S10 E1—When you walk into a room, what does that room tell you about who you are as a human being? What assumptions go into our restaurants and civic buildings and churches and homes and schools? What do they say about who we are and about how we relate to each other? Artist and design researcher Sara Hendren joins Amy Julia Becker to explore how modern spaces—from office buildings to nursing homes—shape what we believe about dignity, dependence, and belonging. Together they uncover how design can either diminish or restore our shared humanity, and why the good life depends on reimagining how we live together.

00:00 Introduction to Design and Humanity
05:24 Understanding the Machine Model and Anti-Human Design
14:32 What Spaces Communicate About Being Human
29:29 Design Choices and Human Dignity
34:49 Innovations in Dementia Care Design
37:26 Art and Dignity for Individuals with Disabilities
41:32 The Metaphysics of Dignity and Human Connection
51:07 Designing for the Good Life: Relationality and Community

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• What Can a Body Do? How We Meet the Built World by Sara Hendren
• Previous podcast conversation: “S3 E15 | Who Belongs? Disability and the Built World with Sara Hendren”
• Comment Magazine essay by Sara Hendren: “Pattern Recognition: Design for humans in unexpected places.”
• Short film: Simple Machine
• Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

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ABOUT OUR GUEST:

Sara Hendren is an artist, design researcher, writer, and professor at Northeastern University. Her book What Can a Body Do? How We Meet the Built World explores the places where disability shows up in design at all scales: assistive technology, furniture, architecture, urban planning, and more. It was named one of the Best Books of 2020 by NPR and won the 2021 Science in Society Journalism book prize.

Her art and design works have been exhibited on the White House lawn under the Obama presidency, at the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Seoul Museum of Art, the Vitra Museum, and many others, and her work is held in the permanent collections at MoMA and the Cooper Hewitt. She has been an NEH Public Scholar and a fellow at New America, and her commentary and criticism have been published in Harper’s, Art in America, The New York Times, the Washington Post, and elsewhere.

Website: sarahendren.com

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