In this episode, Lyssia sits down with architect, leadership coach, and best-selling author Diane Van Buren to explore what Rome can teach us about beauty, architecture, and the way we live today. Drawing from her years living in Rome and her background in architecture, Diane looks at why the city’s piazzas, fountains, public spaces, and handcrafted details still feel so powerful centuries later.

The conversation explores what the Romans understood about human scale, belonging, beauty, and civic life. Diane explains why piazzas act as “people magnets,” why pedestrian spaces can feel more restorative, and why public beauty can do more than simply decorate a city. She also talks about the way Roman architecture communicated permanence, power, luxury, and identity, and why those ideas still shape how we experience buildings today.

They take the conversation deeper into some of Rome’s most enduring design lessons, including the Pantheon and the engineering behind its unreinforced concrete dome. Diane explains how Roman concrete was designed to strengthen over time and why the craftsmanship, proportion, and durability of ancient buildings continue to stand in such sharp contrast to much of what we build now.

Lyssia and Diane also explore what may have been lost along the way. From the decline of ornamentation and handmade detail to the rise of car-centered cities, repetitive materials, and buildings designed around speed and efficiency, they look at how modern spaces can become disconnected from the people who actually use them.

The conversation also moves into fountains, sculpture, public art, craftsmanship, city squares, and the role beauty can play in everyday life. Diane explains why spending time in thoughtful public spaces can create room to slow down, observe, process, and reconnect, and why beauty does not have to be grand or expensive to have an impact.

By the end of this episode, you may start looking at the places around you differently and asking a bigger question: if Rome got so much right about how people gather, move, and experience beauty, what have we forgotten about how to build?

More Room to Think:

Diane Van Buren
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurel-diane-van-buren-14698315/
Website: https://thrivingvisionaries.com/

Room to Think
https://roomtothinkpodcast.com/

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