I have spent much of my career writing about one not-so-simple question: how do the spaces we inhabit—imagined spaces, real spaces—transform us, and become the fabric of our lived experience?

That curiosity began with a focus on creative writing, with a BA with Honors in English and American Literature from Brown, after which I shifted to writing directly about art and architecture with an MA and PhD from Columbia University's Department of Art and Architecture History. But it was as a professor of architectural history and theory at Harvard—where I taught for a decade—that I began to crystallize my project around the question of how people experience buildings, landscapes, cities, and art. Exploring how a building's proportions and rhythms affect our bodily sense of ease; how the design of public spaces and monuments shape communal identity; how landscapes support human flourishing—these questions formed a bridge between my scholarly work and my prizewinning work as a critic. I wrote mainly for The New Republic but also published in many other places including the New York Times, Art in America, Landscape Architecture, and Architectural Record.

My 2017 book Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives (HarperCollins) -- part manifesto, part science, part criticism -- argued that good design is not a luxury product but a public good and foundational component of human flourishing.