Neuro-Sustainability: Designing Places Where Brains Can Thrive
Neuro-Sustainability: Designing Places Where Brains Can Thrive
Guests: Burçin Ikiz (Stanford / EcoNeuro / Neuroclimate Working Group) & Mohamed Hesham Khalil (University of Cambridge)
Neuro-Sustainability: Designing Places Where Brains Can Thrive
What if sustainability wasn’t only about carbon, materials, and energy — but also about the human brain?
In this second episode of the mini-series about neuro-sustainability, neuroscience and architecture meet in a conversation that feels both urgent and surprisingly practical.
We investigate the work of Cambridge scholarship student, Mohamed Hesham Khalil, which we believe should be integrated into planning and architecture around the world.
“We can change diet, can change habits, but we cannot change a built environment. It’s built once and it lasts for tens of years.” Mohamed Hesham Khalil
In this episode, he is joined by Burçin Ikiz, who brings a climate-and-health lens to brain wellbeing across the lifespan.
Mohamed Hesham Khalil brings a design-and-research lens focused on environmental enrichment — and what our homes, streets, workplaces, and neighbourhoods are doing to us every day, whether we notice it or not.
This is not a theoretical chat. It’s about how we design environments that help brains thrive — especially as heat, pollution, and chronic stress become part of daily life for millions.
Why this episode about neuro-sustainability matters
We like to think of brain health as something personal: sleep, diet, exercise, mindset. But the built environment is a long-term exposure — and it’s stubbornly permanent.
If your surroundings make movement hard, keep you indoors, overwhelm your senses, trap heat, or load the air with pollution — you don’t just “feel it.” Your brain does too.
What you’ll learn
1) What “environmental enrichment” means in the real world
This conversation translates neuroscience into design language: environments that support movement, stimulation, connection, and recovery.
“Don’t use it, you lose it. Just kind of like our muscles in our bodies.” Burçin Ikiz
2) The indoor reality we rarely talk about
If buildings are designed mainly for convenience and comfort, what happens to stimulation, mobility, and everyday brain engagement?
“When we spend like around 90 percent of time indoors… almost no chance for cognitive stimulation or physical activity through the building…” Mohamed Hesham Khalil
3) Heat, buildings, and brain function
As the climate warms, poorly adapted buildings become neurological stressors — not just uncomfortable boxes.
“If most of our buildings… have not been created for this increasingly warming world, it can be very, very hot indoors and that can really affect our brains.” Burçin Ikiz
neuro-sustainability and the built environment
4) Pregnancy, pollution, and lifelong outcomes
The discussion doesn’t dodge the hard evidence: prenatal exposure can shape brain development before birth.
“Even if the parents are exposed to some air pollution… effects on the structural changes of the brain of the fetuses that are not even born yet.” Burçin Ikiz
5) The developing brain and why early life is everything
They break down neurodevelopment in a way that’s easy to grasp — connection-building, then refinement.
“By the time you reach 10 years old, you lose half of those connections that are made in the first two, three years of life.” Burçin Ikiz
6) Mapping risk: from science to neighbourhood action
A standout moment is the push toward tools that help cities prioritise interventions where they’re needed most.
“Brain Vulnerability and Resilience Index that can be mapped out to different neighbourhoods…” Burçin Ikiz
Who should listen
Architects, planners, developers, and sustainability professionals
Public health teams, local government, and school decision-makers
Anyone interested in brain health, climate impacts, neurodevelopment, and ageing
People who want a sharper definition of “healthy buildings” — beyond comfort
Topics covered
- Neurosustainability: what it is, and why it’s bigger than a buzzword
- Environmental enrichment: stimulation, movement, complexity, and connection
- Indoor life: design gaps, missed opportunities, and hidden stressors
- Heat, air quality, noise, and other exposures that affect brain health
- Pregnancy and early childhood vulnerability
- Practical policy pathways for local government, schools, and housing
About Mohammed Hesham Khalil
Mohammed Hesham Khalil is an architect and neuroscience researcher, and a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge.
His work explores the relationship between environmental enrichment, neurogenesis, and the built environment, with the aim of developing a practical framework for neurosustainability in architecture and urbanism.
About Burçin Ikiz
Burçin Ikiz is a neuroscientist with over two decades of experience in brain health research, and a leading voice on how climate and environmental exposures affect the brain. She is the founder of the Neuroclimate Working Group and the director of EcoNeuro.
The final takeaway
Neurosustainability asks a simple question with massive consequences:
Are we designing places that protect — or quietly drain — our brain health?
This episode makes a strong case that the next wave of sustainability must include the brain: from pregnancy to older age, from buildings to entire cities, and especially for the communities facing the greatest environmental burden.
Neurosustainability and the Built Environment Podcast
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