The Mind Palace is an intergenerational daycare center that aims to promote healthy cognitive aging in place through community driven programming and design. It seeks to understand and explore attachments formed with the built environment through personal storytelling, wayfinding, and cognition. Design decisions are informed by inferences gained through employing a research driven process by reactivating a neighborhood landmark, this project supports cognitive aging in the Mantua/ Powelton community. Evidence-based methods include participatory sessions with community and expert interviews. 

We all have an innate need for transcendent experiences – moments that are “beyond or above the range of normal or merely physical human experience.” To meet this need, Meta/Physical proposes adding an experience of transcendence to people’s regular routines through the design of a public library branch. With a particular focus on the use of light and shadow, transparency and opacity, wabi-sabi, color theory, connection to nature, and scale, this library space acts as a respite from the outside world.