Synesthetic Research & Design Lab

The Synesthetic Research & Design Lab (SR&DL) is an interdisciplinary design research platform exploring how people sense, perceive, and inhabit space—especially those whose experiences remain underrepresented within dominant architectural narratives. Rooted in practices of care, co‑creation, embodied cognition, and sensory ethnography, the lab brings together architecture, media arts, cognitive sciences, disability studies, and lived experience expertise to imagine more empathetic, responsive environments. 

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The SR&DLab is conceived as a place where history and theory interweave with practice, where sensory difference becomes a generative design principle, and where interdisciplinary collaboration opens new pathways for inclusive futures. We are committed to cultivating environments—and conversations—that honor complexity, expand empathy, and redefine how we design for and with diverse bodies and minds.

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Our work unfolds across multiple, interwoven modalities of inquiry, each offering a different lens through which to understand sensory experience, spatial perception, and neurodivergent ways of navigating the world. In our works, art is both a method and a catalyst: a way to probe the limits of conventional architectural representation and to reimagine spatial experience through multisensory, participatory means.

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Documentary & Multimedia Art. Through film, sound, and lens‑based media, we cultivate practices of deep listening and narrative co‑creation. Projects like Voices reveal the sensory, emotional, and social textures of urban life as described by autistic individuals. These works operate as both research and public scholarship—shifting cultural imaginaries and expanding how we talk about lived experience.

Responsive & Immersive Spatial Installations. Our installations—exemplified by Echoes and Synesthesia—merge neuroarts, embodied cognition, and technological experimentation. Using adaptive custom sensor systems and real-time feedback loops, we craft environments that respond to bodies in motion, emotional states, and sensory rhythms. These prototypes test new forms of inclusive placemaking and expand the vocabulary of spatial design.

Built Environment & Architectural Practice. We study and design the everyday spaces people inhabit—from urban pathways to institutional interiors—through the lens of sensory experience and neurodiversity. This work seeks to reframe architecture as an empathetic, multisensory practice that supports grounding, regulation, and belonging. We partner with professional design firms, the health industry, and communities to imagine built environments that welcome a wider range of perceptual realities.

Qualitative Research & Sensory Ethnography. Our methodological foundation is grounded in co-creation and embodied inquiry. We employ walking interviews, participatory mapping, sensory logging, and cross-disciplinary collaboration to understand how people navigate spatial uncertainty, sensory triggers, and moments of regulation. These insights directly inform our design work and theoretical contributions through published scholarship. 

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Public Forums. Each spring, SR&DL convenes the International Neurodiversity & the Built Environment Symposium, a gathering that brings together autistic self‑advocates, scholars, clinicians, designers, artists, and community partners to advance research, discourse, and practice around sensory-inclusive environments. The symposium operates as a living modality of inquiry—a public forum where emerging research, lived experience expertise, and creative practice intersect. Through open dialogue, the event expands the field’s understanding of neurodiversity, fosters interdisciplinary collaboration, and nurtures a global community committed to sensory justice and inclusive placemaking.

Together, these efforts define the Synesthetic Research & Design Lab as a site where:

• Neuroarts and architectural research converge, expanding how we understand sensory experience and spatial perception;

• Embodied experience becomes a framework for design justice, particularly for neurodivergent and autistic individuals whose sensory and emotional realities remain marginalized in environmental design.

• Experimental technologies act as both instruments and provocations, revealing hidden sensory dynamics and enabling new forms of environmental attunement.

• and placemaking is reimagined as an inclusive, multisensory, co‑created practice, shaped by the diverse ways neurodivergent communities inhabit, make meaning from, and regulate within space.