, when you adopt this mindset, we're all, you know, make it new, tear down the

31:52old and, you know, kind of start from scratch. So, um, when I, like I said, this is such a

31:57sprawling

31:58topic. I want to try to bring it back into the housing industry and, and, uh, and, uh, specifically

32:06like moving, you know, moving forward and course correcting, like whenever you and I had spoke

32:12previously, uh, you kind of compared this moment to like doctors before they discovered the

32:20importance of washing their hands or car companies. It's a paradigm shift. It's a paradigm shift or it's

32:26a Bill Gates, Steve Jobs paradigm shift. Well, I weren't digital and IBM making iPhones. Why didn't

32:31they, cause they, they're making so much money often. Everything is finance driven, you know,

32:38it's all finance driven and they're making so much money. And from an inflection, like at this

32:43inflection point, like how close to that inflection point do you think that we are for the built,

32:48for the built environment? Do you still think that we're, you know, a couple of decades away before we

32:54see any sort of meaningful, uh, meaningful change in the way that homes are built and, and, and communities

33:01are, are, are laid out? Yeah. I think we just have to start being humble and realize we're all part

33:08of

33:08a system. Um, we have to be humble and, and, and recognize we're all in it together. We're not above

33:16nature. We're of nature. And often the things we're doing, um, are, are hurting us all. And we have to

33:23set new standards for health and wellbeing. You know, is it right, right to make the plastics?

33:29Um, and how do we do it? And, and, and it often there's these embodied costs. We act like they're

33:38not there, but they are there. It's just like leaded gas and gasoline in cars was hurting infants

33:44breathing it, you know, or, but I think, I think it's the housing industry, the finance industry,

33:52the architecture industry, it's kind of a difficult time because it's all about money really. And

33:58architects often don't have that much control. It's really the bankers and the real estate

34:02developers that control the, what gets built. That's one of the biggest questions that I wanted

34:07to, to, to ask you. So you don't, you know, we don't necessarily have an academic audience that's,

34:11that's listened to this. So it's, you know, people that rocket mortgage, you know, D R Horton,

34:17one of the biggest builders in the United States, Keller Williams. If, if, if you had their ear,

34:25what do you say to them or where do you share with them that makes it makes the business case

34:31for, for building differently? Well, when you look at how the resorts are built,

34:38or you look at how Disneyland's built or Caesar's palace, you know, those places are built to delight

34:47and they do. And people come from all over the world. I was recently in Las Vegas and I was

34:53stunned

34:53to see parents pushing strollers with children in it through Caesar's palace.

35:01But it's fascinating to walk through it. And, and the mall is amazing.

35:07And, and it's just a Caesar. Have you been to the Caesar's palace mall?

35:11Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

35:12Yeah. It's absolutely amazing. So they get the neuroscience. They know what people need to

35:16see. They know what people need to see to be delighted. They know, they know if they made

35:21it all blank glass, it wouldn't work.

35:23Do you think that we currently from a, one of the biggest issues with the, with the housing industry,

35:30you know, right now, especially for many sort of like big picture reform is a one zoning and

35:35zoning is a local, it's a local issue. Do you, do you see a, I guess from a, let's just

35:43start with

35:44zoning, but do you see an infrastructure? If it, if builders and builders, investors,

35:52they decided that they wanted to kind of course correct in the way that they approach the design

35:57of their homes and neighborhoods. Do you feel like we have the, the infrastructure to support that?

36:03Maybe from those, like I said, the zoning issue, a, a, a, a builder skill.

36:09Well, I think you can do evidence-based design. Why, why is Nantucket? Why do people love Nantucket?

36:15Why do people love walking in the mall in Caesar's palace? You could do evidence-based design and the

36:20buildings really in some ways are very similar. Lots of detail, bilateral symmetry, top, middle,

36:25and bottom face, like facade. It's quite similar and very walkable. And then you have to think,

36:31are you designing a building that would be on a postcard? And are you designing a building

36:35that someone's just going to ignore? You know, there's this old English saying,

36:39out of sight, out of mind. You know, if we're not going to even look at it,

36:42we're not going to think about it. We're not going to think of, hey, meet me for T-ZEB in

36:45front of

36:47that building. If it's not something we want to look at, you won't even think about that, you know.

36:53If you, there've been a few things that you've, that you've kind of layered in throughout the

36:58conversation. If there was one element of design or, or planning that you could correct for

37:06immediately, is it wrong to assume that the first step would be walkability?

37:11Walkability, but also if we have to build for community. So I think you want to have

37:16designed for approachable housing rather than avoidant. In neuroscience, they talk about approach

37:22avoidant. Your brain is hardwired to either want to approach, look at something or look away. So you want

37:27to, you want to go for the instinct where you want to look towards it.

37:31What does that look like in a, in a home, in a neighborhood? What makes it approachable?

37:35Well, you approachable, usually a facelike facade, bilaterally symmetrical, detail, shutters,

37:40you know, top, middle and bottom. And not every house exact, oh my God, you see these neighborhoods

37:45where all the houses are exactly the same. That's not how the Cadal houses are in Amsterdam. They're all

37:50slightly different. And that makes it more, you might have two that are similar and then three that are

37:55different. And you know, you want diversity, you know, diversity within the same system to make

38:03it interesting to look at. Why did Disney do 52 different building elevations? Makes no sense.

38:09Makes perfect sense. It makes perfect sense. He sent his Imagineers to Europe to, in the 1950s,

38:17where are people the happiest? And they copied that. So in a way, that's what the real estate industry

38:23should be doing now. Where are people the happiest and copy it? Well, I was gonna say in the United

38:27States, you mentioned Nantucket, but where are the happiest places in the United States from a design

38:33standpoint? Well, I don't know. I think someone said Wyoming was happy. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. But

38:39I think, I think, you know, what you can really see the most expensive, what's happened in my lifetime

38:43is beauty now becomes just the domain of the wealthy, the mega rich. Yeah, that's what's happened,

38:51where it didn't used to be like that. And the private schools too, the private high schools are

38:57often really beautiful old buildings. The buildings that the kids go, the regular kids go to, they

39:02look like, you know, factories. Well, I wanted to, I didn't want to close out before mentioning this.

39:10So anybody that, like I said, this is something that I, I believe this is a very important,

39:16a very important pressure issue in our, in our society. And especially, you know, I think that

39:22we're pretty close to that inflection point with just the issues of mental health issues and, and

39:27physical health issues and how that is so much. Right. You know better than anybody else tied into

39:33the world that we are building for the world that we're building for ourselves. And in my opinion,

39:38people, anybody that is in the housing industry, whether you sell mortgages, you sell homes,

39:42or you build and design them, uh, you at least need to be conscious of, of what you're selling,

39:47what you're taking part in. So, you know, for anyone that is, that's interested in being able to see

39:53the world a bit more like, like you do, uh, the, the happy, uh, has courses on their website.

40:01Uh, correct. I think actually, I think you have a course bundle right now that's available.

40:07It's the happy.org. Is that right?

40:08Yeah. The happy.org. Yeah.

40:10Can we talk about those courses? What are they?

40:12Oh yeah. So the human architecture planning institute, we're a 501c3, we're a nonprofit.

40:16And the whole idea is how do we get the science out there? How do we bridge it?

40:20And, and the science is actually fascinating, understanding our animal nature,

40:24non-consciously we're wall huggers. So if you put a bench in the middle of the room,

40:28people weren't sitting, you put a bench by the edge of a wall, people are going to sit there.

40:32You just understanding human behavior, um, understanding our face bias,

40:36understanding how we prefer looking at symmetrical things than asymmetrical things.

40:40It's easier on our brain. So it's just basically course, understanding that.

40:43And then it shows you eye tracking and facial expression analysis. Those are tools that the

40:47business world now really uses to, um, help sell products. Um, they're, they're very, very smart.

40:54They understand our animal nature directs us. So they want to manipulate our animal nature

40:57and they know how to do it. Um, so we need to get the science out there. Um, two of

41:01the courses

41:02are free. We have bundles out there too. You can get them all for like $99. And it's just, um,

41:08we need to bridge the disciplines just the way Steve Jobs did, you know, understanding that we are

41:14animals, we're not modern, we're antique, and we're in a closed system, um, and build places for all.

41:21So the fact that just the wealthy get walkable places where you feel good and people walk down

41:26the street holding hands, um, that is not right. It should be everybody gets that.

41:31Steve Jobs Well, I signed up for my course.

41:32Actually, I got the course bundle last night and I encourage you to do the same.

41:37And look, and I, uh, we're coming up on our time. I really appreciate you taking the time to, uh,

41:41to, to speak with me. And, uh, I've got a few other kind of projects in, uh, uh, in the

41:47fire,

41:47uh, right now that I'd love to get your, get your opinion on.

41:51Steve Jobs We could do, we could do a research study. Let's get back. Let's do it. Let's get

41:54the science out there. Let's change the world for everybody for the common good.

41:58Steve Jobs Working on it one day at a time. Thank you, Ann.

42:01Ann Walker Thank you.

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