Six month residential research Atlantic Fellowship in brain health at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and UCSF, San Francisco into all aspects of brain disease and health. Specialising in advancing the research and understanding of how the built environment impacts the brain, cognition, memory and functional ability. By developing a deeper understanding of the brain through research and spending time in clinical settings with world leaders in Geriatrics, Neurology, Neuro Psychiatry, Psychology, Radiology, acute stroke specialists, multi-disciplinary neuro teams and patients has allowed us to advance the understanding of the impact of the built environment on people living with: dementia and associated diseases, Parkinson, acute stroke, brain tumors, delirium, Intellectual disability (ID), depression and anxiety.Buildings are not passive and can disable and/or exclude people from our communities while increasing health and care costs. People suffering from dementia can even experience the built environment as a form of torture as we condemn them to a life of constant stress, anxiety and even fear caused by poorly designed buildings. Intuitively, people with dementia withdraw from environments they can't cope with but when 'locked' or admitted into hospitals, long term health facilities or care homes they can experience accelerated functional and cognitive decline, loss of dignity and independence. Today we use sedation to control the behavioral responses.We now have the knowledge to design buildings (and towns and cities) that are inclusive for people with cognitive and/ or sensory impairments but do not implement fully what building guidance exists never mind evidence based best practice design. We can visualize the impact of the built environment on people with physical impairment but struggle to understand the impact on people with sensory and/or cognitive impairments, especially dementia.

www.gbhi.org/fiona-walshwww.ddsarchitect.org