Announcement: Intentional Spaces Roadmap
Johns Hopkins’ International Arts + Mind Lab Releases the Intentional Spaces Roadmap, an Evidence-Based Strategy for Designing Environments that Support Health and Wellbeing
BALTIMORE, MD — January 27, 2026 — 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 & 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 work of the Intentional Spaces Initiative is supported by the Pedersen Foundation through a working partnership called the Intentional Spaces Collaborative, which includes the Milken Institute, HKS Architecture, Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture, and the IAM Lab. Each partner takes on a unique aspect of the Collaborative to help build and advance this emerging field.
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.
Resource links: Roadmap and Foundations
About the International Arts + Mind Lab (IAM Lab)
The International Arts + Mind Lab, Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics (IAM Lab) is a multidisciplinary research-to-practice initiative at Johns Hopkins University that is accelerating the field of neuroarts through the study of neuroaesthetics. The IAM Lab is pioneering Impact Thinking, a translational research approach designed to solve intractable problems in health, wellbeing, and learning through the arts. The IAM Lab brings together brain scientists and practitioners in the visual and performing arts, architecture and design, and creative arts therapies to foster collaboration and research. The goal of the IAM Lab is to empower the global neuroaesthetics community to change the way we think today and enhance the way we live tomorrow.
About the NeuroArts Blueprint Initiative
The NeuroArts Blueprint Initiative is a partnership between the Johns Hopkins International Arts + Mind Lab, Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics (IAM Lab) and the Aspen Institute’s Health, Medicine and Society (HMS) Program. Co-directed by Susan Magsamen, MAS, executive director of IAM Lab, and Ruth J. Katz, JD, MPH, executive director of the HMS Program, the Initiative bridges the gap between the arts and sciences to advance health and well-being by promoting innovative research, developing evidence-based practices, and raising public awareness of the arts’ potential to enhance health. The Initiative also created and maintains the Neuroarts Resource Center, a first-of-its-kind online platform designed to connect, inform, and inspire the growing neuroarts global community.
