BALTIMORE, MD — The International Arts + Mind Lab (IAM Lab): Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine today announced the release of the Intentional Spaces Roadmap—a strategic plan of action to build a new interdisciplinary sector, or field, called neuroarchitecture that incorporates translational research and evidence-based practices to envision, design, and build environments, both physical and virtual, that intentionally support human health, connection, creativity, learning, and wellbeing.
Research across neuroaesthetics, psychology, architecture, and design increasingly shows that elements such as light, sound, texture, form, and nature shape how we feel, think, heal, and connect with others.
Yet despite a growing evidence base, real-world application of design insights remains largely limited—and the sector still faces challenges related to translation, methods, structure, and communication.
The Intentional Spaces Roadmap brings these insights together in a clear, coherent framework and offers practical strategies, shared principles, and a common language to guide evidence informed space design from healthcare to education, urban planning to community development.
The Roadmap, a publication of the Intentional Spaces Initiative, builds on the foundational work of the NeuroArts Blueprint Initiative, a partnership of the IAM Lab and the Aspen Institute's Health, Medicine and Society Program, and the broader neuroarts movement—rooted in neuroaesthetics and other ways of knowing—to advance intentional space design as a tool for human flourishing. The Intentional Spaces Initiative and Roadmap are supported by the Pedersen Foundation. The IAM Lab is also part of a consortium of organizations assembled by the Foundation called The Pedersen Collaborative, which includes the Milken Institute, HKS Architecture, and Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture. The Collaborative is dedicated to advancing evidence-based design.
Intentional Spaces Overview
In November 2023, the IAM Lab convened a pivotal summit that brought together over 300 leaders to align research, architecture and design practice, and community voices; a subsequent field survey gathered additional insights that helped shape the Roadmap’s recommendations.
“We are in, or move through, spaces every moment of our lives, and we now know that our environments have powerful effects on our physical and mental health,” said Susan Magsamen, Executive Director of the IAM Lab. “The importance and momentum of this work have never been more critical. From individual wellbeing to community impact, across every sector of society, the implications are profound. Intentional spaces represent a cost-effective, life-changing opportunity to improve health, resilience, innovation and quality of life at scale. This is not a dream or wishful thinking. There are organizations already putting these ideas into practice and leading the way and we are offering a roadmap and resources to accelerate this movement.”
A practical agenda to close the evidence-to-practice gap
Even with accelerating research, evidence-based design is not the norm. The Roadmap is intended to help shift thinking from siloed fields to collective action—informing environments that are not only functional or beautiful, but deeply supportive of human health and wellbeing.
Roadmap recommendations
Drawing on cross-sector input, the Intentional Spaces Roadmap outlines a set of clear, actionable recommendations to:
● Enhance basic and translational research and diverse ways of knowing including through pilot programs
● Establish career pathways that incorporate this new neuroaesthetic knowledge
● Expand methods and technology to advance intentional spaces
● Strengthen messaging and communication for multiple stakeholders
● Generate economic and impact evidence
● Advance policies that support intentional space design
● Build capacity, leadership, and inclusion
Implementation strategies and next steps
To translate recommendations into measurable impact, the Roadmap organizes field-building efforts around three core strategies: Building Evidence, Building Infrastructure, and Building Community. An implementation timeline based on these core strategies will be released in spring 2026.
Companion resource: Foundations
To support uptake across audiences, IAM Lab is also releasing Intentional Spaces: The Power of Place—Foundations, a practical, sector-wide guide for stakeholders who create the built environment. Foundations, developed in partnership with Thermengruppe Josef Wund, White Mirror, and The Future Laboratory, brings together research, core concepts, design strategies, and interdisciplinary insights, and includes frameworks for collaboration and recommendations for integrating principles into everyday work.
