By Kathryn Yap - 5th November, 2026

People, Place, and Purpose: A Decade of Social Science in Architecture

What should architecture measure—and whose experience should shape what gets built? At Social Science & Architecture: A Decade of Impact, Future Directions, speakers brought public health, social science, technology, and design into conversation around this question. One idea carried through the evening: knowing that the built environment affects health is only the beginning. Designing healthier places also means listening to communities, learning from lived experience, and returning to see how places actually work over time.

The evening opened by looking at how the committee itself has changed over its first decade while maintaining a focus on the human layer of architecture. Nadine Berger, AIA, current Co-Chair of the AIANY Social Science and Architecture Committee, reflected on that evolution, while Melissa Marsh, M.Arch, AIA, Founding Co-Chair, thanked successive leaders, members, and AIA New York for sustaining a space for both professional practice and teaching and learning.

Over that decade, the committee has brought together 170+ presenters and contributors, welcomed more than 1,200 program participants, hosted 50+ public programs and events, and delivered 75+ continuing education units. That work builds on its 2016 founding mission to bring architecture and the social sciences into closer conversation, with then-AIA New York President Tomas Rossant, AIA, playing an instrumental role in establishing the committee. Its work has continued to build shared language across disciplines, while the Building Blocks of Social Science and Architecture initiative has helped document that history and carry lessons from past programs forward. Marsh invited participants to keep shaping what comes next through their own involvement.

Explore the committee’s first decade: See ten years of Social Science & Architecture programs, conversations, and milestones.

That ten-year perspective also drew on themes surfaced during the committee’s September 23 anniversary workshop. Eve Klein, PhD, AIA, Founding Co-Chair, connected the lessons of the past decade to what could come next. The workshop mapped key projects and cultural shifts from the last ten years into quadrants of impact, measured by depth and by reach from local to widespread, using those examples to consider the changes participants most urgently wanted for the next decade. Those shifts range from sustainability, resilience, and health becoming more familiar parts of design practice to growing attention around participatory planning, social outcomes, neuroinclusive design, adaptive reuse, biodiversity, and evidence of how places actually perform for people.

That breadth of work also reflects how the committee has operated: bringing different fields into the same conversation and creating space for ideas to move from research and discussion into pilots, guidelines, and built projects. The October 19 panel continued that approach, bringing together perspectives from public health, technology, research, and design to consider where that work could go next.

One sign of that shift is that the relationship between health and the built environment no longer needs the same level of convincing. Speaking from the perspective of the Active Design Guidelines 2.0, Josh Langham put it plainly: “We don’t necessarily have to convince anybody any longer that the built environment has an impact on health.” The challenge now, he said, is understanding who a place is for and engaging communities in ways that are authentic—not simply collecting data or checking a box. That means designing with the people who will live with its consequences and being willing to adjust in response to what they say to better meet their needs and support their health.

Technology adds another layer to that responsibility. Drawing on work that brings digital services into civic and urban spaces, from transit information to LinkNYC, Paul McConnell of Noble pointed to a changing role for designers as emerging technology reshapes practice: “The stuff that you don’t see—data, data policy, stewardship, ethics—who’s managing them is really important.” As physical and digital environments become harder to separate, those less visible decisions about data and responsibility increasingly become design questions too.

Health, connection, and belonging also depend on leaving room for people rather than trying to prescribe how they should behave. Through stories from her life and work, including a school project in Buckingham County, Virginia, Dina Sorensen connected social science and public health to architectural practice. Her reminder that “design doesn’t determine connection; it makes room for it” distilled a larger idea: in architecture, it is a rehumanizing act to design the conditions for different people to participate, connect, and feel that they belong. She also called for robust evaluation that considers not only measurable outcomes, but how people feel and connect in the places they inhabit.

That question of evaluation came back to what architecture chooses to study in the first place. Marsh argued for widening the lens beyond buildings alone: “We’ve been studying buildings, and we need to find ways to study people first or simultaneously people and buildings.”

When participants were asked what “wins” they hoped the field would be talking about ten years from now, the answers ranged widely: more evidence-based approaches to public health, design that better serves vulnerable and overlooked communities, stronger public spaces, less waste, better access and mobility, climate resilience, more inclusive design education, and AI literacy that supports rather than replaces human judgment. Other responses imagined reduced homelessness, more nature woven into cities, and clearer evidence of how design affects people’s lives.

Sorensen’s warning stayed with the room: “Edges aren’t only where innovation happens; they’re also where people get left behind.” Ten years in, the committee is not running out of questions. It is getting more specific about who those questions should include, what evidence should count, and how architecture can make sure the people at the edges are not left out of the future it creates.