Will McCollum is a designer who worked alongside celebrated urbanist Lew Oliver for 10 years to create meaningful and beautiful communities across the United States. He currently resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he has opened his own firm. He also serves as the president of Citymakers Collective and as a board member of the Congress for the New Urbanism in New England. I've had the pleasure to visit the summer studio organized by Citymakers Collective in Charleston last summer, which was a huge success.

Applications for 2026 summer school are open until early march, visit the website of Citymakers Collective for more information and to apply: https://citymakerscollective.org

Connect with Will: https://www.linkedin.com/in/will-mccollum-6965a066/

Follow Citymakers Collective on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/citymakerscollective/?hl=en

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Ann Sussman is an architect, author and researcher interested in how buildings influence our behavior. She's president of the Human Architecture and Planning Institute, and also known from the books Cognitive Architecture and Urban Experience + Design. She recently co-authored the Handbook of Neuroscience and the Built Environment, which recently launched.

In this interview, Ruben and Ann talk about a variety of topics regarding the brain, the importance of beauty, the experience of our built environment through our senses and the need for a different kind of design that takes human perception into account.

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Alexandros Lavdas is a is neuroscientist, a tenured Senior Researcher at Eurac Research, Bolzano, Italy and head of Psychology at Webster University, Athens Campus, Greece. He is also member of the board of directors of the Human Architecture and Planning Institute. He holds a PhD from University College London (UCL) and has worked at UCL and the Hellenic Pasteur Institute in Athens.

He has worked extensively in nervous system development and regeneration, and is especially interested in examining elements of visual organized complexity, such as those found in nature and pre-modern architecture, and exploring their physiological and neural correlates.

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For more information on The Aesthetic City, find our website on https://theaestheticcity.com/

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Follow us on X: https://x.com/_Aesthetic_City

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.aesthetic.city/

Substack: https://theaestheticcity.substack.com/