Buildings shape our lives: let’s make sure that is a positive experience.
What Design Can Do
When faced with the pressing social, health and ecological problems of our time, we rarely consider the common material basis that underlies each and every one of them. Loneliness is now a health risk on par with smoking and obesity — but have we asked how the design of our homes and cities have created the conditions that exacerbate loneliness or even make it inevitable? What happens to civic engagement and social cooperation if people do not have safe and inviting places to gather?
How can we reconnect to nature if it has been banished from the places in which we dwell? Our everyday lives are structured by the built environments we inhabit, yet we fail to consider how our buildings influence our thoughts, behaviors and social interactions—and our very possibilities of being in the world. This is the very first film to consider design not as a luxury afforded to the wealthy few, but as an active agent capable of helping us to heal faster, learn better and connect across social divides, demonstrating how interdisciplinary research informs life-promoting design. Directed by Mary McDonagh Murphy, written and produced by Sarah Williams Goldhagen and Sarah Robinson.
What Design Can Do: Trailer
Released in 2023, this award-winning film embarks on a visionary journey through the world of architecture, aiming to educate its audience on the profound impact that buildings have on society and the environment. With a mission to inspire and inform, What Design Can Do reveals the transformative power of thoughtful design in shaping our lives.
EVENTS
Saturday, November 15, 2025
6:00 - 7:30 PM CET / 12:00 - 1:30 PM EST / 9:00 - 10:30 AM PST
What Design and Designers Can Do
Hosted by: What Design Can Do
Speaker: Milton Shinberg, AIA
What Design and Designers Can Do
Milton Shinberg, AIA, will share insights and unconventional approaches for architects to seek and find ways, including strategies to help their designs resonate with people’s deep needs for human and humane spaces and places.
Milton Shinberg, AIA
Milton Shinberg is a veteran Washington architect who has served as an adjunct professor in the School of Architecture & Planning for nearly 50 years. Many of his school and religious projects with Shinberg Levinas Architects, created in partnership with Salo Levinas, have been published locally, nationally and internationally.
At Catholic University’s School of Architecture & Planning, he has taught all the studio levels, both undergraduate and graduate, along with initiating special courses on design, drawing, and technology. His popular seminar, Beauty & Brains, began in 2004, including an emphasis on the all the senses, and drawing.
Shinberg was given the Architect Teacher Award by the Washington Architectural Foundation in 2021 and the Part-Time Teacher Excellence Award by Catholic University in 2023.
His new book, People-Centered Architecture: Design, Practice Education, from Wiley, looks into ways the sciences of people can be successfully integrated into design-thinking and practice. It also investigates how architects can harvest architectural wisdom from non-architects.
In addition to his work as an architect, Shinberg’s watercolors and photographs have been featured in group and solo shows.
NEWS
What Design Can Do for Human Health and Community Wellbeing: A three-part series at the Center for Architecture (AIA New York)
Suchi Reddy Mariana G. Figueiro Margaret O’Donoghue Castillo Milton Shinberg
Sarah Williams Goldhagen speaking at the first event of the series
Images and Video source: https://www.aiany.org
On July 17, the AIANY Social Science and Architecture Committee hosted the second event in its three-part series What Design Can Do: Bridging Human Experience, Neuroscience, and Architecture.
The discussion was moderated by Margaret O’Donoghue Castillo, FAIA, LEED AP (Chief Architect, New York City Department of Design and Construction), and brought together speakers from diverse fields- including design, development, academic research, and government agencies:
Mariana G. Figueiro, Ph.D. (Professor, Mount Sinai)
Suchi Reddy, FAIA (Founding Principal, Reddymade Architecture)
Milton Shinberg, AIA, NCARB, LEED AP (Milton Shinberg Architect)
The recording of the event is already available on the Center for Architecture website. You can also watch the recording of the first event in the series - featuring a discussion and Q&A with Sarah Williams Goldhagen, moderated by Ian Wach.
Stay tuned for the third and final event in the series, coming this fall!
FOLCS International Short Film Competition 2025
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3rd Place
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FOLCS International Short Film Competition 2025 • 3rd Place •
WHAT DESIGN CAN DO wins 3rd Place at FOLCS International Short Film Competition
We’re proud to share that WHAT DESIGN CAN DO has been awarded 3rd place at the FOLCS International Short Film Competition.
Hosted by the Forum on Life, Culture & Society (FOLCS), this annual International Short Film Competition invites filmmakers from around the world to explore the relationship between law, justice, and society by creating original short films. From documentaries to dramas, animations to comedies, the competition is open to all film genres that express the struggles and injustices that humanity faces, and the noble pursuit and moral imperative of justice.
We’re thrilled to see the message of our film resonate on such an impactful platform. A huge thank you to the FOLCS jury for this recognition - let’s keep telling stories that matter!
Awards and Presentations
Premier - IAM Lab’s Intentional Spaces Summit, Johns Hopkins University, Washington DC, November 2023
Our Mission
To start a grass-roots movement to raise awareness of the power of buildings to improve our human existence
As a collective of architects, design professionals and scientists, we are on a mission to educate, advocate and design a built environment that supports human flourishing and ecological well being.
Listen to our Podcast
Want to hear more from the creators behind What Design Can Do?
Situated: a podcast exploring how our surroundings shape us
hosted by Sarah Robinson
Read our Books
by Sarah Robinson
Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives
by Sarah Williams Goldhagen