Buildings shape our lives: let’s make sure that is a positive experience.
What Design Can Do
When faced with the pressing social, health and ecological problems of our time, we rarely consider the common material basis that underlies each and every one of them. Loneliness is now a health risk on par with smoking and obesity — but have we asked how the design of our homes and cities have created the conditions that exacerbate loneliness or even make it inevitable? What happens to civic engagement and social cooperation if people do not have safe and inviting places to gather?
How can we reconnect to nature if it has been banished from the places in which we dwell? Our everyday lives are structured by the built environments we inhabit, yet we fail to consider how our buildings influence our thoughts, behaviors and social interactions—and our very possibilities of being in the world. This is the very first film to consider design not as a luxury afforded to the wealthy few, but as an active agent capable of helping us to heal faster, learn better and connect across social divides, demonstrating how interdisciplinary research informs life-promoting design. Directed by Mary McDonagh Murphy, written and produced by Sarah Williams Goldhagen and Sarah Robinson.
What Design Can Do: Trailer
Released in 2023, this award-winning film embarks on a visionary journey through the world of architecture, aiming to educate its audience on the profound impact that buildings have on society and the environment. With a mission to inspire and inform, What Design Can Do reveals the transformative power of thoughtful design in shaping our lives.
EVENTS
Thursday, January 22, 2026
6:30 - 8:00 PM CET / 12:30 - 2:00 PM EST / 9:30 - 11:00 AM PST
The Architecture of Resonance with Sarah Robinson
Hosted by: What Design Can Do
Speaker: Sarah Robinson
The Architecture of Resonance: new book by Sarah Robinson
The profound impact that design has on human experience - physically, emotionally, cognitively, or ecologically - is now well established. And while this experiential and affective turn in architecture is gaining momentum, studio time remains primarily dedicated to the creation of buildings as independent objects with minimal regard for the interactions and impacts those buildings may have on their inhabitants and their surroundings.
With an engaging preface written by Harry Mallgrave, this book carefully details an alternative for thinking and designing that shifts attention from abstract formalism and object orientation to the creation of dynamic interacting fields of affective, tactile, kinaesthetic, ecological, and social engagement. The book articulates resonance as a model and metaphor for the way we interact with our environments. The word’s literal meaning is to re-sound, implying a surface or receptive body that amplifies and alters the sound - an interdependent relation and process occurring in between. Seven kinds of resonance specific to design are detailed theoretically and illustrated with practical and historical examples. These design strategies demonstrate the possibilities resulting from shifting attention and resources from the longstanding preoccupation with fixed forms towards structuring and supporting dynamic interactive relationships between the built and the natural and between people and place.
From Routledge: The Architecture of Resonance: from Objects to Interactions seamlessly combines architecture with cognitive science and neuroscience, environmental and evolutionary psychology, and social theory and anthropology, in clear, direct, and engaging prose, this book will be essential reading for all architecture students as well as those in these varied fields.
NEWS
What Design Can Do for Human Health and Community Wellbeing: A three-part series at the Center for Architecture (AIA New York)
Suchi Reddy Mariana G. Figueiro Margaret O’Donoghue Castillo Milton Shinberg
Sarah Williams Goldhagen speaking at the first event of the series
Images and Video source: https://www.aiany.org
On July 17, the AIANY Social Science and Architecture Committee hosted the second event in its three-part series What Design Can Do: Bridging Human Experience, Neuroscience, and Architecture.
The discussion was moderated by Margaret O’Donoghue Castillo, FAIA, LEED AP (Chief Architect, New York City Department of Design and Construction), and brought together speakers from diverse fields- including design, development, academic research, and government agencies:
Mariana G. Figueiro, Ph.D. (Professor, Mount Sinai)
Suchi Reddy, FAIA (Founding Principal, Reddymade Architecture)
Milton Shinberg, AIA, NCARB, LEED AP (Milton Shinberg Architect)
The recording of the event is already available on the Center for Architecture website. You can also watch the recording of the first event in the series - featuring a discussion and Q&A with Sarah Williams Goldhagen, moderated by Ian Wach.
Stay tuned for the third and final event in the series, coming this fall!
FOLCS International Short Film Competition 2025
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3rd Place
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FOLCS International Short Film Competition 2025 • 3rd Place •
WHAT DESIGN CAN DO wins 3rd Place at FOLCS International Short Film Competition
We’re proud to share that WHAT DESIGN CAN DO has been awarded 3rd place at the FOLCS International Short Film Competition.
Hosted by the Forum on Life, Culture & Society (FOLCS), this annual International Short Film Competition invites filmmakers from around the world to explore the relationship between law, justice, and society by creating original short films. From documentaries to dramas, animations to comedies, the competition is open to all film genres that express the struggles and injustices that humanity faces, and the noble pursuit and moral imperative of justice.
We’re thrilled to see the message of our film resonate on such an impactful platform. A huge thank you to the FOLCS jury for this recognition - let’s keep telling stories that matter!
Awards and Presentations
Premier - IAM Lab’s Intentional Spaces Summit, Johns Hopkins University, Washington DC, November 2023
Our Mission
To start a grass-roots movement to raise awareness of the power of buildings to improve our human existence
As a collective of architects, design professionals and scientists, we are on a mission to educate, advocate and design a built environment that supports human flourishing and ecological well being.
Listen to our Podcast
Want to hear more from the creators behind What Design Can Do?
Situated: a podcast exploring how our surroundings shape us
hosted by Sarah Robinson
Read our Books
by Sarah Robinson
Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives
by Sarah Williams Goldhagen