I recently went one-on-one with Danish Kurani, founder of the architecture firm Kurani and author of The Spaces That Make Us.
Adam: What is human-centric design, and why is it essential for leaders today?
Danish: So, human-centric design, Adam, is essentially the practice of starting your design process by understanding the needs of the users that you’re designing for. So it doesn’t matter if this is architecture, UX, UI design, product design, healthcare systems design, you start by thinking about who are the people that we are serving? What are their needs? What are their aspirations? What do they want in life? What do they want out of this thing that I’m creating for them? Start there and then move outwards. So in my practice, we don’t call it human-centered design necessarily. We would say, start by looking within. Look within. So if you’re designing for yourself, or you’re designing a home for your family, or you’re designing for someone else, look within. Ignore the noise about what everyone else is doing, and think about what are the needs of the person who’s going to use the space, in the case of architecture.
It’s essential because if we’re not doing it, we end up creating a lot of junk. We end up creating a lot of products that, by the way, use up a lot of finite resources from the world. We end up creating things that aren’t as useful as they could be for people. So if you don’t look within and you don’t understand how people operate and what their needs are, then you create things that are misguided. Essentially, you don’t have a good target, and you need a great target if you’re going to create a product that’s useful. I’ll give you an example, not even from the architecture world, but from UX design, because I came across this. I’ve got an elderly parent that I’m, you know, I’m helping her with navigating complex websites for healthcare, right? And so if you think about someone who is 65-plus and they’re trying to navigate a website, how often are UX designers saying, you know what, this is for Medicare? And so I know everyone’s a senior citizen. I know they’re not going to be as tech savvy or digital-savvy. Let me make it easy for them, right? And so we don’t think about who our users are and what their needs are, what their skills are, how they move about. We’re not going to create products that are going to serve them very well. So for leaders, it’s critical to do that. Otherwise, what are you doing to control quality of your products? Like, how are you ensuring that you’re actually putting something out in the world that people need and will use and will be happy with?
Adam: You have an interesting design philosophy. You call it ba hum, and there are seven core principles of your delight design philosophy. Can you share what they are and why they’re so important?
Danish: Yes, so first baham, which, as I was thinking about the way that I’ve practiced for the last 20 years, there’s this word from my native language of Urdu, Urdu spoken in Pakistan, Central Asia, many countries. There’s this obscure word baham, which means two things working in tandem, mutually influencing one another. So there’s this famous quote by Winston Churchill, he said at the British Parliament back in the 1940s-something along the lines of, first we shape our buildings, and then they shape us. So there’s this reciprocal relationship with our built environment, where we get to shape it, and it, in turn, is influencing us. And so to me, baham was the perfect way to think about design, that if we had a baham mentality, if we had, if we practice baham design, which is constantly recognizing that we have the power and agency to shape our built world, and it, in turn, is shaping us back. There’s this reciprocity that is something we need to keep at the forefront of our minds for many reasons. One, I think we’ve ended up designing a fairly suboptimal world. At times, it can be very detrimental to our health and our happiness and our relationships, and our built environment often isn’t serving our needs very well. Baham reminds us that we designed it so we can redesign it, and so this idea of the agency that we have, we are not just victims of our environments, we can actually shape our environments to serve us better. So the seven principles of baham, and they’re very simple. So the first one is look within. So it is, start with the user, whoever is going to be using the space, and think about their needs and design outward from there. The next one is to solve important problems. So this means put utility and function, and performance over flash. What I mean by that is, so often today, designs are created based on taste and personal preference and just what looks good and sexy, not thinking about what really matters, is how is someone going to use the space and how it would serve their needs? Another example is when we think about the home we’re going to buy based on resale value. It’s like, that is such a 30-years-away problem. Why are we sacrificing our experience in the home for the next 30 years just because of some imaginary future buyer might want a formal dining room, right? So solve important problems is focus on what really matters. Another one, another one of the principles is designed for change. So, designed for change essentially means that we recognize that our built environment has the ability to nudge us towards certain behaviors. So, Adam, think about your grocery store. You just mentally put yourself in your grocery store. You walk in, tell me where the milk and the eggs are in your grocery store. Not great. Okay, so they’re in the back, and that is so typical for all grocery stores, and of course, it has a little bit to do with the refrigeration, but they know that milk and eggs are staples. Every time you go in, it’s likely that you’re going to want some milk and eggs, so they put in the back of the store, because it forces you to circulate through the entire store. So grocery stores, and there are many other techniques that they use to nudge us. They shape our behaviors. The size of a grocery cart tells you how much to fill up, in a way, it is subliminally guiding you to fill up more and more. So recognize that design has the power to nudge us. Let’s figure out what types of behaviors we ideally want to have, what types of thoughts we want to have. For example, if you said, I want to live a healthier life, we can create an environment in your home that will passively nudge you to be healthier. So design for change encourages us to think about design’s ability to nudge people and to change them. It also means that our needs evolve over time. What you need from your house today is not what you’re going to need from your house 30 years from now. Our needs change, and so we need to create designs that are adaptable and can accommodate our changing needs, not only at an individual level, but even as a society. So a couple more of the principles. One is, follow nature. So we are all biologically wired to respond a certain way to light, air, noise, stimuli, so understand the way that our nature is and design so that people can be comfortable. It also means look around you at nature. Nature is an incredible designer, the way that other species have evolved over time. What can we learn from them? So this is, let’s not be so almost sapien-centric, and let’s actually look at other species, because they have a lot to teach us in terms of design. So you look at a termite mound and how it’s designed with shafts that bring hot air out so termites can stay cool in the hottest climates. What can we learn from other species that we can then incorporate into our own designs? Couple more principles. One is, embrace details. Basically, don’t forget the small things. They make a big difference. We’ve got build ecologically, which means, essentially, let’s build in a sustainable way, because ultimately, if we are causing harm to our environment, other species, to nature, that’s not good for humans in the first place. And finally, zoom out. So zoom out is a fun one, because I think it’s one that people forget to do most often. So if you are, let’s say, buying a chair, think about the context that chair is in. So zoom out. Don’t just think about the chair. That chair has a relationship to a table, right? Are the arms of your chair going to be able to fit underneath the table? That table and chair, how are you going to arrange that in a room? Well, zoom out and think about the whole room, or your bedroom. Where is it in the house? If you’re designing a house, think about that relationship. Do you want it to be close to the kids’ bedrooms? Do you want it to be far? What’s the relationship of your bedroom to the street? If your bedroom faces the street, maybe you’re going to be up all night when you hear cars, you know, revving outside, versus if your bedroom faces away. So zoom out really reminds us that you got to think about the context everything is in and then design it accordingly. Make choices accordingly. Don’t forget that nothing is an island. Every object you buy or design it has a context, and so think about that. So these are seven principles. They are based on 20 years of practice but research. I’ve read 10s of 1000s of pages of philosophies and design practices. I’ve traveled the world. I’ve studied throughout history other design philosophies, and I felt like these were seven timeless principles that if we all followed, we can design a better built environment.
Adam: How can anyone designing for human behavior understand human behavior well?
Danish: So there’s a lot of research that scientists have done on how humans react to certain things. So we know from behavioral economics and other studies that in a grocery store, for example, humans are going to buy more stuff that’s at eye level. And that’s why, if you look, if you go in any aisle in a grocery store, and you look at what’s at eye level, that tends to be the things that have the highest margins for the grocery store. So they know that you’re going to buy more that’s at eye level. You’re not going to look at the bottom shelf as often. So the stuff that earns them the most is not going to be on the bottom shelf. So let’s flip that. Let’s say that we had a goal, that we wanted to design grocery stores so that we were all healthier, made healthier choices. Let’s put all the unhealthy stuff on the bottom row, and let’s put all the healthy stuff at eye level. We are going to see it more. It’s exposure therapy in a way. So we’re going to see it more. We’re going to end up buying more things. So there are studies that are done. There’s so much research that exists out there. There is research on all sorts of stuff. I mean, I found research. For example, you live in LA, right? So, traffic is terrible. We know that. I lived in LA for a year. I know it’s bad.
Adam: It’s 70 degrees right now, and it’s the middle of December.
Danish: Well, the weather, the weather’s great. Traffic is terrible, right?
Adam: But you’re in Atlanta. Is the traffic really any better in Atlanta?
Danish: No, it’s, it’s terrible in every city, right? And if you commute, I feel terrible for folks who have to commute. There are studies that show that if you sit in rush hour traffic, when you get home, the chances of domestic violence in your house go up 9%. There are studies that show that if you are in a hospital, in a recovery room after surgery, if your hospital window faces a blank wall versus nature, it’s going to take you longer to recover. You’re going to need more painkillers, you’re going to be in a worse mood, and your recovery is not going to be as good if all you had to do is have a window that faced nature. There are studies that show that we’re actually up to 25% more creative under a high ceiling, and under a low ceiling, we’re more focused. So there’s this vast body of scientific studies out there on how our environment shapes us, how we are influenced to behave and act and think in certain ways. And so it’s important that as designers, we are making use of this. We are not just guessing, we are not just making things up as we go, but we are using, we’re taking a scientific approach, and we’re using the data that exists where humans have been studied en masse to then design for how humans tend to, tend to operate.
Adam: Do you need tactical advice for architects and for designers on how to ensure that they are truly understanding human behavior and integrating it into their design?
Danish: So I think one is, start doing the research. Build up your own database of research and studies that you think can be useful in the types of spaces that you design, right? So, for example, what we just talked about, if people tend to buy more stuff that’s at eye level, that’s going to help you the most. If you’re designing cafeterias, dining spaces, grocery stores, maybe it helps you if you’re designing homes, because in someone’s home, maybe in the kitchen, you put the shelf of healthy snacks at eye level, and you hide everything else lower. It may not help you if you’re designing a spa or a hotel or something, right? So, depending on the types of spaces, find the studies that are helpful to you and start collecting those and build up your own database. The other thing is, observe yourself. There’s so much that we can learn about how humans operate by just being keen observers of ourselves and how we react to certain types of spaces. I often tell people, look, if you’re going to do a bathroom reno, before you do it, think about your bathroom. Go to a friend’s house and observe what it’s like using their bathroom. Then go to a hotel, use a bathroom there, and go to a couple of other places and make note, in each of these places, what did you like and what did you not like about those bathrooms? So again, start to observe how you respond and react to different conditions and situations when you’re out in the built environment. So I think starting to do things like this. And then, by the way, of course, we’re going to look within. So when you’re designing, engage the end users. So if you’re designing a home for your family, bring them around the living room, and let’s go room by room in the house and talk about what works for us, what doesn’t work. Ask everyone to write down a list of frictions over the course of a week or two. Every time they run into some issue, oh, my brother’s being so loud next door and I can’t focus on what I’m doing because he’s blasting his music, okay, write that down. Start to write down all of the things, these little frictions in your environment, so we can fix them when we design our new home, for example. So again, engaging the end users, thinking about your own experiences out in the real world, and then making sure that you’ve done your research. If you do all three of these, you’re going to do a better job of designing around those human needs.
Adam: And that advice that you shared integrates a lot of the other principles that are at the heart of your philosophy when it comes to great architecture: looking within, solving important problems, not just designing for taste, not just trying to figure out what is going to be the coolest design, what’s going to be the design that will win you an award, will get you featured in a magazine, but what are the actual problems that need to be solved, and solving them.
Danish: Yes, and that’s, by the way, that is a temptation that designers have to resist. Is this pull of, is this going to photograph well? Is this going to look amazing on Instagram? Is this going to get me press? No, like that is not the right way to design. You are, one, doing a disservice, obviously, to your clients. But then you’re also using the world’s finite resources to create something that could have been better, doesn’t work as well as it could have. So it’s kind of wasteful in that sense, too, but you have to, it’s, it’s so hard to resist this temptation, because we all want to make things that are celebrated, become exemplars for everyone else. And unfortunately, with social media algorithms and the media in general, they, in a way, signal to you, it has to look a certain way. And so you have this temptation to make it look a certain way for their approval, when in reality, our focus should really be on, does it work a certain way? Does it work the way that it should for the people that I’m building this for?
Adam: How do you thread that needle?
Danish: Yeah, well, I don’t think of it as an either-or. I say, let’s do both. Let’s make it fit the needs of the people who are going to use it and make it an incredible space for them, which, by the way, doesn’t mean, when something’s functional doesn’t mean it can’t be beautiful. So let’s make it incredibly functional and make it work extremely well, and let’s make it look amazing too. And the reason is that, actually, people do feel more comfortable in spaces that are beautiful. People are happier. So much of our built environment today, which is driven by real estate spreadsheets and decisions that are very profit-driven, so much of our built environment ends up being bereft of beauty. It is bland. It is blank. You drive around to LA, and you’ll see this, right? We’ve just got blank stucco walls on the sides of buildings everywhere. It, we are creating an environment that’s, that’s dull. It is unnatural. If you look at nature, it is filled with detail. I’m staring at a tree right now outside the window, and on the trunk, there are spots all over the trunk. Every leaf has detail. Every leaf is unique. Our natural environment is so detailed and has so much beauty in it. So, in this principle of follow nature, it also encourages us to think about how nature has created these beautiful designs, right? And this idea that we must embrace detail, we have to bring in more detail into our buildings. And so, to answer your question, I think it’s, you do both. You make it beautiful, because actually, people feel more comfortable. It feels more natural when something is beautiful, when we have mimicked nature and the beauty of nature in the way that it creates patterns, it creates complex repetition, right? If you look at a honeycomb, every cell is repeating, but every cell is unique. Same as snowflakes, same as leaves. You’ve got these fractals. If we actually start bringing in these designs from nature, people feel more comfortable in the space than they would under, you know, behind a blank wall. And so make it beautiful, because that’s good for people, and make it work. And then you don’t have to split the difference.
It’s funny, because most clients come in with how they want it to look because they’ve seen images either in your portfolio or online. And so I think a lot of clients come in already thinking about, I want it to be beautiful, and often we have to encourage them to think more about experience. And so I find it that clients want it to look beautiful. No client is saying, give me blank walls and something boring and bland. They want beauty. I think it’s actually nudging them to think deeply about experience and not sacrifice that for looks. Let’s merge the two and let’s give you both, but let’s not throw, let’s not forget experience and just create things that look cool, because maybe you’re trying to impress your friends who come over, or you’re trying to impress other organizations with how your offices look, or let’s really think about what’s going to be right for you and the people that are in that space with you.
Adam: You mentioned the importance of embracing details. The little things add up to the big things. What are those important details that are essential to ensure that you’re not overlooking?
Danish: Yeah, and there’s not one set of details. It depends on the type of space you’re doing. I’ll give you some examples, though. Let’s say that you have your desk and there’s an outlet underneath your desk, and let’s say you travel a lot, so you have to take your computer charger with you often. If your outlet, real example, okay, yeah, great. So if your outlet is underneath the desk, you’ve got to constantly bend down and get it, right? If your outlet was above your desk, let’s say 34 inches above the floor, because your desk is going to be about 30 inches, let’s say it’s above your desk, it’s a lot easier for you to grab that outlet and grab the charger and go, right? Are we thinking about little things like that? Because often when an architecture project happens, we have standards, and it’s like all outlets are 18 inches above the floor, standard, unless we tell you otherwise. And often people will forget, and forget to say, you know what, there’s a countertop here or there’s going to be a desk against this wall. We should probably raise that outlet. We get another example. I was working on a project in LA, actually, in Inglewood. It was a, it’s a STEM lab for high school students, Computer Science and Technology Lab. And we model everything in 3d, and I do walk-throughs in our model, sort of like a VR walk-through. And I’m looking up and down and thinking about, okay, how does this feel? And so we’re not just looking at a design in 2d drawings. We’re looking at it in 3d, and there was this big projection screen we had for events. And towards the end of the project, of course, you’ve got to start dropping in exit signs. These are code required. Usually happens at the very end. So our local partner started dropping in these exit signs into the design. And it was by walking through in 3d I noticed that the way the exit sign was hanging, the rod that was hanging the exit sign would block people’s view, some people’s view, of the projection screen. That is so easy to miss. Often, we’re just adding exit signs in 2d, and you go about it, and you’re like, okay, I added all the exit signs. I’m code-compliant. It’s actually looking at an exit sign in a 3d model that is so rare, but because we did that, I was able to catch the fact that this exit sign is going to block some people’s view of the projection screen. So this is what I mean by details. Embrace details is, don’t forget these little things. I remember in the Bay Area, I went to this restaurant recently, where I went to wash my hands in the bathroom, and the faucet was not long enough, so it didn’t come forward into the bowl enough. So when I soaked up my hands, and then I was washing them, my hands were so close to the back of the bowl that they were actually touching the bowl, which felt gross, of course. Like I’m trying to wash my hands, but because you didn’t place the faucet correctly, or get one that was long enough, these little details that add up and end up creating tiny frictions in our days. And then you say, well, multiply that times 100 things every day, every day of the year, and it’s the slow bleed where our environments are just not serving us well. So embracing details is, hey, we got to make sure these tiny things really work.
I’m not saying bending down is a bad thing, right? We all actually need more movement in our lives. We’re quite sedentary these days, but that type of bending down, usually, where you’re getting underneath the desk, that’s not the good kind of bending down that’ll throw you back out potentially, versus if you look at traditional Japanese homes, their beds are very low to the ground, and we know that Japan has some of the highest percentages of centenarians in the world, and they are more mobile as they age. They have stronger lower bodies. They’re more flexible because they’re constantly squatting down to get into bed. In the Western world, often our beds are basically you kind of just roll into them, right, and so we can create opportunities in our homes for movement in the right ways. So that’s squatting down. And so when I learned this years and years ago, I lowered the bed in our home. I also found studies from Denmark where they studied twins, and one twin who sat on the floor his whole life, and another who sat in chairs, and the twin who sat on the floor lived longer. And the reason is, you know, it’s tied to some other studies as well, again, about the lower, lower half of your body and the mobility and how as you age, that’s the thing, you know, you tend to, seniors tend to get hurt and die from a lot of falls. Is, how do you keep your lower body strong passively? It’s not, oh, I gotta make more time to go to the gym. It’s, can I just change a few things around my house so that every day, just by living, I’m living in a better way. So for the past few years, I’ve been sitting on the floor at home when we’re in the living room, and we’re hanging out or we’re watching something, I’m sitting on a little mat on the floor instead of on the couch. So I’ve now essentially baked it in to where, passively at home, I can just be doing more squatting and more using of my lower body. And so again, it’s thinking about the right way to set up the conditions for you to move, and not conditions for you to actually hurt yourself or, or be an inconvenience or friction.
Adam: You’re making me feel very self-conscious right now sitting on my chair.
Danish: I mean, I’m sitting on one right now, too. I’m not saying you got to do it all day, but if you can set up some things around your house, right? And you could do this in your kitchen, you can do it in your bedroom, in your living room. Just thinking about, for example, I put up a shelf specifically for me to put my phone and a water bottle before bed. I put them on this shelf. It’s outside of the bedroom. One, it prevents me from bringing devices into the bedroom, which will disrupt sleep. And in the morning, when my alarm goes off and I go to the phone, I’ve got a filled 14 ounces of water right there that I can chug immediately, first thing in the morning, so that I’m better hydrated throughout the day. Again, setting up these little nudges, these little cues for how to behave, that can do wonders for your own health.
Adam: And when I asked you, right off the bat, about human human-centric design, what it is, why it’s so important, this is it. This is it. And looking at it from a leadership perspective, when you talk about friction and how the role of a leader is to understand, am I adding friction, or am I removing friction? Am I making people’s jobs more difficult, or am I making people’s jobs easier? Think about the leaders who you’ve worked for. Are they helping you get better, or are they making things harder for you? It’s a pretty easy question, but interestingly enough, there are leaders who we’ve had in our lives, whether they’re people who we’ve worked for professionally, whether they’re people who we’ve been around outside of the workplace, who have made our lives a lot easier and who have made our lives a lot more difficult, and it really comes down to the same principles that we’ve been talking about.
Danish: Yeah, I mean, it’s something that I’ve had to learn and continue to learn, is how to be a better leader. I think so often what happens in business is that we have great technicians, and then, because you’re so good at your craft, you get elevated into a managerial position. But you’re not a manager by nature or those are not your skills. So we have a bunch of people who are great designers and technicians, but they weren’t ever taught to manage or lead. And so I think if that happens, you know, you have to then develop those skills. Same as an architect, I knew that I wanted to have my own practice, and I was studying architecture. I was never studying how to be a manager, how to be a leader. And so these are things that I’ve certainly struggled with, and over time, I’ve tried to learn more and more of. As you said, how do I not get in the way of my team, and how do I create an environment for them to be successful, and actively think about that, and not just think about the architecture we’re creating, because that’s not my only job anymore. And that recognition that my job is not to just create great designs anymore, it’s to also set up the conditions so that others can create great work.
Adam: What are those conditions and what can anyone do to become a successful leader?
Danish: Ooh, you probably have so many other guests that could answer this better than me, given the types of people that you’re interviewing. You know, I’ll say for myself, a couple of things that have gone a long way is actually showing care, and showing it’s not just that you care, but showing your team that you care about them and their well-being. So even. So my team is distributed. I’ve got folks in America and also outside of America, and so we’re on many different time zones, and thinking about, well, what time zone is someone going to receive this message in? And what time of day is it going to be for them? Because I don’t want to message them when it’s nighttime for them. Or making sure I’m setting up meetings. That balance, you know, we’ve pretty much got the whole globe covered in terms of our time zones, is it’s acceptable for everyone, or if they have things going on in their lives, recognizing that the stuff outside of work obviously influences and affects people at work. Making sure that my team is healthy and sleeping well, and their circadian rhythms are balanced, and these types of things, which I, you know, early on, when I started the practice, I wasn’t really thinking about this, because you’re just drowning, trying to get your business afloat and make sure you’re designing well and being a good practitioner. But in terms of thinking and caring for other people, being that nurturer and caring for the others, that’s something that I’m, I’ve been learning and, you know, been trying to get better at. So for me, that, that’s one of the things. The other is essentially giving people the benefit of the doubt and operating with the assumption that they want to do the right thing and that they are trying to do the right thing. And so I think it’s little mind shifts like this. They’re so tiny, of like, how do I nurture my team? How do I become the nurturer of this group? How do I always treat it, treat others, as if they want to do the right thing and they’re trying to do the best that they can, so that we’re not unnecessarily critical in times where we don’t need to be. How do we acknowledge our own fears in front of the team as a leader? How do you, how do you express to them the things that worry you, so that they, they recognize that this is a safe space, that you know, I understand where you’re coming from, so that you have more open dialog. So for me, it’s been these very subtle, tiny mind shifts that I hope are making me a better leader today than I was 10, 15 years ago.
Adam: I love it. I am on board and in full alignment with everything you shared. Starting off with the fact that the very best leaders fundamentally love people. You can’t be a great leader if you don’t love people. You use the word care. Caring about people is right at the heart of great leadership. When I do keynotes, I share a list of the key characteristics of the very best leaders, and right on that list, love of people. There are plenty of things that you can do in life and be really, really successful doing. And we could probably come up with that list. I don’t know about a comprehensive list, but we could come up with a lot of professions on that list together and not have to love people. But if you want to be a successful leader, you have to love people, yeah. And if you want to be successful as an architect, you have to understand people, yes.
Danish: Got to understand yourself. You got to understand others, and especially the people you’re designing for.
Adam: The premise of your book is that design is broken and that we need to fix it. We’ve spoken a lot about what you think makes great design. Why do you say design is broken, and is there anything else you want to share about how we can fix it?
Danish: So the reason I think design is broken, and by the way, I think we broke it, as it’s not inherently a flawed, flawed thing, is actually, and I talk about this in the book, that being designers and architects is actually in our DNA. So if you think about our primate ancestors, who used to sleep in trees. So if a monkey is sleeping in a tree, it can never fully go to sleep because it’s got to be hanging. So there’s a certain part of its brain that has to stay on, otherwise it would, if that part of the brain was able to go to sleep fully, the monkey would lose its balance and tumble to the ground. So they had to, you, keep a part of their brain on when they slept. They couldn’t get like true deep sleep. Then they realized and discovered how to build nests on the ground. So they were essentially creating shelter where they could sleep on the ground and be protected from threats. By doing that, they allowed their brains to fully get into deep sleep. And so that discovery of how to use architecture helped their brains evolve into what evolved into our human brains. And so from the very beginnings, we have used architecture to make life better, even if you go to the agricultural revolution, 12, 15,000 years ago. We used architecture. We built fences to contain our crops and animals. We set up small settlements. Architecture allowed us to actually stop being hunter-gatherers and initiated the agricultural revolution because we were able to protect our crops and animals, because we started figuring out how to build fences. Take the 1850s, for example, 1830 to 1850, Paris, the city of Paris, France, had explosive growth to the point where they had plagues, and a huge percentage of the population was dying because it was dirty, congested. There was disease everywhere. They actually redesigned the urban layout of Paris. They widened streets, created these wide boulevards, and essentially planted 1000s and 1000s of trees, created parks, plaza squares, modern sewage. They did all of these things and essentially solved a public health crisis in their city. So as recently as the 1850s, we’ve used architecture to really solve humanity’s problems. Then we got into Industrial Revolution, and we started mass producing things, which meant, you know, prior to the Industrial Revolution, if you were a farmer, Adam, you would have thought about, well, what do I need as a farmer? And you would design and build a home that was suitable for a farmer. And if I was a fisherman, I would have done it for a fisherman’s lifestyle. So we used to think about what we needed. And then, with our community, we would build our homes. In the 1900s, we started outsourcing it to builders who would build these homes for us. In fact, the, you know, Sears, who went out of business, the, you know, department store, they used to have this like Sears Home catalog, where you could just flip through their catalog and pick out a home, and they would send you the kit of parts, and you would just build it. But we started outsourcing design to others. Like, what we needed for ourselves, we let others think about it. We let corporations think about it. And these corporations didn’t always have our best interests at heart. They wanted to make money. And then you fast forward, and you’ve got the Baby Boomers all coming back from the war. And so real estate development really took off because we had to house so many people. And so real estate developers started building these spec homes. Again, they’re not thinking about the end user and their needs. They’re quickly getting up homes cheaply and turning a profit. And so this real estate development boom that we’ve had in the last 70 years or so in the US, that has made us have worse environments as well. Also, by the way, when air travel became more accessible in the 1950s, people started traveling all over the world. You’d fly places, and you would see an idea in Japan, and you’d see another idea in China, and you’d see an idea in the Philippines, and you’d come back with those ideas in your head, and you would start to build your own homes and spaces like that, without thinking about the fact that, well, maybe that works in that context and that climate. Maybe it’s not right for us. For example, people who lived in the northern parts of the US, if they traveled to the south, they went to cities like Atlanta, Charleston, Miami, they would see homes with high ceilings, and come back to the northeast, to the northern states, and when it was time to build their next home, they’re like, I love that high ceiling. I want that high ceiling, but heat rises. And if you do a high ceiling, and you live in a cold climate, all the heat in your house is going to go up, and you’re going to be cold because you’re close to the ground. It made sense in those Southern climates because it’s hot there, and you wanted the heat to rise and get away from your body. So we got into this habit of sort of cherry picking ideas and stealing ideas from other parts of the world without thinking about why they were done that way. And the internet made this much worse. Forget visiting a place and seeing it. We were just looking at photographs online, and we’re like, yes, that looks great. I want to do that. You weren’t even, you didn’t have the benefit of experiencing it. And so there were so many things. And then add to that, social media and the algorithm putting in front of you these cool, sexy looking spaces, which, by the way, you can’t tell from a photo if it’s a good space or not. It may look cool, but we don’t know if it works. I always tell people, if you saw a photo of a library online, can you tell if it’s a good place to study? Can you tell if the acoustics are good in there? Of course not. It’s a photo. It’s an abstract 2d representation of three-dimensional space and experience. And by the way, photos are the same way. You know, food photographers, they’ll, they use like WD 40 and all these tricks that make, you know, a burger look like it’s dripping. And, you know, by the way, architectural photographers do that too. And so these are highly staged images, so you don’t know if they work very well. So basically, in the 20th century to now, like we have gotten worse as designers. So we have started to outsource the thinking. We’re thinking less about it. We’re being influenced by algorithms. We’re not actually thinking about our own experiences and using empirical knowledge of stuff. We’re just looking at photos and saying, oh, this looks cool, or that looks cool, or, or frankly, others are making the decisions for us, and they’re corporations who don’t care if you’re comfortable or you enjoy your space. They just want you to buy it, and then that’s not their problem.
I think these principles are pretty comprehensive. I spent a lot of time. I spent years formulating this and putting it together in the book. And so if you do read The Spaces That Make Us, I think you will get everything you need to be a good designer. I mean, the book, these principles are timeless, by the way. These are not fads or things that are cool now. These are not prescriptive. They don’t tell you, buy this type of throw pillow for your couch? No, I don’t know. It depends on who it’s for and your context and, and your goals. So unlike a lot of books and philosophies, it is not prescriptive. It doesn’t tell you the way in HGTV shows, they might say, well, do this. I don’t know. I’m giving you the framework and the techniques to follow so that, no matter who you design for, what you design, or in what context, you make the smartest, best decisions possible, so that people end up with a space that they love, and that’s all in the book. So there’s plenty in here for you. I think anyone who, by the way, is a professional designer, a design aficionado, or even just someone who’s interested in the topic, I think you’re going to get so much. Or someone who just wants a happier, healthier life. There’s so many things, by the way, in the book that it doesn’t require a professional designer to do for you. These are, you will start thinking differently. I make this promise to everyone, if you read the book, you will never see your physical world the same way. Again, you won’t. It will fundamentally alter how you see your surroundings.
When I was in kindergarten, so I was six years old, it was in a very typical kindergarten classroom. We had the rug on the floor where we plopped down for storytime. We had a bookshelf full of books like Berenstein Bears and things like that. We had those vinyl folding mats for nap time, because it was the 90s. We had ceramic mugs that were up that we had been making for Mother’s Day. And one day I just, I had to go to the bathroom, and so the bathroom door was at the back of our classroom. So I got up, walked to the back, and walked into the bathroom, and as soon as I walked in, another boy walked in from a door that was opposite mine. And I didn’t realize that our bathroom was a Jack and Jill bathroom that was connecting two classrooms, and he rushed in at the same time as me. And this boy had to go. His pants were down. He was ready, and so he is, he is peeing all over the place, and he’s literally peeing on me. And I’m getting soaked, and I’m squirming, and I froze. I didn’t know what to do. I’m just standing there getting drenched by this boy’s pee. And then I had to walk back into my class, hope none of my classmates see that I’m soaked, and just sat down. And my teacher, bless her heart, Miss Ray, she was the sweetest thing, she noticed. She pulled me aside. She had a spare pair of pants for kids who had accidents, and they were these, like acid-washed jeans, and I had to wear those for the rest of the day. And everyone knew I had an accident. It was so embarrassing. And as much as I was upset at that other boy, as I got older, I realized it wasn’t his fault. What architect thought this space made sense? What architect thought that a six-year-old, who has to use the bathroom, would remember to not only lock their door, but go lock a second door? This is a terribly flawed design for that age group. Frankly, most humans, adults, wouldn’t even figure that out, right? So at that age, I had a terrible experience with architecture in schools. Fast forward to when I went to grad school. So I was at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard. There’s this building that we’re in called Gund Hall. It’s this building from the 70s. It’s this brutalist building, but the way that it’s designed, it was the first time in my life, you know, I was in my late 20s, it was the first time in my life I was in an environment that inspired me. When I was in kindergarten, it was terrible. I got peed on. In high school, middle school, the environments were very prison-like, didn’t feel great. I remember when I was taking the SATs in 11th or 12th grade. The day I was taking the SAT, there was construction going on next door and in the room next door, and like, I bombed it because I couldn’t focus. I took it two months later on a quiet day in the same building, but just no construction going on, good acoustics, carpet floors, and I did 10% better. I scored like 130 points higher. But typically, until I got to grad school, I was in these terrible school environments. And then I got to grad school, and you walk into Gund Hall at Harvard, and on the ground floor, basically is a gallery, and every day that you walk in, you see the work of other students, and it’s impressive and it’s motivating. And then when you go up to the first, second, third, fourth, fifth floors, they’re called the trays, these open studios in a essentially a staggered floor layout, so they’re terraces, and you can stand and see basically what four floors of students are working on. And as you walk around, it’s open studio. So you see models that other kids are building, drawings that they’re doing. One, it’s inspiring. But also, you could just stop at their desk and say, hey, that’s sick. Like, how did you do that? Can you show me how to do that? Or what are you working on here? That looks really interesting. And you build these connections, you build these relationships, you learn skills. So it was the first time I was in an environment where it inspired me. And so throughout the book, there’s all these anecdotes. You know, a couple of years ago, my mother, she had a heart valve rupture. I spent 800 hours in the hospital with her that year, just observing. And so there’s all these stories about how hospitals aren’t taking care of our loved ones when they’re there, they’re actually harming their health. And so it’s loaded with these lovely anecdotes that help you. It becomes tangible. You start thinking about your own experiences out in the real world. It’s loaded with statistics and data. You know, we talked about, bring science into your practice. Bring science into how you design. It’s loaded with science. I’ve actually put all of that research in there for you. So there’s just so many things in the book that are valuable for anyone, whether you’re a professional designer or not.
Adam: What is the future of design? How is AI impacting design today? How will AI impact design tomorrow?
Danish: That is a good, pertinent question right now. In my practice, we are at the point where we are experimenting with AI in terms of, where can it augment things that we do in design? We have yet to come across any tools that can replace or truly make better or efficient what we do. I think it’s not quite there yet. Of course, I think AI with LLMs, it’s helpful on things like administrative work, marketing work, things like that. But in terms of design, it’s tricky. In fact, about seven years ago, I think it was seven years ago to this year, I was working with this computer scientist from Carnegie Mellon, and we were looking at, can we actually train AI to design? Can I give it certain criteria and it create a floor plan for, let’s say, a school building, if I tell it all the spaces that I need? If I tell it, these are the criteria, I need these spaces to be next to these. This room needs light. This one doesn’t need natural light. This needs plumbing. This one doesn’t. Can you, based on certain criteria, give me an excellent layout? And he was able to get it to create layouts. In fact, he did 1000 floor plans for me to choose from, which, of course, like, when am I, when’s anyone going to have a time to do 1000 options of anything? And he showed me the 10 best options, presumably, and charted those out. And I looked at them, and none of them were good. And I realized at that time that he only asked me for a certain amount of criteria that I could give it to think about as it designed. As a designer, there are so many criteria that we are holding in our minds simultaneously, and balancing all of those and inputting those into a design. It’s really hard to codify that. It’s really hard to codify the way that a designer thinks and get a machine to do that, because I think we don’t even recognize all of the processes and things that are going on in our heads as we design. It is so extensive, the way that our brains are working. And so I know others have tried to now create software with AI. Obviously, that was seven years ago. AI’s gotten better. Folks are trying to create software. I just haven’t come across anything yet that can truly replicate the power of a designer.
Adam: Are there any other tools in any other significant technology tools that you utilize, or that you would advise others in the space to utilize?
Danish: I mean, we’re pretty straightforward. I’ll tell you in terms of, we’re probably using the same 2d and 3d software that most architects are using, right? So I don’t think there’s anything different or special there. We’ve got probably a similar server set up and using, you know, the same docs and slides and things that others are using. I have found Airtable to be quite useful in terms of building databases and libraries, of both the research, but even our, the building products that we tend to use. So I found that to be useful. Trying to think of what else. I mean, we’re pretty straightforward. I think the magic comes from the process, not necessarily the tools. I think it comes from the way that we approach problems and tackle them, not the technology. Because at the end of the day, technology is kind of dumb in the sense that, like, you have to use it well and in the right way for it to be meaningful. Otherwise it’s, it’s somewhat neutral. It doesn’t help or hurt you. It’s just there. Yeah, I don’t think, Adam, that we’re doing anything special when it comes to on the technology side. I think it’s that we actually go through the painstaking effort of rendering everything in virtual reality and taking the time to fully use the tools that are available to us. I think that’s probably the thing, is that we have all these amazing tools that let us and our clients see things in 3d and see it fully visualized and rendered before it gets built. How often do we fully leverage that tool? And so I think we just try to do that.
Adam: Is there anything else you’d like to share?
Danish: Well, I’d love for this audience to be in touch if they want to continue this conversation with me. I’m happy to chat further. I would be extremely grateful if folks would check out the book.You don’t have to be a professional to read this, and I think it will equip all of you with one great dinner party conversation pieces and just ways to articulate the importance of our built environment to all. I know you all believe it. Sometimes it just takes having the right words to be able to articulate it to others, so that they believe all of us architects and don’t think we’re crazy, and, you know, love the built environment more than we should. So I think it’ll help in that sense of really making it a more public conversation and getting the general public to understand, hey, this stuff matters. Our built environment really shapes our lives, and these spaces can either break us or they can make us. I think we all have some designer in us, and I think it’s up to us to figure out, how can I use that to do good in the world?
Adam: How do you wake up every day and ensure that you are doing just that?
Danish: By which projects we choose? We have the luxury to be able to say yes to the projects that we believe in and are going to have a social impact, and say no to the projects that we think would actually be detrimental to society. And I think as architects, we need to remember that society, as a society, we are what we build. So what we choose to build, that’s what we are. It’s the same way they say you are what you eat. You, we are what we build. And if you don’t believe in something that’s being built, don’t take on that project. Take on projects that you know are going to do good for the world.
