Summary: Dr. Zeisel is the president and founder of Hearthstone Alzheimer Care, Ltd. Hearthstone was founded in 1992 to offer innovative treatment for persons living with Alzheimer’s, notably, using the physical environment to reduce symptoms of Alzheimer’s. The company operates eight residences throughout New York and New England for people living with the disease. Zeisel is the author of numerous articles and books, including Inquiry by Design: Environment/Behavior/Neuroscience in Architecture, Interiors, Landscape, and Planning; Independence Through Interdependence: Congregate Housing for Older People; Lowrise Housing for Older People; and Midrise Elevator Housing for Older People.

Educational background: I have a bachelor’s in Oriental studies and Chinese, a PhD in sociology from Columbia, and a Loeb Fellowship award from Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

Profession: I’m president and founder of Hearthstone Alzheimer Care. We use the physical environment as a treatment for Alzheimer’s to reduce symptoms of aggression, withdrawal, depression, and other ailments. The environment can help people with Alzheimer’s retrieve memories, find their way, know how to behave in certain situations, figure out what time it is, reduce hallucinations, and become less apathetic. The physical environment also can help people with Alzheimer’s be less socially withdrawn and more connected to other people.

The reason the environment and Alzheimer’s are vitally linked is that people with Alzheimer’s are extremely vulnerable to the physical environment. If we can develop principles of physical environment design that support people living with Alzheimer’s, then we can apply those principles to other people and support them because if it works for people with Alzheimer’s, it’ll work for everybody.

Link to architecture: Even though I’m not an architect, I did teach in the architecture department at Harvard for eight years. I was the first Loeb Fellow at the Graduate School of Design and was there because I worked on translating sociology into architecture. The first article I ever wrote was a translation into design of a book called The Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life of Italian-Americans by Herbert Gans. The book described the Italian area in Boston that had been torn down, the old West End. I worked with architect Brent Brolin to develop a theoretical building that would have responded to the needs of those Italian and other ethnic groups that lived there, if it hadn’t been torn down. We published the project in Architecture Forum, an important architectural publication of the time. As a result of that article, among other things, I was invited to become a Loeb Fellow. What I developed as a Loeb Fellow, and then taught for eight years to architects and planners at Harvard, was how to interpret and use information about people—social science, social science research, and sociology—in designing better buildings. That resulted in a 1980 book called Inquiry by Design. The 2006 revised edition includes several chapters on the neuroscience of architecture: what goes on in people’s brains, how to think about it, how to do research on it in response to the built environment, and also a dozen case studies of buildings that have been built in the last 20 years using the multi-method research approach initially explained in the 1980 version of the book.

First job after college: My first job was evaluating VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America), the domestic Peace Corps. I went up into the “hollers” of Eastern Kentucky in Appalachia and evaluated what the VISTA volunteers accomplished with people living in that part of the world. We were trying to help the government figure out how to evaluate the program and improve it.

Hobbies: If I have a hobby it’s cooking. I like to go to market, pick out what’s fresh and new, and then figure out a healthy, interesting way of combining ingredients.

Favorite place: My favorite place is Florence, Italy. Florence is one of the most beautiful physical places in the world. The visual environment is calming and wonderful.

Sources of inspiration: One is the architect Le Corbusier. I have visited most of his buildings in the world. What he demonstrates is that beautiful buildings—elegant, beautiful, spiritual buildings—have a quality that transcends the question of usability. There’s an essential element in architectural design, which goes beyond; it touches people beyond the social or behavioral. In addition, his chapels and even the buildings in Cambridge—the art center on the Harvard University campus—demonstrate a kind of creativity that is essential to all work, not only architecture, but also research.

The second person is sociologist Robert Merton. Bob was one of my teachers. He demonstrated to me that scientific rigor could be, and of necessity is, creative and insightful, and that there is a way of looking at the world through the social sciences that gives you an insight into people, organizations, and society that the built environment needs to respond to if it’s going to be responsible.

And the third is neuroscientist Rusty Gage. He gave the AIA convention keynote address two or three years ago. Rusty inspired me to realize that the neurosciences are critical to the way we see the world around us and how we respond to the world and to the creative process. He’s the discoverer of neurogenesis, the idea that our brains keep developing long after people thought they did—that cells regenerate in certain parts of the brain.

The future of health-care design: I think that neuroscience and design absolutely is the next big thing on the stage. The link between neuroscience and architecture, without a doubt, is not only the future of health-care architecture but also of the healing aspect of all architecture. In other words, office buildings, housing, schools, and other types of buildings also have healing properties. The neurosciences play a major role in those settings as well.

We’ve already applied some of these neuroscience design principles at the new offices of the Society for Neuroscience in Washington, D.C., and we’re evaluating their effects. Working with an architect/interior designer, we have implemented those principles that we’ve learned about healing and health in office design and we’re now in the middle of evaluating that building’s effects on employees. We’re doing the evaluation in collaboration with the AIA, the Society for Neuroscience, Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture, and the New Work Environments Research Group of the University of Montreal, which has an internationally used evaluation program called Buildings-in-Use Assessment.

Most difficult aspect of job: The most difficult part is getting people to understand that quality of life as provided through physical environment, gardens, and care approaches in health care and in Alzheimer’s care is among the most important elements for people living with this illness. For future generations, cure research is important. For those living with the illness, developing a quality of life and reducing symptoms using environment is a critical factor. It’s very hard to keep that message afloat and in the forefront.

Most rewarding: The fact that when we do this well, we improve the lives of everybody we touch. Not only those living with Alzheimer’s, but their families and also the staff. It’s truly uplifting to help people.

Advice for architects: If we are correct that the physical environment can change our brains to make them work better, then what architects do is even more important than we have thought in the past. It is equivalent to, if not more important than, what doctors and the medical profession do. Architects should take their work and what they do with great responsibility and great seriousness because they have a tremendous impact on people’s health and healing in all environments.