Unveiling the Intersection of Design and Neuroscience

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AJ: Welcome to Once Upon a Project. The podcast where we dive into the most ambitious, unexpected, and deeply human stories in design. I'm your host, AJ Paron, design futurist for Sandow Design Group, bringing you insights from your favorite design brands, interior Design Magazine, metropolis Design, milk, and Think lab.

today's episode explores the intersection of design and neuroscience.

How the spaces we create

can literally change the way we feel. Function and connect. And who better to guide us through this than sui ready, architect, designer, artist, and founder of Readymade. From a sensory driven installation at CEL to redefining what empathy means in architecture, Suchi takes us on a journey of [00:01:00] neuroaesthetics innovation and deeply personal purpose. This is one of those conversations that will stay with you long after you've stopped listening. Let's jump in.

tell the audience a little bit about your background.

Suchi: I am an architect and designer, and now also an artist. I was born and raised in South India, in a city that used to be called Madras, but is now called Chen.

I like the Czech Madras Cze that everyone knows. Um. But it is now called Chennai. And I left home when I was 18, uh, to come to this country to study architecture. I had started in India. I continued my education here in this country, and then went to work for some very large firms, uh, architecture firms around the country. so, I've actually lived in, I want to say at least eight different states in the United States and lots of big cities and very small towns. so I have a real lens on what it's like to be [00:02:00] American, to live in this country, to be an immigrant here, to figure out, um, really the place of people in society, right?

Like who are we? How do we work with each other across from all of these places? And for me, design and architecture really are the perfect place to study that. That's why I think interior design is so important. 'cause it's the first thing that people relate to.

AJ: what was the smallest town that you lived in?

Suchi: was Janesville, Wisconsin, I

AJ: Oh goodness.

Suchi: Yes, quite small. But I have dear, dear, dear friends there. Um, and it was such an amazing, it was also the first place where I actually started doing interiors because I was working for an architecture firm. They didn't have anyone working on interiors.

And we started working on a Montessori school and I put together this whole package that then got us a few million dollars in funding for the school. And they were like, oh, wow. Look at what we can do. And I was [00:03:00] like, yes, design has a lot of power. You know we gotta pull these kids in. We gotta figure out how design makes people come together, how they can learn better.

So this has been, as you can see, kind of an ongoing trajectory, part of. You know, enjoying the place that you're at, but also really seeing how you can move that forward, right? Like, how can we make this better and better and better? And that for me is. the real love that I have for design, architecture, and now art.

It really is. It's like, how can we love everything? We have and I know that sounds really woo woo, but I do believe it's possible.

AJ: No, I think it's possible too, and you are proof that it doesn't matter where you are, you, there's impact that design can make and sometimes in those smaller towns or smaller, I mean, you're in New York City now, so it's a far cry to working on that school in Wisconsin, but it, it does really. Play into kind of the phase that you've moved into [00:04:00] in your work.

So how would you describe what you do now

Suchi: so I started my practice. Honestly, I didn't even mean to start my own practice. I was working for a firm. I was doing a lot of retail design. Um, they lost a client the same day that they lost a major client. I. Somebody called me and said, would you design a house for us that I didn't know? And that's how I started my practice.

I had no intention of even starting my own practice. I was perfectly happy working for incredibly talented people. My, my previous boss, who is an Oh who is a mentor, who I continue to be in touch with, you know, it's like this larger world Of architecture, right? And all of a sudden off I am doing my own thing.

And then nine 11 happened. And I was like, oh my God, let me really think about is being an architect and designer the best thing I can do in this world? And then I really took time to think about it and I came back to saying, this is a skill I have that helps people and I do want to do, this is what I want the rest of my trajectory to be.

And so I [00:05:00] started the practice with that knowledge. And of course we started, you know, doing. Commercial interiors, residential interiors, uh, small architecture projects. And over the years, which we are now in year 23

AJ: Wow.

Suchi: I don't even, I don't even know how that happened, but here we are, 23 years later doing architecture of all scales, design of all scales and typologies and major art installations in major museums around the world.

So it's gone from being, you know, kind of this. naturally born trajectory into a place like you're saying, where, what are you actually thinking about now? You know, really starting to bring ideas into the practice, right? Not just having it be a practice about design, but being an idea focused practice.

So are we innovating in something? Are we doing the first of something? Are we pushing the boundary in something like 23 years later? I'm in a position where I can [00:06:00] think about these kinds of things. And so most of our clients end up being kind of the first of something. You know, whether it's like Google's first retail store ever on the planet, you know, or you know, a, a hospital room That's being designed to help children, um, recover faster.

From disorders of consciousness, or is it, you know, it's those kinds of things that I love kind of pushing the envelope on. And so I always joke and Say we have everything between a four inch round object and a campus plan. In the studio and everything in between. So it's a very fertile practice that's always influenced by how things feel.

AJ: Let's talk about this project that you worked on, and it's one of the first projects, um, I had really been exposed to with your work and really understanding how you can take all these different elements of, uh, a sensory experience, the built environment and create something so original, new and cutting edge.

[00:07:00] So do you, do you wanna walk us through the project you wanna share with us today?

Suchi: Sure. So I was thinking about, um, you know, my trajectory and my trajectory over the last few years, like I said, extends from all kinds of fields, but also into the fields of science And design. To really looking at what are the fields that are pushing design forward, right? Because a hundred years ago, you know, the Bauhaus created such a big impact on architecture by looking at the technology of their time.

And I was thinking, well, what are the fields that have made so much growth in our world? And really, neuroscience is the thing that's made leaps and bounds, and we haven't looked at how that affects design. Right? Seriously, in, um, sort of in a practical way, I will say, not from a academic standpoint. How this field of knowledge that totally deals with humans and brains and bodies and how we are in space, you know, hasn't become a part of how we think about design from a everyday perspective.

AJ: And why do you think [00:08:00] that is?

Suchi: I think it's new, right? Like any of these things that are new, like for a field of science. This field, which is called Neuroaesthetics, is only about 20, 20 some years old. Almost as old as my practice, you know? And I've been into it for maybe the last 12 years.

You know, when I first was in a cab, like going down by Madison Square Park and I hear on the radio something about neuroscience and architecture, I'm like, what? These two things can come together. Two things I love, I'm crazy about, you know, it's like, run home and find out how to get this together. Right.

And I start doing the research and seeing who the people are, who the academics are, and it's an amazing field that includes the work of cognitive scientists and psychologists and neuroscientists and architects and artists, and all of these people coming together to really say, are we building our world from the perspective of how it's affecting us and how we're affecting it.

You know that to really understand this fact that it's a cycle where we're affecting our world and our world is affecting us constantly at the same time.

AJ: I [00:09:00] got thrown into the world of neuroscience with my son when he was diagnosed with autism at the age of three, and now he's almost 30. And I remember listening to. all the experts and understanding how the brain was functioning and how sensory integration could be problematic and how the brain processes the built environment and things that I'd never, ever learned.

And I'm like, oh my goodness, this is my world. Why doesn't, why don't I know about this? I don't understand how we're not using this in practicum, and hence why I started building the practice and. You know, I think some of it stems from many times we're designing in a vacuum, right? And so we're designing in our studios or at, at your place of work or even the client's space, but we, we don't have a ton of access to the users of the space.

And we create these renderings or these 3D models and we have all these people walking around. And never in the [00:10:00] renderings are the people doing anything bad. They're always walking around perfectly happy, healthy individuals walking around, enjoying this beautiful space in awe. They're never like in a bad mood or have some sort of a mental health crisis or, you know, we don't, we don't, we don't design that.

Like we never think about that. And I think, you know. Your, your practice was one of the very first that started looking at meeting the person where they're at, and that's probably not that picture of the rendering.

Suchi: No, no. Our renderings end up being more, you know, how does it feel around you? But it's so funny when you say this. So when I was telling you, I started my practice kind of, you know, organically, you know, I moved to a space in the village and I thought, why am I in the village? You know, it's like, uh, so full of.

[00:11:00] Students and young people, and I love the life here. I love the people in the street, right? So we have a walk up to the studio, which isn't quite, you know, your corporate image of a, of a beautiful, um, interior design studio, right? But then you walk into this like light filled space that's really amazing and you go up one flight of stairs.

So as we were going up the flight of stairs, I actually hand wrote a quote from Dita Rams, the incredible industrial designer on my wall. And I might not get it perfectly Right. but he does say. the cardinal sin that a designer can make is to be indifferent to the reality in which people live.

And I thought that that was such an important thing to guide my practice, you know, to really think about that every day as I go up and down the stairs, you know, in and out of the studio, that I would really be thinking about not being indifferent, that who I am as a kind of a. Medium for the needs of the project, the needs of the client, the needs of the users, and the needs of, let's say a brand or um, a, a marketing [00:12:00] initiative or whatever.

Whoever I am as the medium for all of those things, my job is to not be indifferent to the realities in which that's operating and the full reality of that. Which means that's people who are able, that's people who are in between able and unable. It's a whole spectrum of experience of humanity that we know to be real every single day.

We deal with it all the time, and yet somehow we don't think our spaces need to address this, that they're somehow designed for what's called the, the lowest common denominator of all of this, which in the end doesn't serve anyone. And not that that's easy. You can't cater to individuality so much in a public project, and that's always a dicey line.

But I think the most important thing that we can do as designers is to retrain the compass of where we're coming from with the design, because then you really look to gather all of this information from the users. You look [00:13:00] to fields outside of the users, you look to science, you look to technology, you look to ai, you look to all of these other ways of bringing information to bear on what you're hearing, so that then you can be like, okay, with my skill as a designer, I can bring all of this together.

I can synthesize. So the reason I say that is often when I talk about Neuroaesthetics, people will ask me, what are the 10 things you can do to make this a neuro aesthetic space? You know? And I'm like, there are a lot of principles that we can go through in terms of science, in terms of refuge, in terms of giving you rest, in terms of giving you comfort, in terms of giving you energy.

Like there's, there's ways in which we can modulate light space, proportion, material, all of that to get you to a certain place. But what that does not do is let the designer off the hook. It's really our skill and our talent at putting those things together. In the way that is best suited to the project's needs, the project's, [00:14:00] budgets, the project's, timelines, and the way in which we do that successfully.

That's our skill, and no one can take that away from us. AI is not coming in a hurry to take my skill away from me. I will tell you that, you know, with, with the deep conviction, putting all of those things together, including the psychological aspect of the humans that we work with, right? This is a very, very important.

Aspect of the work. And I think it's important for us to recognize as designers, the value we bring to society. And once we do that and we recognize ourselves, then we're able to recognize also what we're doing for other people as a true service. And I think that's how the business has to be reframed.

And I think more and more it's important to have your compass pointed in the right direction. 'cause all kinds of stuff could happen in the world, but you know, you still gotta be, you know, moving towards that. One thing I've been finding myself saying a lot lately is, which is funny, I read it once in a friend's book.

We always think that, uh, when we think [00:15:00] of a spider, Right.

we never think about it without its web. But somehow we think humans are separate from their, from their environments, and we're never

AJ: Oh, that's interesting.

Suchi: We're always in the environment, whereas interlinked to it as any animal to its natural habitat. And we just think that when we go in a forest somehow, this is a very special, you know, place for us.

No, like every moment of our life is a special place for us. That's affecting our brains. It's affecting our bodies. It's affecting our mood and our psyche and our ability to do what we do well and what we need to do well, and how we need to show up for other people. And all of this can be something that design plays a part in.

AJ: tell us what your challenge was and how did you get into designing something for cel?

Suchi: So on the subject of Neuroaesthetics, I was [00:16:00] having these conversations with Ivy Ross, who is, who is the head of, uh, VP of Design, uh, hardware design at Google. And um, uh, Google was about to do an installation for cel?

and. We thought that we should make it about a whole new way of thinking about design, and that's how this installation came about.

And we did it in collaboration with the IAM lab at Johns Hopkins the biggest challenge. As most things are is getting it done. So we had to build 7,000 square feet in five days, all in quick ideas coming together. And obviously we couldn't do this so quickly because this was meant to be.

I'll backtrack a little bit. I'll tell you what the brief actually was. So the brief was to create three different spaces that had the exact same function, so like living dining, let's say. And all of them would have different, um, physical moods or atmospheres. And we would, um, give people a band that would test four different bodily [00:17:00] metrics, like skin conductance, heart rate variability, et cetera, et cetera.

And from those, we could show people from the readings, which when they took off their band and their data was, you know, uh, downloaded and then deleted, you could tell where their bodies were most at ease or most excited. And to really show people that design has a physical. Component, and it isn't so much the subjective, I like pink and I like blue, which you do and you could like pink and you could like blue instead.

But pink and blue together and where the light's coming from and what sounds you're hearing and how you're feeling in the space that matters to yourselves and to really begin to understand that is a very, very important, I think, new direction. And this, you know, this will take. I'll, I'll be long gone before we really crack the code, I think

AJ: Yeah, I agree. I think we are just on the very tip of the edge of what [00:18:00] neuroscience, neuroaesthetics, however, whatever you wanna state of understanding, um, how our mind and our wellbeing and our, the restorative actions that our bodies can be taken is influenced by. The sensory world that we're in, the built environment that we're in,

Suchi: it, it is totally the tip of the iceberg and you know, it takes the, like I was saying, the field itself is about 20, 25 years old, you know, which for science is very young. And you know, scientists like to make, do the same thing 350 times in a lab, so they know that we can move.one to dot two, right place one to place two, which is amazing.

But in real, real life, we don't get to do that. We move at a much faster pace. People bring all kinds of baggage to wherever they are in space, right? Whether they run into someone on the street that made them unhappy or the sun came out or. Whatever happened, and there's no way to really quantify that

AJ: I say this to clients all the [00:19:00] time. This project has never been done in the history of the world. Like the materials you're using, the people that are working on it, the space it's located. Even if you did this, you know, retail store or this hotel or this classroom somewhere else, there's, there's differences.

And so from a science standpoint, that's really difficult because you don't have. You kind of did on this project, 'cause you had three, were the exact same size of rooms.

Suchi: they had to be slightly different just because we were fitting into an existing space. Um, had we done it, you know, under kind of more controlled conditions, I think we would've done it that way. But I was very careful. So what happened? And you know, anyone who's gone to Cel Salon knows this. It's incredibly inspiring.

It's overwhelming. There's so much to see. You know, everyone's like, I've gotta see this. And the adrenaline is up. Right. And so they come in and there were people standing in lines around the block to come into this installation. So they come in and then there's a [00:20:00] courtyard which has the, you know, blue sky.

So you get a little bit of sort of exhale. And then I designed the kind of reception space. Also as an exhale space. So this became a very white kind of light pouring in from the above. The words that described the exhibition were also like engraved into the wall. They weren't protruding so that you could run your hand against it.

It was a very soft kind of a plaster wall. That sign for the show was made out of dichroic material so that the lights and the colors in it moved and from your different angles, you could read it differently. So you started being introduced to the state of being more sensitive. And, you know, softly touching everything and kind of having this softness kind of enter you.

And then, you know, you got this incredible introduction to the band that you were going to wear, what it was going to do, obviously you had to sign a release and all of that. And then the first phase you went to, I designed as a kind of qu chamber. So this was a, a sensory, let's say, deprivation. [00:21:00] Chamber that you go into where all the sound is cut out, the light is very, very low.

And from there you go into the first room, which I modeled after our spaces and caves. So it had like, and this mind you building this with real materials in five days, real mud on the walls. Real wood floor, an 80-year-old cactus that I managed to borrow to put in the room because that cactus had the presence of having lived life this long.

AJ: Oh my gosh. How did you get the mud to dry in time? I mean that alone.

Suchi: It was an amazing plaster material that we had been experimenting with, you know, that could dry in, in, in three days actually. So it was dry by the time everything else had to go on. And, and this was night and day. Let's just be real. You know, when, when you're passionate about something, it goes very long and very late.

And, uh, so there was a giant tapestry and it was all curved walls and the light came from below. So it was very warm, it was very earthy. The tapestry was like, I want to [00:22:00] say 16 meters long, and it was made by cloudy youngster who's incredible, you know, she does these beautiful felted works and the felt was like from goats that she had been saving, uh, from, you know, going on the chopping block to the dyes that were made from flowers.

And not that, and I'm saying all of this, not that anybody walking into this space would know or care. But the thing is, these things have presence in the world, right? We know when something is real. We know when the care has gone into it. That's what makes a Jackson Pollock different than somebody dripping paint on a, on a floor.

It's like you, you feel the energy of these things. You feel the embodied energy of a different kind that goes into making these objects, so you hold it all right? And then, uh, we curated the activities in this space so that the books that people read, 'cause of course people had to take off their phones, you know?

And they couldn't look at them. They couldn't talk to other people, and they had to be quiet in every room for 10 minutes at a time so that we could get some kind of a read from their physical metrics. And so [00:23:00] you have to give people something to do. So I had given them books about like cooking and making and poetry and those kinds of things in this first space.

And so after they spent 10 minutes in this space, they went into another aquatic chamber, which is a slightly different color, but still the same thing, you know, cuts down your. Sensory stimuli and then brings you into the next room, which was very bossanova. It had lights going lots of different directions.

It had graded color. I put in flowers were different. They were like brilliantly colored, tropical Ethereums everywhere. And I gave people pop-up books, which I'm like one of these people that all my childhood fascinations will find their ways into my projects. Popup books,

AJ: I

do too. I like the popup cards

Suchi: Yeah, like, you know, boom, it came up at you, you know, gave you something and the music was bossanova. And then you went into another quiet room and you went to the last one, which had light pouring down from up above. And the walls were made out of this beautiful material that's made with paper that [00:24:00] feels like concrete, but is made with paper.

And it made these giant artworks in there that were made of burnt wood, so you could smell the kind of charred wood in the room. The, the books were all of like. Abstract art and those kinds of things, You know so everything starts falling and there were plants in the room. So it started feeling a bit more earthy, but sublime in a certain way that, that everything went abstract.

And then you went into another chamber that actually you waited in and before you went from there into the kind of decoding room where you took off your band and you put it on an iPad and your data would show up, you know? And it showed up in the form of this like beautiful watercolor ring. Which the team had designed so amazingly well, and the watercolor ring, instead of being data in numbers and stuff that people wouldn't understand, it was beautiful colors and where the metrics had been hot, you would see these flares.

And then people came out, you know, out of that into lecture space where they could learn more [00:25:00] about it. They could understand how to design for their senses. You know, we have so many neurons in our brains. These are sensing everything that pulling all the information from the rest of the body together into an aesthetic, artistic experience constantly.

Whether that's a blue sky or it's a space, right.

It's happening constantly. And for us to be mindful of that and not that we can do this as designers to this micro level, I. All the time. But to really build the kind of sensitivity where we're understanding this, I'll say, you know, so of course we couldn't keep anyone's data because this is all about privacy, et cetera.

And it was in Europe and what we, I was standing outside like asking people, so what do you think your favorite was? You know, and I knew half of them would say, or more would say it was the first room

AJ: How come?

Suchi: well, because they got to exhale. You know, they got to go in there after all the rush and the crush and being out in the city and seeing all of these things, you know, everyone's system was normalizing, which is why I made that the first room.

I kind of wanted everything to kind of reset [00:26:00] and then go through, and then they were so surprised to find out that maybe they were more excited in other rooms and maybe this wasn't their favorite, you know? So we found really in really interesting evidence also about like who felt comfortable psychologically, like who felt that it was okay.

To relax in these spaces that were designed so beautifully if they didn't come from that environment, you know, if they did, if their own world wasn't made that way, they were like, whoa, can I just sit here for, you know, is this my thing? Is this about me? And it was really interesting to see kind of how inclusivity plays out in design, how empathy plays out in design, how agency plays out in design.

And I have to say, one of my favorite moments was two of my friends came out. And they both looked at their sheets 'cause you got to leave with like the information about the space in which your body was most at ease. And they were both in that second kind of bossanova room and they were like, they had their flares in the same place on the ring and [00:27:00] they looked at each other and said, oh my God, that must have been when we smiled at each other.

'cause they both love pop-up books. And I thought, see this is How human connection and design come together. They come? together. This is happening all the time. Like if you could really think about that, you'd be so excited to be a human and be alive.

AJ: lemme ask you a question. So. Did you make these different antic chambers in between the rooms to be like a pallet cleanser so that you would basically be resetting someone so you would have the data that their, their body was giving you would be sort of reset, so not influenced by whatever they saw previously or, or did some of that still play over

Suchi: I mean, you're very right. That's exactly how I [00:28:00] would describe those spaces as a pallet cleanser. And even the first entry space was sort of designed as, as a pallet cleanser. It just had to have light and all of this other stuff so that you could actually see where you were going. But these other chambers were kind of like going through a little tube.

You know, let's just call it, because then we've all had that experience. I'm sure you know, where you like go through something dark and you come out and you're like, ah, here I am, and you're, I'm all new. Right? And you readjust. So to really do that for people, but it was truly to try and create as much of a palate cleanse between these atmospheres so that the data could be as clean as possible.

'cause this is the other thing where people think, oh, we're getting the data and we're gonna just like, know what it says. Data's a messy thing. There's a lot of noise in.

data. You have to figure out what's noise and what's not noise. And so the more you can do to really understand how to generate the information that you are, the section of information that you're looking for, right?

And clusters, that's very important. And this is where actually doing it outside of, that [00:29:00] condition from this built project to other work that we're doing for people where we're really gearing something towards understanding a particular aspect of this. In a built space, whether it's a hospital room, a pro, a prototype for a hospital room, or it's working with, a larger kind of residential development on the whole, to think about which aspects of all of this learning come together, in which different spaces, in the amenities space, in the wellbeing space, in the residences, in the coworking spaces, right in an office.

How do we look to use all of this information if we're looking to accommodate what's. Really a growing neurodiverse population, more than 20% of a population. So now we can really look at, that

AJ: could you tell if there was one space that. People did better in than others, or was it all over the place? What did you learn from those three different designed areas?

Suchi: Well, what I learned is that the instinct [00:30:00] to address people's need to feel natural materials was very right on that. Regardless of what the body was saying, the mind would say that that's okay. That's a good place for me to be. So that was sustaining the kind of, let's quote unquote, the biophilic movement, sustaining that aspect of information.

It really ratified that. But I will say that there wasn't one space that stood out. It depended on people. It depended on what they did. It depended on who they were and what their age was. There was a lot of information like that that came out of it. And some of that we've also seen in some of the artworks that I've done, you know, because I take this work and I go, of course, like everything else in the studio, you know, we start blending retail ideas into residential things and then commercial ideas into other means and typology.

And so I took, um, I'll digress a little bit. [00:31:00] I did an artwork that was at the Smithsonian. A few years ago, there was a centerpiece of a show called Futures that was about humans and technology and how are we coming together or not. And uh, so I asked people to give me one word for their future, and I read the word, the emotion in the word.

So they spoke into this cluster of lights and then they, I read their emotion through using AI and ML at that time, which was very rudimentary, you know, trying to understand that and like putting it into buckets and, you know, separating buckets of like happy and sad and scared and. You know, that kind of thing, and then presenting it as lights.

What became very clear from that is when somebody says something and said, my future is really dark, and then they get this beautiful sequence of like very dark lights and like a pulsing pattern or something that's a little bit more strident than if you said, my future is great or beautiful, you would get a different pattern.

But once you even got this, the next word, which they would feed it in again, would be nicer and

better. And that was because they had been fed something. [00:32:00] That responded to them A and that was also beautiful. And so for me, these kinds of things are little pieces of information that I then take in to, if I were to translate that now into interior design, I would say you make an entry space in which people feel really welcomed and really at home.

And then you can take them to the, no matter what they come into. Right.

Particularly in healthcare, this is really important. You know, where you can come into a certain kind of space that has all these slight design cues that let you know that your needs have been thought about and that you're being listened to somehow in a way that you're not.

And that can just be the voice and the training of the person who's at the desk behind, you know who who, which is not a small part of all of the design strategy, right? Which is why we sit with our clients too. Help them strategize even on the training of the staff and stuff, because these things have to tie into the design.

They have to tie into the overall ethos. It's not separate, and particularly in hospitality, it's a big deal, Right.

So [00:33:00] bring all of those things together so that you can build experience sequence upon sequence, particularly in interior design. So you're amplifying everything. You're building from zero, but zero is not forgotten.

You know, zero becomes 10 very quickly and 10 becomes a hundred very quickly. If you can really use design to make that ratio work,

AJ: What are the learnings that you felt you got from doing that project? The things that you learned that now you're, you're trying to incorporate into other things that you're doing?

Suchi: The learnings were huge. I mean, there were no learnings that I didn't know by the way, going in. 'cause I had read like the papers, you know, that say curves and, and things of a certain hygiene proportion. And people will relate to that better. And that's why one room was curved and that's why one room had Earth and that's why the other room, which had a column in it and had to design around it was gonna be more angular, was, you know, it was also balancing the reality, right, of the space of what it offers.

Of all [00:34:00] the things we can put together, the budget, like the timeline, like bringing all, that's why I'm saying these things are real. On our end, they're real on the clients end. They're real on the end of the person who experiences it too. But it's really the skill of the desire. If you can use all of that to your advantage or 90% of that to your advantage, you can do something that's really unforgettable, you know?

And I learned that A, that that's possible. And to see that kind of effect on people. Right. And this is what my art practice also really teaches me in a way that design or architecture, I don't get to experience necessarily. I see the visceral reaction of people Right.

to an experience. And I learned so much from that.

Like really knowing because it's unfiltered and you know whether people are really responding to it, what aspects did they respond to. So I learned so much from this. Then really showing people, you could really talk about design from a whole new perspective, [00:35:00] knowing that there's this growing field of information that's building under that. Right. So for us, we need to be on top of just like, I think we need to be on top of technology and we need to be on top of like what's happening in data management or whatever. Right. As designers, like we need to understand. That what we're doing is kind of the envelope for all of that. That we lift it up in this kind of way and we have to understand the layers of what's accumulating in the world as knowledge that we're pulling from.

And that became so real to me, aj. I just thought, you know, I'm getting older. There's gonna be a point where I'm not taking in more new information.

AJ: Yeah. No, it doesn't stop. We keep learning.

Suchi: No, and I just have to be a bigger and bigger sponge about design, about everything. Like I was just in Milam this year and, um, actually made it a point to go and see a, a beautiful home that was designed by Renzo Magardino who, whose work I adore and respect. Not at all something that comes out [00:36:00] of my language, but something that speaks to me so deeply.

And I know that the thing that ties those two together is what it's actually doing to the body. You know, so this is the other thing that I learned is like I'm agnostic really about style of design. I think there's a style that responds to the user and there's a SP style that can respond to the visitor, and that thing is a very ing collaboration between what the space is supposed to do and what new thing it can offer you.

As an experience, and I think that's also kind of really thinking about how to learn from these kinds of sensory integration ideas. Thinking about collecting longitudinal data. Because it would've been wonderful had we been able to keep that installation up And collected the longitudinal data and really sliced it for time of day, time of month, you know, type of person.

Like been able to do that.

AJ: I was wondering that. 'cause if [00:37:00] it's like all designers that are walking through that space, you know, our brains are just, they

do work a little bit different. Right. You

know, that versus like, my mother walking through the space or you know, a child walking through the space. You, you do wonder if, if you are, you're gonna see.

More variability or things like that.

Suchi: Yeah. And we couldn't have children in there obviously. 'cause we're like ushering people in for 10 minutes So it was tricky, you know, so to be able to accomplish that again in some kind of, you know, real life format.

I am working on a very interesting project with a wonderful, um, developer who is a woman, I will say an incredible force, um, creating, um, a residential development where we will have all ages. We will have all functions, we will have all typologies within one development, and I'm really looking forward to that.

That's gonna be and I've got some incredible neuroscientists [00:38:00] working on that with me, and I'm super psyched to talk to you more about that maybe in a year or two.

AJ: Yeah, that might be another episode on our, on our podcast. Okay. This is my last question for you, sushi. So is there anything that you weren't able to do on this project that if you would've had maybe more time or money, whatever or less limitations that you really wish you could have done?

Suchi: You know what I will say on this project? No. I really just wish I could have let it live

much

longer. That was my wish about it. If we could have done that, we would have learned so much more that would've been so great for the field. But you know, we're working on reconstructing it in certain sectors with anybody who wants to come forward to say, Hey, let's, let's carry this field forward.

That would be a great way to do it.

AJ: So what's next for you? Suchi.

Suchi: Hmm. All kinds of [00:39:00] things. We're doing some very interesting residential work. Um, I'm actually doing one cultural residential complex that's being built around commissioned artworks in India, which I'm very excited to do. And that's like building a whole campus that looks like a sculpture itself, but also houses all these sculptures.

So super exciting to be working on that. And um, as I said, um, from a neuroscience perspective, working on this residential development. And bringing all of these factors of knowledge into it.

AJ: Well, I'm excited for your next projects because everything that you touch always has a new level. Of understanding for me, like, oh, I never thought about connecting those two things together. I never thought about putting these two elements together and what's that reaction? I, I adore your work. I adore the mission that you're on sushi.

anyone that works with Ready Made knows what you guys can do. It's deliver the Impossibles, which [00:40:00] I love. So thank you so much Sushi for your time today. And if they wanna find more about the project or more about you, what's the best way for them to follow what you're doing?

Suchi: probably Instagram, um, where we update, all the different things going on in the studio so they can find us at ready-made design. R-E-D-D-Y-M-A-D-E-D-E-S-I-G-N. Thank you so much, aj. Really for the inspiring people that you bring on your podcast.

You know, I was really listening to so many of the episodes and finding so much to learn from and, and be energized by,

AJ: Thank you for all your kind words and for being a great guest today. So much to learn from you, Suchi. That's it for today's episode of Once Upon A Project. I hope you're walking away with a deeper appreciation of how design and neuroscience can merge to support, healing, connection, and human potential.

A huge thank you to Sushi Ready. For sharing her incredible [00:41:00] perspective and for reminding us that great design starts with compassion, curiosity, and care. If you want to see more of sushi's work, follow her on Instagram at Ready Made Design. Thanks as always to our stellar production team, Rob Schulte and Rachel Santor for helping bring these stories to life.

If you loved this episode, be sure to subscribe and check out more inspiring [email protected]. Until next time, keep asking bold questions. Keep designing with purpose, and we'll see you on the next episode of Once Upon A Project.