I am a research psychologist at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. I spent many years trying to find small answers to small questions in neuroscience, mostly having to do with how animals understood their surroundings and how they used this knowledge to help them solve the basic problems of life, such as finding food, shelter, and sex.

More recently, I’ve found myself wondering about the bigger questions: how do human beings understand space and place? How do our surroundings influence our feelings and our behaviour? The more I thought about this, the more I realized that not only were such questions intrinsically interesting, but that their answers might lead to new ways of thinking about architecture, design, and how we plan our built world.

I wrote a book about these emerging ideas, which you can find described here. I also direct the Research Laboratory for Immersive Virtual Environments where we use the tools of virtual reality to do research on design, wayfinding, and the human emotional response to place.

I’m working on several new projects that I think will help us to understand how our built surroundings affect how we feel and what we do. My most cherished desire is that my work will help us to build healthier and happier places in a time where we will very likely have to learn how to live with less of many things, including space.

You can read about my work right here on my blog, and in some of my other writing projects both published and in the works.