By Celis Brisbin, Programs Manager
The Massachusetts Chapter would like to thank Ann Sussman for sharing her presentation, Architecture + the Human Subconscious Response, for today's Green Breakfast. We had a full room of architects and professionals who enjoyed the presentation and contributed to a robust discussion following the presentation.
The presentation covered four learning objectives:
1. Understand how our responses to the environment reflect human evolution.
2. Explain how our brain has built-in responses to edges, specific patterns and shapes.
3. Explore how considering human perception will gain importance in building design.
4. Identify connections between new findings in cognitive science and the future of Green Building.
Next Month!
Next month, we will be welcoming Carrie Havey from The Green Engineer, for our next Green Breakfast. Carrie will be presenting on the intersection of Transportation and Green Buildings and LEED. Carrie is involved with many LEED projects in the Commonwealth and is also a very active volunteer with the Chapter. Keep an eye out for more information on this in the next few days. Don't forget to reserve your seat!
More about today's presentation
Ann Sussman, AIA, is interested in how buildings influence our behavior. Her new book, Cognitive Architecture, written with Justin B. Hollander, an urban planning professor at Tufts, reveals the subconscious tendencies at work when we navigate the world around us. Her studio is in Concord, MA, at ArtScape in the Bradford Mill, an art and business center.
The 21st Century has already been labeled “The Age of Biology” where new findings in the life sciences are reframing our understanding of how we function and came to be. They also offer insight into our behavior in the built environment, from why we head down some streets and avoid others to how it is older cities maintain their charm. This talk reviews recent scientific findings relevant to our behavior in and around buildings. The slideshow will look at our innate responses to edges, patterns, and shapes and discusses how all these tendencies came to be for one very good reason: they helped us survive. The most successful green buildings in the 21st century, the author maintains, will use this new science to good advantage; for the more we build buildings people like to look at and ‘attach to' – the more likely the new constructions wilI last.
Global Head of Sustainability, Superior Essex
Sustainability Director, Steven Winter Associates
PE | Associate, LeMessurier
Vice President, AEW’s Architecture & Engineering group
Interior Designer, Jacobs, Boston
Senior Vice President, Market Transformation and Development U.S. Green Building Council
AIA LEED AP BD+C | Senior Associate, Gensler Boston 
LEED Fellow, WELL AP | Founder and Principal, Ecoworks Studio
AIA, LEED AP BD+C, WELL AP
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Assistant Professor of Exposure Science | Director of the Healthy Buildings program
Managing Director, Harvard University Office for Sustainability
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Director of Sustainability Programs, DASNY | LEED AP BD+C
Associate Principal, BuroHappold Engineering
Senior Vice President, Sustainability at Kilroy Realty Corporation
Co-Founder, Facilitator at The Laurentia Project | LEED AP BD+C, LFA
Vice President of Sustainable Development, Shaw
Founder and President, Board of the Healthy Building Network
Building Technology Director, Kingspan North America
LEED® AP ID+C, BD+C, USGBC Faculty, WELL® AP, WELL Faculty and Fitwel Ambassador
Workplace Strategy Expert and Researcher, EYP
Principal, Integrated Ecostrategy
Senior Vice President, International WELL Building Institute
Principal, Bruner/Cott
Architect, Associate, and Sustainability Design Leader, Stantec Architecture and Engineering
FAIA, LEED Fellow, Long Green Specs
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Director of Acquisitions and Development
Director of Restorative Enterprise, Interface
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