Heart to Heart Interview with Colin Ellard, Trailblazer of Neuroarchitecture

At the Centre for Urban Design and Mental Health, we aim to connect and share the work of people making heartfelt impact and exploring the ways our built environments shape psychological well-being. 

Recently, Anastasia Serebryakova had the privilege of sitting down with cognitive neuroscientist Colin Ellard, PhD,  to interview him about his life, career, and his thoughts on neuroarchitecture.   Below is an excerpt of their heart to heart discussion!

Anastasia: Colin, hi. My name is Anastasia and I am currently interning with the Center for Urban Design and Mental Health. I am so happy and honoured to meet you! Thank you so much for your generosity in speaking with us. I am looking forward to getting to know you and your work better. Let’s kick off!

To begin, I see you were the keynote speaker at the Office of the New Earth [1] conference in Barcelona, how did you find this experience?

​Colin: ​Oh my goodness, it was life-altering - a beautiful meeting of passionate, like-minded people. In terms of substance, the people who presented were great. Not to mention the perfect setting - Barcelona. I think every conference should be held in Barcelona! We started early in the morning and, of course, as it's Barcelona, dinner was at eight or nine o'clock and then it was time for a good time - until one or two o'clock in the morning! So I was exhausted. But I made so many wonderful connections with people doing interesting work. I came away feeling emotional and motivated - the best outcome of a conference.

​Colin: ​It was a turning point for me.  In the words of my good friend, I am a recovering academic. I feel that my contribution now should be something different. I have been linking my scientific research to my personal experiences. This approach was unexpectedly well received in Barcelona. A lady followed up with me saying that she had to leave my talk because she was crying so hard. And I thought, okay, well, I cried in front of the audience too.

I concluded that there seemed to be a new way to reach people at a deeper level by relating very personal experiences to findings in neuroarchitecture.

I have reached the point when people refer to me as "a founding father", whatever that means, of neuro-architecture. The first time I heard that, I thought, that's usually what they say about people who are dying. There are so many fantastic, young researchers coming along now. And it feels like this field is in really safe hands. So now I feel free to do something a little different.​

One of the other speakers at the conference was Tye Farrow [2]… Later, after the conference, we had a lovely moment of serendipity - I ran into him in my little town - Kitchener, Canada.

We sat on the porch and drank lemonade. He said, “the difference is that we're seeing young people now who've come into this field knowing that this is exactly what they want to do rather than entering it mid-career like we did - it's amazing!”
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This change is really invigorating and gratifying.

Anastasia: And then Colin shared about "when worlds collide", starting out in the industry, and animated discussions within design and science...

​Colin: ​When I started in the industry, there was a lot of backlash from people in design about the application of scientific principles, psychology and neuroscience to the design of the built world.

I remember some very animated conversations with certain architects who, I think, were prompted by anxiety or confusion. And they told me that they didn't want me; that I had no business interfering with what they knew. I'm not an architect and I don't understand a lot of that world … that's true.

​​Anastasia: Well then, what do you think is the missing link between architecture and science? Because to me, they're very similar. ​

​Colin: ​One of the reasons I have always been fascinated with architecture is because it's so many different things. It's an art and a feat of engineering. Buildings can't fall down.

The first time my arguement was publicly well-received was published in the Venetian Letter [3]. I just said, you know, trying to ignore the stuff from psychology and neuroscience that applies to design is like ignoring gravity. I mean… it's there.  And it will impact how we feel and how we treat one another.

One of the concerns of some architects was that people like me would code their creativity out of existence. 

“The problem with people like you...

As someone told me, “The problem with people like you is that you come along and you say that round doors are the next best thing for our well-being, which goes into code, and we are stuck making round doors forever”.

Back then architects had some concerns that they were being subspecialized out of existence. Maybe this is still true. Their domain, their decisions, their creativity, was being more and more constrained. And I understand that. 

I think, if there's a principle that's required for well-being, then no matter how fine your artistic sensibilities might be, you can't ignore it.

​​​Anastasia: Your book, ‘Places of the Heart’, opens with your trip to Stonehenge with your dad when you were just 6 years old. Looking back, how did that experience influence your professional journey?

Colin: ​That was a formative experience. Oh, it really was. Obviously at the time I had no clue. And even after I started to do the work that I'm doing now, I didn't really appreciate all of the connections. It's entirely possible that that visit with my dad set in motion the sea of stuff that had been dormant for a long time.

It’s one of the things that still chokes me up a bit.

My father was a quantity surveyor. And somewhere in my really messy office, somewhere, I still have his opisometer. It’s a little wheel that you roll over blueprints to measure them. Incredible.

And as I was playing with it, I had my holy sh*t moment. I thought, this is where this is all comes from...  My dad, as I say in my book, had a refined understanding of the technicalities of buildings and their materials. But he also had what is even more important, I think, which is that sensibility, that emotional response to built forms. I like to think that he gave it to me.

​​​​Anastasia: It sounds like your dad merged the gap between science and architecture.

Colin: ​​You know, my dad was very down to earth. He didn't think that I should go to university. He thought it a waste of time. He thought that joining the military would straighten me out. I was 17 and had no clue what I wanted to do - what 17-year-old does? Eventually he came to appreciate what I was doing, though he never understood why I didn’t receive royalties for publishing peer-reviewed articles. His mind was blown when I told him that sometimes one has to PAY to have an article published!

I think a degree is a wonderful way of helping one become a good citizen of the world. And as a university professor now, when students tell me, ‘I don't know what to do with my life’, I would say, ‘Good. That's good’.
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The ones I worry about are the ones with a plan. But that plan might explode over and over and over again. That's what happened to me. And I think that's healthy - finding yourself over and over again.

​​​​​Anastasia: As an author, is there something you have read in your sphere that really stood out to you? ​

Colin: ​​​I'm going to confess - I recently read a fantasy novel called, ‘A Court of Thorns and Roses’ by Sarah Maas. My friend came for a visit and brought five volumes of this book. He slammed it down on the table and said, ‘it's pretty good. Every hundred pages there is some pornography, but you can just skip over that part’. I since learned that that's why it's a bestseller.

I also read a beautiful little book. It's called ‘All the Beauty in the World’ by Patrick Bringley. Patrick worked for The New Yorker. He wanted to be a staff writer, but became really disillusioned with the corporate world. So he quit and became a security guard at The Met in New York City. In this book, Patrick is weaving philosophical questions into his own personal narrative - I think that’s why I like it so much. It highlights the importance of exposing yourself to beauty. He made me think about how I miss going to galleries; now that I am dad to a toddler, gallery-going will be tricky for a couple of years. A gallery is a space explicitly for beauty. It's possible to do the same outside the gallery, walking down the street, enjoying the everyday. There are different ways of experiencing the city - you can experience it in a very pedestrian fashion (excuse the pun), just using the space to get things done. Or you can treat the everyday as a transcendent experience. It is just a mind-shift.
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We should be treating more of the world as if it's a gallery experience.

​​​​​​Anastasia: ​and our conversation continued...  

This is just an excerpt from my conversation with Colin. I really hope you enjoyed reading it as much as we enjoyed sharing it. You can find more about his work online, at his website, and throughout the space of neuroscience and design. Below are links to a couple of his books and websites if you wish to follow him for more. UD/MH is super grateful for his time, support and impact.   

About Colin Ellard

Colin Ellard, PhD, has worked as a cognitive neuroscientist for more than three decades and is one of the world’s foremost experts in the application of psychology and neuroscience to architectural and urban design. 

​Colin has been a gift to the centre for Urban Design and Mental Health since its formative years, as a fellow, journal editor, and contributer.  We are grateful for his support.

Website: colinellard.com
Books:

• ​Places of the Heart: The Psychogeography of Everyday Life
• ​Where Am I?: (Canada) You Are Here: (USA), Why We Can Find Our Way to the Moon but Get Lost at the Mall

Writings: colinellard.com/writings 

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References:

1. “Office for the New Earth - ONE.” 2025. ONE. July 22, 2025. https://new-earth.one/symposium/.
2. “Office for the New Earth - ONE.” 2025. ONE. July 22, 2025. https://new-earth.one/symposium/. ‌
3. Letter, Venetian. 2021. “Venetian Letter - Colin Ellard: I’ve Had People Shout at My Face to Get Lost.” Venetian Letter. June 17, 2021. https://venetianletter.com/2021/06/17/colin-ellard-ive-had-people-shout-at-my-face-to-get-lost/?utm_source=chatgpt.com. ‌
4. https://www.facebook.com/brian.f.haddock, and geekslop. 2010. “The Smurfs Craze of the 1980’S - Geek Slop.” Geek Slop. August 15, 2010. https://www.geekslop.com/life/fads-and-trends/fads-and-trends-1900/2010/smurfs-craze-1980s.

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About the Author

Anastasia Serebryakova is an intern for the Centre for Urban Design and Mental Health, studying Fine Arts at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.

Her love for architecture has led her to exploring how the intersection between disciplines can leave the world a better place. She has undergone work at the architecture firm astudio, and is currently focused on her studies for Johns Hopkins Smart Cities, IE University’s ‘Making Architecture’ and LSE’s Real Estate Economics and Finance courses.  

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