 and welcome to The Creative Life, a collaborative production between Think Tech Hawaii and the American Creativity Association Austin Global. I'm your host, Darlene Boyd, and joining me today is our guest, neuroarchitect Richard Fleming. Stay with us as we discuss the intersection of neuroscience and architecture as a pathway to building better brains and unlocking happiness. Stay with us and we'll be right back. Welcome Richard. We're so glad to have you with us today. And you're joining us from Irvine, but your offices are not too far from your home in Newport Beach. And I think I'd like to let the viewers know right at the onset that you are really global. So you have offices in London, Paris, and Milan. And you're not just the common stock architect that most of us are used to. And as followers of us on the Creative Life, I just remind our viewers that typically we are shows direct us towards people that are able to take us through the process of the creative process and how they've gotten to where they are by utilizing whatever models that they have in mind. And also people that are living the Creative Life, obviously having demonstrated to us that they've been through the process themselves. And you exemplify both. So you're just a model for us today for both. And I suppose we should start out by letting our viewers know what a neuro architect is and what inspired you to pursue the field of neuro architecture versus just being a run-of-the-mill world common stock architect. Aloha, darling. That is such a great question. I get asked that a lot. You know, when somebody says to you, you're a neuroscientist and an architect, what does that mean? And I think it's the intersection of science and design that became my passion. One of the things people introduced me usually as I used to be the Walt Disney Company architect. So I focused on making people happy. You know, about a million guests a day would show up. But how I got started was I first started doing intensive care units for children. And I had a child who was eight years old who was in a coma. And so he could not see. And how does an architect design a space when it's not seen? So it activates your other senses. And I realized that the brain was doing a lot of gathering of spatial information, temperature information, daylight information. And I wanted to incorporate that all. And I ended up, after becoming an architect, I was designing a UCLA university hospital. I said, why don't I apply for the Doctorate of Neuroscience? And I got it. And so the road was somewhat serendipitous, but it was through observation. And I think that's the core to creativity is noticing when there's opportunities of creativity. So basically, I'm brain-based design. And I have clients from all over the world. I have Disney, ABCs, Apple, Starbucks, Gap, City of London, Ferrari. All these companies have something in common. And they're all creative companies. And they didn't realize that for them to be the most effective they could be is to tap into our human brain. And I call it also user experience. Richard, you say that they're all different companies. And they are extremely late. And then they have a commonality at the same time. But they clearly are different, aren't they? They are. They're so... Ferrari, working for Ferrari. Whoa. Yeah, they built a theme park in Dubai. And they were having low attendance. And so the conversation started with, well, I said, who's your customer? And I made a joke. And I said, you know, isn't it just one gentleman that's driving around in a Ferrari that we see everywhere on the roads? And is that something that needs to be a part of a community? Does he have friends? Does he have family? Does he have a spouse? Does he have children? How do you create this experience that would be an extension of the love, the rush that happens in the brain from driving a car? And so we built into looking at, ironically, Ferrari, Andrea Buccelli, Armogen Cheese, and balsamic vinegar were the neighbors, the four corners on the same block in Italy. And I said, let's pull these people together with this theme park. And so we typed in, we pulled in music. We pulled in flavors. We pulled in smell. And we pulled in all of our neuroscience elements to the rush of driving park. So you said this was in Italy on four corners as you're describing it? Four corners. Like what are the chances those four neighbors knock it out of the park in their field? Right? I'm going to just focus on cheese, right? And I'm going to focus on Parmesan, right? I'm like, could you imagine? And you go there and you could almost reach across the street and you know, everybody's sharing everything. But you just think this is iconic neighbor. It's iconic. Absolutely. Absolutely incredibly amazing to think that they would be on the four corners. Similar to, I won't reference what we have on our every corner. That's right. So Richard, tell us a little bit more about the depth of the neuroscience. Or let me backtrack a little bit here. Since you brought up Italy, I can't help but visualize, of course, the architecture in Italy being so extraordinary to those of us that live in neighborhoods with track housing and that kind of thing. But you said something to me recently that I wasn't aware of. I was complimenting you on perhaps having the opportunity to design your home. And you had mentioned that you not only designed your home, but you designed the whole neighborhood. And that's enviable to me. And I wonder who designed the neighborhood on those four corners. But tell us a little bit about this neighborhood design. So architecture, if you've, you know, if I might be the only architect you ever meet, the average person meets one architect. I want to start off the bat. I love what I do. If you're considering the profession, I highly recommend it. I am a, most of the profession does residential. I am commercial. I do about cities where a million people a day show up. So if I don't get it right, everyone is banging into the door stuck in the cul-de-sac. So I know very quickly if something doesn't work. So I was hired by a large real estate developer away from Disney to look at the city planning of the city that we are in, in Southern California. And so we had 40 area plans and we started to take a look at the evolution of a human. And prior to this development, when you built the neighborhood, you built the same floor plan and then people outgrew it. And they then had to leave and they lost their friends. So this neighborhood is about all the stages of life. I'm single. I'm newly married. I'm an empty nester. I'm raising a family. I am a, I need a one story home and they're all within the same community. So that you could have friends in every stage of life and you could stay within your community of friends and you just moved. Maybe you had no kids when you moved in and now you've got six, or maybe you are single and then you get married. The idea is that you stay within your sense of community. So that's part of city planning. And it works really well in London as well, or it works well in other European cities that have more of a history. They tend to have, this is the big difference for me. They have a lack of what we have here, which is a single use mentality. Like this building is only an office building. Where in Paris, it's a cafe. It's an office. It's a restaurant. It's a home. Second floor cafe, restaurant, office, home. And people take their kitchens with them. So the idea that you build architecture that can live through 500, a thousand years, because it's going to grow and change as we find the growth, the need in those areas. What do you mean by they take their kitchen with them? Oh, so this is fascinating. I don't want to take my kitchen if I moved. Oh, maybe. I don't know. I like my kitchen. Now yours would stay. So in Europe, your kitchen is portable. The craziest thing. So the staircase stays, the bathroom stays, but the kitchen is portable. Amazing. Another amazing fact here. So let's stay in your Europe for a little bit of take you back, take you back to the time of Da Vinci. Would Da Vinci have been exemplified in oral architecture? Yes. Absolutely. At the core, the center of creativity was his process. So he was outside the silo. So he saw the combinations of, say, chocolate and peanut butter for the Reese's peanut butter cup. He saw that the ideas that were growing out of things in different categories and being put together in Italy in particular, and Da Vinci in particular, but in Italy in particular, there's an area of the of the boot of Italy, which is more of the agricultural area called Umbria. And there's a town called Assisi. And it's very famous for what it happened here in the United States, particularly for us in Southern California, is that St. Francis D. Assisi. So if you can imagine a flat agricultural area, and then you've got almost like a volcano mountain. So it's like very flat and then it pops up. And on the top of it is a village, a city called Assisi. And there's a cathedral called St. Francis D. Assisi. He's the patron saint of the environment. Well, during our early history in the United States, we had another pandemic called polio. And we had a doctor, Jonas Salk, who was struggling passionately trying to find a cure for polio. And he was working at a basement in the east coast with no windows, no daylight. And his wife said, please, let's go to vacation. And they went to a seat, they went to visit Italy, and they went to Assisi. And he transvert, he climbs this mountain, you know, drives up, but it's very narrow drives up, gets to the top and immediately arrives at the cathedral at the top. And he walks into the cathedral and he looks up to the high ceiling. And he instantly has a spark in his brain. And he realizes, I think I just figured out the cure for polio. He got no new information. He physically changed his space. And that spark called a synapse is what happened. And Dr. Jonas Salk coined the phrase, the cathedral effect that the height of the ceiling affects your brain. He went on to build the Salk Institute in San Diego on cognitive neuroscience that I'm a member of. So in San Diego, we have the Institute of cognitive neuroscience. And it's based on him having an environmental impact, a thing outside of his research that affected him. And it opened up a whole conversation that we never really looked at before. And that spark, that cathedral effect, here's, here's what boils down to this. The higher the ceiling, the more creative your brain is. The lower the ceiling, the more analytical you are. So how important is that for me, for you, for our listeners to realize it's what you're doing in the spaces is as important as the space. So if you remember the Apple headquarters in Northern California, that was built a gorgeous ring. And they built these large open spaces because they are one of the most, I think they're number one creative company, but they had people who were doing programming and they put tents over their desks because they needed to lower the ceiling. And so understanding our environment, but understanding the task and the building and our brain. So if you want to do a brain boost, let's say you were just sharing with me that you're working on your book, right? So here we write our book is almost as important as what we're writing in the book. So are we doing editing? Then let's stay focused. Are we creating new concepts of chapters? Let's focus. Are you thinking of writing music? Go for a walk underneath a canopy of trees. One of the things I know, this is exciting, is that one of the things we realized it was kind of extrapolated is that correlating or not, that St. Francis, DCC was the patron saint of the environment, dot, dot, dot, what we found out is classrooms, classrooms that children are in with windows, natural daylight. Natural daylight is really important. We know that, but natural daylight in a classroom where you're learning your cognitive abilities are learning, you increase your cognitive abilities 26%. Where do you get results like that? 26% of a brain boost by having a room with daylight. And if the daylight, the window to the outside has vision of trees with greenery, it's 28%. And all this data is available if our listeners would like to research it, but it's called the classroom phenomenon of natural daylighting. It's all powerful. So I always say it breaks down to three points. Understand your environment, think about the task, and then think about the user experience. And those are such a key formula to boosting your brain that I can go and elaborate on those things too if you like, but those are really important. Nature, the volume of the space, the task at hand, and then understanding the user experience. And when I say user experience, I don't know if you wear cologne, perfume, all of these things, but your sense of smell is so powerful to your brain. You've probably maybe been to an open house where the realtor had some chocolate chip cookies. Right? And then you're like, I love this house. Do I really love this house? I just love chocolate chip cookies. I can't remember. But Disney knows this. And so when I was at Disney and I was designing happiness for you, your brain, when you walk down Main Street on the left side, there's a restaurant or a shop called Gibson's Ice Cream Bakery. And underneath the windows, there's a vent. And it looks like a decorative medallion, but it's actually a vent that pumps out the smell of vanilla. That sense of that smell of vanilla, why are they doing that? But that smell of vanilla at the height of a stroller of a child, pre-cognitive, right? They can't read, they have a mastered language yet. It connects with them and that happy emotion. Disney knew this so much that in the 1980s, they actually got a patent for it called the Smellitzer Machine. And whenever I would design something at Disney and I would start off with like a blank piece of paper, the first thing I would design is what is this going to smell like? Then it was, what is it going to sound like? What's the ideal decibel level? And then I go into what does it look like? A little different for an architect. You know, that user experience first? So sometimes my solutions are not building. They're completely outdoor spaces. Or there I elevate you so that you have more blood flow to the brain. And I'm like, we need to be at 1500 feet above sea level to design what you're going to do here. If you're going to work on a bio and tech a cure for COVID, we need to know where those universities, those think tank locations are as well because they affect, we all, all of it, it all affects itself in the brain. Does that make sense? It does make sense. And there are many things that are starting to make sense. Now I understand perhaps why almost every shocking center here has a fountain. Now that may not work at the East Coast as much, but I suspect there are other solutions for the senses on the East Coast. It might be the chocolate chip cookies. I want to take us back to Assisi, a little connection there, if I may. And that is, what about sacred architecture? Like architectural sites considered sacred churches or one memorials, the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial? How does the brain figure into that and what connections? I love talking with you. Okay. So that is like an extra credit question. That we call neuro phenomenology. Neuro phenomenology, it actually has a whole name. And I was just in Washington, D.C. and there was a whole conference on this. And really it boils down to this, is faith is the absence of sight. So if you close your eyes and you're in a spiritual space, what information do you get? Is it the reverberation? Is it the senses? Is it the sound on the pavement? What are those senses that tie into this conversation? Neuro phenomenology. And what we have found is enormous. So we can adjust the, so for example, if you are walking quickly or slowly, it affects your brain. So when you go into spiritual spaces, what we found is the height of the ceiling, the architecture, the way the, it's called a groin vault where you have, it's like a canopy of trees where you have one structure crossing over to another structure and then they intersect. Whenever you are walking underneath intersections, it actually helps your brain put ideas together. That's why they say if you ever have writer's block, go for a walk. Because when you go into a cathedral, when you go into a church, when you go underneath a canopy of trees, when you go into an area that has an overhead structure that connects, your neurotransmitters start to put ideas together that we haven't thought of before. And it comes in the frontal cortex of our brain. This is our creative area. So right here, it's pre-cognitive. You know, you love it before you know why you love it. I love that music. I love the food. I love this fountain. I love Italy. You know, all of those things happen and then you break it down to is it the language? Is it the food? Is it the music? So neuro phenomenology is what it's called and it activates the brain. How does this all connect to happiness and how do we sustain the happiness? We've done, we've had, I've had a guest that we talked about happiness and just when you think you've reached your happiness, something happens and you feel like the rug has been pulled out from beneath you. Are the trees going to keep us happy or is there another formula? There's, there's two parts. So when I was talking about the environment, the task, and then the user experience, understanding ourselves, awareness is the beginning of your happiness, right? So what makes you happy? So there's a hormone or chemical that gets released in your brain that happens and I'll, I'll do it a little cheat sheet dose, a dose of happiness. D-O-S-E. D is for dopamine. O is oxytocin. S is serotonin. And E is endorphins. Now, I'm a dopamine person. I'm a planner. Like Darlene, I was so excited to meet with you and to speak with everyone. And so I was thinking it through. I said, oh, I hope I remember to say everything that would help everybody. My wife, you usually marry the opposite person. I'm married to an endorphin. My wife runs around like crazy. Christmas Eve, she's buying the presents. Thanks. Go back before she's getting the turkey. Kind of drives the dopamine person, but we have the most amazing meals. In the middle is serotonin and oxytocin. Oxytocin, you think of the O-X, it's the cuddle. It's the cuddle one. So a mother cuddling a child, it's a hug. There's a great MRI that was taken of a radiologist who was kissing their baby and their brains lit up in the same quadrants when they hugged. So oxytocin is the cuddle. Serotonin is the tactile. It's hair dressing, woodworking, gardening. So happiness is tapping into these natural chemicals that are free inside of your body and you being aware of what your superpower is. So I know what my dopamine, I know what mine is. Mine is the dopamine. I love to plan. You might, what do you think yours is? I don't know. I don't mind planning, but I don't think that would be my choice. If you're doing this, I might think you're an endorphin because you're thinking quick on your feet. Yeah, that's true. You know, that might happen too, but those are how you tap into happiness. Know thyself, understand that there's a free chemical that gets released in your brain when you tap into that element of happiness. The happiness is tied to what is it that you really thrive in doing. And so many times I've got three kids. I ask my kids all the time. I got one that's an athlete, literally loves to run around. I have my daughter as the planner. Her room is immaculate. Her homework's done. It's perfectly lined. I have my other son that is more of the maker. He is the serotonin guy. I want to speak to them. If they were my clients, I would want to build an environment for them that they excelled, that they brought. If they were a business to business, you'd want to make sure that I speak their language. If they were business to consumer, I want to make sure that each different person that walked in felt the connection to my company or my business or my service. And if it was a customer to customer, if your social media is understanding who your community is that you're speaking to. It's so simple. It's so accessible. I remember being on an airplane and I had this woman. She said she owned a bathing suit company. And I said to her, and she goes, oh, I've been working on when they unwrap the bathing suit. And I said, oh, what does it smell like? You look at me and she goes, what do you mean? I said, well, when you open the box at the bathing suit, they're going to go on vacation. What does it smell like? And she goes, I don't know. And I said, well, you should design that because it's going to smell like something. So she ended up taking the tags and making them smell like coconut sunscreen. And so whenever people smell that, they think of her company. Her company in the beach. So when you said opening the bathing suit, I instantly could smell the smell of a bathing suit. And generally it has some unpleasant rubbery latex stretchy kind of smell to it. So smart move. She said she had the right seat on that plane. That was a good flight. So what advice would you give to individuals or organizations looking to incorporate neural architecture into their worker daily lives? I think with the advent of artificial intelligence, one of the things that we are not able to duplicate in the human brain is our sensory stimuli. The tactile, the smell, the sound to some degree, we can do visual, right? So recognizing how powerful your business is to get ahead and thrive and find and really dig down into your groove. So recognizing user experience and understanding all the five senses. And if you don't design for it, you still have them. So if you don't know what your place of work looks like or sounds like, it's still going to have a sound or if it smells like or if it, you know, how comfortable everything is. All of those things exist. Either you design for it and you optimize it or you don't. Those would be the things that I would say a neural architecture is evolving. So what I say that is we have more data to show the success. Like I designed a restaurant in downtown Disney for Planet Hollywood. And the gentleman came to me and he said, Richard, this is my 19th store. I know exactly what I'm doing. And I said, what is your restaurant smell like? He goes, why? I go, what is the, what's the temperature inside the building? He goes, I don't know. I go, well, what is the sound level? It's like, I don't know. And I said, okay, so I ended up pumping the smell of the fresh baked bread over the front door. I made all the landscaping, all the ingredients, rosemary, onions, scallions, peppercorns. And I ended up making the audible, no more than 72 degrees, 72 decibels, 80 degrees, by the way, is a garbage truck. So 72 is really high. So you want to make sure none of the managers are cranking it up. He ended up signing a lease. He had to make $10 million in 10 years. And he made $10 million in one year. And he says, yours sounds. He's on the plane and go to Paris and fix that one, go to New York and fix that one, go to Florida, fix this one. So I ended up going around the world with him refining his business model, incorporating all of the senses. Thank you. This is a quick question. And we're running, we're coming close to the conclusion of our time. So it requires a quick answer too. And that would be, am I correct to assume that with, let's say Alzheimer's, for example, that triggering with smells might be something that would trigger memory, lost memories? Or is that hoping for too much? No, no, I think you're there. That and music. And music. Well, Richard, this is the conclusion of, it's gone very fast. And I have so many more questions. And I look forward to spending some time with you in the future. And I've learned so much. And I hope our viewers have as well. And with that, I must tell our viewers that you have been watching The Creative Life on Think Tech Hawaii as we discuss the exciting growth history and practice of neural architecture with our guest, neural architect Richard Fleming. Join us in two weeks for another episode of The Creative Life. And until then, Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. 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