Johns Hopkins IAM Lab Launches Global Design Challenge to Create Places Where Humanity Thrives

IAM Lab’s work to translate neuroaesthetics research into everyday life takes a new form through the Intentional Spaces Design Challenge

Intentional Spaces Initiative - Johns Hopkins IAM Lab Launches Global Design Challenge to Create Places Where Humanity Thrives Page Image

BALTIMORE, MD, NOVEMBER 13 – The International Arts + Mind Lab (IAM Lab), Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, is bringing architecture, neuroscience, and community knowledge together to help design places that support human health. The Intentional Spaces Initiative builds on the IAM Lab’s work to apply neuroaesthetics research to health, wellbeing, and learning to understand how the arts and aesthetic experiences affect the brain, body and behavior. Intentional Spaces brings that focus to neurospatial design, or how places are conceived, designed, and evaluated, and how the people who use them help shape those decisions.

Research across neuroaesthetics, psychology, architecture, and design increasingly shows that light, sound, texture, form, and access to nature shape how people feel, think, heal, and connect. Applying that knowledge to architecture calls for designers, researchers, and communities to work together.

The Intentional Spaces Initiative released a Roadmap in January 2026 that sets out practical steps for applying this research to design. It draws on a 2023 summit that convened more than 300 leaders and a subsequent field survey, and organizes the work around three strategic pillars: Evidence, Infrastructure, and Community.

IAM Lab is putting the Roadmap into practice through its Architect-in-Residence program, professional development, and this global Design Challenge that invites others to contribute original ideas.

Opening the work to others

The inaugural Intentional Spaces Design Challenge: Designing Places Where Humanity Thrives extends a global invitation to contribute to this effort. It asks interdisciplinary teams to envision a new Community Health & Wellbeing place that supports people across the lifespan, grounded in the needs, strengths, and aspirations of a specific community.

“We know that our environments are not neutral. They shape our experiences, our behaviors, our relationships, and our health,” noted Susan Magsamen, Founder and Executive Director of the International Arts + Mind Lab (IAM Lab) Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Co-Director of the NeuroArts Blueprint Initiative. “The Intentional Spaces Design Challenge is an invitation to imagine what’s possible when we bring together evidence, creativity, and community knowledge.”

The brief for this Design Challenge leaves the building type and program open. Teams will consider the full experience of a place, including its architecture, interiors, landscape, sensory qualities, social and cultural meaning, and relationship to its surroundings.

Each team must include at least three named members representing design and spatial practice, health and human sciences, and the community for which the place is designed. Community knowledge and lived experience must help shape each proposal from the start.

Proposals must show how research and other credible forms of knowledge inform specific spatial decisions, the experiences those decisions are intended to support, and how teams would evaluate anticipated health and wellbeing outcomes if the place were built. Accessibility, inclusion, participation, and belonging are central to the brief.

The aim is to generate original ideas and learning that can inform work beyond the competition while respecting differences among communities, cultures, and places. With teams’ permission and appropriate credit, submissions will be listed and categorized on the Design Challenge website so designers, developers, community leaders, and others can discover the work.

This Design Challenge is launched in partnership with the Global Wellness Institute and Aldar with support from the Pedersen Foundation. “We’re excited to be working with the Global Wellness Institute, which focuses on empowering wellness through research, public education, and advocacy, and Aldar, a real estate development firm with a focus on creating integrated and livable spaces,” continued Ms. Magsamen. “Our Intentional Spaces Initiative Working Group has been an essential partner in helping conceptualize this Design Challenge and the ongoing support of the Pedersen Foundation has also enabled us to create a call for submissions that embraces the principles of neurospatial design.”

Design Challenge Details

The Design Challenge registration will open with the Challenge announcement at the Global Wellness Summit in Phuket, Thailand, November 13, 2026. Interested individuals and teams can register to receive Challenge updates and information. Submissions open February 1, 2027, and proposals are due June 1, 2027.

Three award recipients will be recognized at the Global Wellness Summit in London in November 2027, including a first-place recipient receiving a $50,000 cash award. The first-place recipient will also be invited to participate in a Global Wellness Institute real estate event in May 2028.

The Challenge is an ideas competition, with no commitment to build a winning proposal. Any future development, research, piloting, or implementation would require a separate agreement with the team and relevant partners.

For registration, eligibility, and full Challenge guidelines, visit the Intentional Spaces Design Challenge webpage.