Erin Sharp-Newton, M. Arch, is the 2024 President for the American Institute of Architects Central New Jersey (AIACNJ.org) and serves as the Director of the Centre for Urban Design and Mental Health (UD/MH), founded by Dr. Layla McCay. She has been a Fellow of UD/MH since 2016 and holds the role of Section Editor of the UD/MH Journal. She completed her post-graduate work at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) in the School of Architecture and Urban Planning with a Master’s in Architecture and a second Master’s in Design from Domus Academy in Milan, Italy.
Erin has earned respect in the industry for her social design approach, using both grassroots and global views of design and environment as instruments of care. Her focus is on innovative, highly sensitive forward thinking solutions that respect standards and guidelines. Erin’s passion is in providing excellence at all levels of the design process and stakeholder engagement, with a spirit of micro to macro service. She is known for her voice that speaks to those overlooked or ignored.
As a design leader for many years in Italy (at Domus, and Studio Cibic) she travelled often from the West Coast to the East Coast and between the US and Europe, giving her exposure and experience spanning all areas of design: from architecture to industrial design, technology to fine arts, public to private space. This background has provided a unique context, enabling critical solutions balanced with imagination in the design process. “Erin approaches all projects with a sharp, humanistic approach that balances evidence-based design with innovation” (Source: AIA-NJ.org 3/20/24).
Annetta Benzar: Erin, thank you so much for agreeing to do this interview. I would like to start this discussion with two short questions that I ask all my interviewees. How are you feeling and have you had a moment of connection with nature today?
Erin Sharp Newton : Thank you and NeuroLandscape for inviting me. I am thrilled to be here. Also, thank you for the wonderful introduction. I'm glad that we can have this time together as I am really enthusiastic about NeuroLandscape and the work that you are doing. Reading [Agnieszka Olszewska-Guizzo’s] book [Neuroscience for Designing Green Spaces: Contemplative Landscapes] has had a very positive effect on my own mental health.
Today is a beautiful sunny day and I am sitting in a space that has a ton of sun coming in right now. If I'm squinting, it's because it's as if I'm sitting outside! This room is a womb with a view [with a large window and beautiful vista]. It is Fall and the leaves are changing. I go outside every day with our dogs into a couple different “contemplative” places: In the front we made a meditation garden with white marble stone and white, modern chairs. From there, I'm able to look far into the distance. There are many qualities [here] from the Contemplative Landscapes Model. So, today, I sat out front, looking at a majestic tree, and the town down the hill, experiencing the “comfort of looking afar”. Out back, we have a private space to sit and have coffee, so today I also did that, spending about 45 minutes outside, connecting with nature, simply sitting, watching and letting go of thinking to be in a flow-state.
Annetta Benzar: Can you share a little bit about your background and what drew you to pursue a career in architecture and design?
Erin Sharp Newton: Ever since I was little I was fascinated by people in space: the spaces we occupy, and how we occupy them is a kind of organism in and of itself. My background was full of juxtapositions and a lot of diversity. I like the word “paradox” [a statement or situation that may be true but seems impossible or difficult to understand because it contains two opposite facts or characteristics:] There was a lot of that in my background which became fertile soil for growth into architecture at a young age. [For example exposure to: creative/technical, artistic/scientific, inside/outside, open/closed, etc].
My education was in visual arts and design so I've always been super creative. Painting, drawing, making things, building. When I was young, I built games, and everything from small to big, for example: cities behind the bookshelves in that three inches of space that occurs behind the books and the wall. We had tons of books, and when you would pull out the books, there'd be all these little cities behind them.[Channeling creativity to be of service]; For me the question was: where does creativity go? On a canvas? In a sculpture? As a starving artist? Andy Warhol? Jackson Pollock? Van Gogh? [I asked myself] Is this what I'm going for? It seemed such a self-centered path. I wanted my creativity to channel as a way of being a service in the world. My multifaceted mind wanted to do creative things, and it wanted to do technical things. [As a child] I was known for taking things apart when they were broken and fixing them on intuition.
Architecture chose me. A lot of people say they always knew they wanted to be an architect. I actually grew up in a place where we didn't even have architects. There were old houses, but their architects were gone. So, I'm a little bit of a late bloomer. After my Masters in Design, while working in Milan, I was put on more and more architecture jobs, so that's what ultimately took me to UCLA to study architecture and urban design.
Annetta Benzar: I'm interested in the idea of humanity focused design when it comes to your work. How did you first get exposed to the idea of humanity focused designs in urban environments, and how did you approach change over time?
Erin Sharp Newton: Well, when I did my first Masters, it was focused on design, and in that era, everything was about creating [physical] products. I really wasn't obsessed with coming up with the newest, coolest chair. Something didn't sit right with me about this, even though I was there. Sustainability wasn't really that much of a thing when I was young. In the program there were people from [all around the world]: China, Japan, UK, Spain, Eastern Europe, Israel, all over, scrambling to design products [objects to fill up the world]. While everybody was designing cell phones, (which I did), and computers and lights, (which I did), chairs and you name it, I found myself wanting to focus on the idea of productivity rather than production.
So, I started [my thesis] looking at [productivity] in factory towns, these industrial towns which you especially see in Europe in the outskirts of major cities. [For example] industrial areas, with houses near factories, and houses on top of factories and sometimes people living in a room somewhere in the industrial park. I started looking at the people in them and my thesis really became all about looking at production from a close up look to a larger scale, which I really enjoy. I started looking at the old and the young, the isolated and the cramped, the mothers, the fathers, the grandparents, particularly older people and the children. At that time, people were working and asking “what do we do with our kids”? The kids were being shoved off into a daycare and then the elderly shoved off into an old person's home, things like that.
Then I started looking at the things that aren't thought of. For example, the person in the wheelchair who never leaves their house yet has a good brain and capacity to be highly productive in society and wants to (because we all want to) be productive members of society… that's esteemable… and who doesn't want to have self-esteem? [Humanity focused design] started there, making juxtapositions of things that didn't seem to go together. Writing new narratives became a kind of an obsession. My final project was a domestic factory, which later became many, many other projects under different names. I worked with Aldo [Cibic] in the studio. He hired me while I was at school, [after he left the Memphis Movement with Ettore Sottsass]. We started doing this work and then it really spawned. We were doing workshops with everyone from students at all different schools to IKEA professionals. Later through my work at Domus, Philips asked me to participate in a research project on a roundtable with a group of designers, called “The Solid Side.”
Annetta Benzar: I first came across you and your work in reference to behavioral mental health design. I wanted to ask, what inspired the shift in your career into behavioral mental health design and how is this work different from your previous projects?
Erin Sharp Newton: Well, let's see. I moved back to the US, because I wanted to be close to family. I started working more and more in healthcare because of my experience growing up with healthcare providers and in healthcare environments because of childhood mobility challenges. [As part of a Healthcare Group] I was put on a job to work on a local campus that had a ton of behavioral health building needs from inpatient acute psychiatric to detox and addictions.
That became a real fire in the belly, because ever since I've been an adult, I've been volunteering and active in community mental health, from obvious ways as well as in anonymous ways. I love supporting people who are trying to work through different kinds of mental health concerns. An early example is when I was in college [in New Jersey] I worked at a shelter for runaways, homeless, and abused children [Together, Inc]. I would go on weekends and do 12 hour shifts. So, I went on these [behavioral/mental health] sites [for] jobs and the spaces were… well, I got anxiety going into them… not: “Oh! Get me out of here!” But a curious anxiety of: “This is where people are going to heal?!? This is where people are going to get regulated? centered, put back on track, or put on track for the first time?!?” [My anxiety was in feeling/thinking] the environments are not conducive to recovery.
[There was so much stigma around this work in those days]. Many people said, “No, I don't want to do that job.” [People didn’t want to go to psychiatric hospitals or places for addicts]. They wanted to do schools, not healthcare… They wanted to do cool things that look beautiful, and hospitals usually don't have a reputation for being high design environments… certainly mental health facilities didn’t. So [in one example], I was sent to the Bronx by myself. The facilities manager let me into the unit. It was an acute unit, [meaning involuntary] and they left me there. They're not supposed to do that because it's a really big safety issue. Next thing you know, I'm looking around and doing my surveying while one woman is pacing the hallway. Another woman is just standing at the end of the hallway, staring at me. And then a couple others were tiptoeing near me and kind of looking out of the corner of their eyes. Next thing I know, seven women are standing all around me, in a semicircle, with my back up against the wall. And I thought, “I need to just surrender and be with them. Be part of them.” So, I stood listening and talking with them. It was a wonderful opportunity to put myself in their shoes. As I was looking around I thought, “I wouldn't heal here." It was a stressful environment, and people want to go to places that are healing, not cold and under-designed.
[Another shift happened when I started thinking about how] I spent a number of years in a body cast as a child, and how I would much rather not be able to move my body than not be able to move my mind, because I know that experience. What good is physical health if you don't have mental health? I think it's important that in the design world the people who are designing these spaces have [this kind of] sensitivity. When you have different things going on, you have different needs in your space too. The space needs to be responsive. Now people are talking about designing for neurodiversity and neurodivergence and they're talking about the importance of having environments that are sensitive to the senses. More and more, if people are on the spectrum, they're making sensory rooms for them. [Which isn’t necessarily enough] though a need.
[Lastly], a lot has changed also with the pandemic. We had a global trauma where everybody went, Wait a minute, what's happening here? All over the planet. People became aware of how vulnerable any one of us could be. So, that was actually really significant to helping people to have empathy for the world of mental health, behavioral health addiction…
[Stopping there], was that too much [of an answer]?
Annetta Benzar: No, it's lovely. We began today's interview talking about nature and the work you do in the field of architecture, particularly in how it relates to mental health. I wanted to ask you about your relationship to nature and whether it plays a role in your design philosophy.
Erin Sharp Newton: Yes, that’s tricky. How do you put nature into healthcare? In the old days you could have plants [growing inside the units] and they [even] had hospitals with trees on the inside. But because of issues in keeping things sterile, we can't [easily] have plants inside healthcare spaces. So you can't have plants, you can't have wood [handrails, furniture, etc], even certain materials that are more healthy or more natural aren't germ free… So, how can you bring in biophilia? How can you bring in the sense of nature into these sterile environments? [That is the big challenge].
[Biophilic Design] I have a handful of projects that I can share with you. The eating disorder unit, [is a good example]. We worked as a team to bring in light, air movement, and all the aspects of nature we could while working with the building standards and stakeholders. Color and biophilic design studies show how, in using a mural of woods or a landscape, the mind, (through processing via peripheral vision), doesn't fully register that it's not real, and actually can be sensed as real. [Similar to optical illusions in space]
[Circadian Rhythms] Same with circadian lighting, the eating disorder unit and other projects were examples of early programmable, interactive circadian lighting. Incorporating early use of tunable light, integrating it for patients and staff, (especially [for eating disorders]where body synchronicity needs are heightened) was actually really huge. It was exciting to see the stakeholders supporting this idea and working together to raise the money [because the new technology was expensive]. As we saw when we shifted from fluorescent lights to LEDs, it was very expensive to implement LED lighting, even though it was better in the long run, saving money in energy efficiency.
In a hospital, it's typically the same light all the time and it's usually bright. That's how I grew up in hospitals, bright light all the time. To be in a place for weeks with bright light all the time is just not good for the body [especially not the brain]. It hasn't happened yet but we also designed outdoor herb gardens with the vision that the patients could spend time in nature doing plantings to get in touch with their bodies in nature. Because, although all the perceptual aspects of nature that we're talking about, Annetta, are helpful, there's nothing like touching the green and smelling it.
Annetta Benzar: Let’s talk about your grassroots work. Can you share about your roles and some of the most memorable moments in your advocacy efforts?
Erin Sharp Newton: Let's see, when I was in Philadelphia. I was part of a community group within the American Institute of Architects volunteering at the Children’s Crisis Treatment Center (CCTC) with students from the Charter High School for Architecture and Design (CHAD). [Which has sadly since closed]. This was really good because it was actually different firms working together that would otherwise be competitive. (I'm thinking about it right now because it's October and we have the day of the dead, Halloween, coming). A problem for children who have experienced trauma in inner cities is that they're afraid to go trick-or-treating on the street with all the scary masks and stuff like that. Some of the children are so badly traumatized that it's not safe. Especially if they've experienced trauma, the idea of going out and walking in the streets, with all the [creepy] costumes, is terrifying.
So, with students from the high school, with the firms from around the city and with the Children's Crisis Treatment Center, we built a scaled version of a city in their gym. Each firm would come and build a portion of the city at half-scale so the houses were kid-sized with fun things. We made this safe world for kids who also felt disconnected or left out because all their friends are trick-or-treating, and we made this just for them and that really stood out. That is just a little bit of [one] story.
Now, this other isn't a “memorable moment” but it sticks with me [as a grassroots effort]. We have something that's really taken off in our area, and I don't know if you have this in Europe, but it is called “a peer recovery specialist”. [As Chair for the Local Advisory Committee on Drugs and Alcohol], for the longest time people who were in recovery would say, “you know, my therapist doesn't understand.” [Because they didn’t have lived-experience]. Peer recovery specialists are people who have been through recovery of one kind or another. Mainly what I'm talking about is drugs and alcohol. They [peer-recovery specialists] are turning their experience with addiction into a vehicle for helping others, and they get paid. So it looks like this: Let's say you have a 17-year-old person in the emergency room at a hospital. They just overdosed. They're in there waiting, [detoxing, etc]. The hospital will bring in a peer recovery specialist who'll be able to say: “It's OK, I went through something similar five years ago, and I'm in recovery and I'm here with you and you can get through this.”
It does two things: It helps that person who's in recovery to really spin their struggles into something beautiful. That's always a moving thing to see people take their pain, their suffering, their challenges and turn it around. Not only are they able to thrive, but also they're able to help somebody else [to have hope, see a path forward, etc]. I think that stands out the most for me [helping others using lived-experience].
Annetta Benzar: You're also an advocate for breaking through old belief structures and design and providing a platform to other pioneers, specifically women in the field. Can you comment on this?
Erin Sharp Newton: If I dare. How do I say this? I spent years not wanting to focus on being a woman in this industry, but as I moved along, I saw more and more and I got frustrated. Frustrated as a woman in an industry where I wouldn't be sent to construction sites. Twenty years ago I would ask to be sent to the construction site to do construction administration, and they would always pick a man. You don't want to say anything because you don't want to get fired.
For me, I would say being an advocate is really trying to find a way to speak truth without being completely disruptive [which is hard]. Saying, “That's not fair, letting men do that, but not us.” I think it has changed a lot because of people who, little by little, try to nurse this thing [inequity] along. The most effective way is to really start lifting each other up. Somebody lifted me up a little bit, and then I lifted up somebody and so on… I got the award for NJ Biz, 50 Best Women in Business, and I was immediately connected to all these kind, really strong women. I have to say, it's not to be “us women” and “them men” because I really, really don't like that kind of positioning. Because they're all “we”, and we're all here together. All of us on this planet. In this Galaxy.
In architecture, we [women] are about 25% now. When I started it was much less. [See: Where Are the Women? Measuring Progress on Gender in Architecture”, by Kendall A. Nicholson, Ed.D., Assoc. AIA, NOMA, LEED GA, ACSA Director of Research and Information]. I want to have the same chances as anybody else. And although it hasn't been that bad for me my whole life, it hasn't been so perfect. I'd like to see it change for the next generation and I think it is changing. It's amazing the logarithmic impact: If one person helps one person and then that person helps one other person, then you have three people, and then the three become five, and the five become eight, and so forth. That’s what I'm seeing happen on a lot of levels. But that doesn't mean it can't come to a full stop if we don't keep it going.
Annetta Benzar: Mmmm. Thank you. Let's move on to your work with the Centre for Urban Design and Mental Health. In your own words, what is the Centre for Urban Design and Mental Health, and how do you come to be involved?
Erin Sharp Newton: Well, in my own words, which are probably the words of UD/MH, The Centre for Urban Design and Mental Health is a think tank for individuals focused on building mental health into cities and places.
I connected with Layla (the founder) shortly after she started the Centre and I participated as a Fellow for many years, peer reviewing, writing, helping to curate graphics, covers, and so on. Over the years, Layla became really busy with her work. During the pandemic, she became a face for COVID in the UK and was on the news on the regular and is now a flourishing author. So, she basically has passed the role to me. She has stayed as the “Founding Director” but I'm basically picking up her efforts.
Currently, our focus is on getting our issue out for the journal. In a commercial world ($ profit focused), one of our biggest things is trying to keep the journal open access so that emerging academics, professionals and others have a place that they can come and submit, bona fide work, be peer reviewed and published. Sometimes it can cost thousands of dollars to be published. So, it's really important [to us] that it's affordable [currently free], but also that it's accessible for practitioners [to publish scholarly, respectable work]. What we're talking about is the joining of the minds. The people that are writing the policy, people that are researching the policies, and researching the outcomes. The architects and designers that are then implementing to the next level, and so on and so forth. So trying to have it that everybody's in there together. Next year, 2025, after I'm done with my presidential tenure, I'm hoping to put together an international round table.
Annetta Benzar: What is your vision for the future city?
Erin Sharp Newton: In my mind, I see two cities.
[Fighting City] One is the fighting city. It's a city that is War. It's us versus them. It's arguing, it's politics, it's this party against that party, it’s this group against that group. It's this piece of land over that piece of land. And it's painful. This belief system over that belief system.
So, that's the fighting city. I fear that the only way I see that changing is if we fix healthcare, fix education, fix homelessness, fix all this unrest. This is very idealistic, I know a lot of people probably get annoyed [with idealism]. Leaning in and saying, “I'm going to now take responsibility for the politics of me.” There are going to be certain policies that I don't agree with, that’s when I need to lean in and try to understand them first. I might need to listen to them or I might need to understand how to cohabitate. In the AIA, we try to be nonpartisan, but we do talk about policy where it affects, for example, the built environment. It can get a little hairy. I think each one of us has to stop fighting to be right, or to change other people. I think all of us should take responsibility for how we're populating the world with fear and anger, and how fear and anger have been driving the outcome. There are people who I don't agree with on certain levels, and I try to connect with them on where I do and if we could all come together at where we do agree and just start there, we would do a lot better.
[Flourishing City] So then, that gets us to the flourishing city, that's the other city. That's the city that I'm going to hope for, work for, and where I want to live. It's a place where people come from where they are. Being who they are. Starting from where they are. To make a place where people can be who they are and not try to keep changing everybody because we can't change anybody. There's all this [unrest] going on where everybody's trying to change everybody. Changes have to happen from the human point, in the human space. Unless we're accepting each other, we're not connecting in that human space. I also imagine resources being shared. None of this is political. It's having more of a sharing mentality.
In the flourishing city, there is a balance of wisdom and acceptance. And there really is a good balance there. People value being wise over being right. I don't think that politicians in this era are going to make our population function from integrity. I would like to see us work together to generate compassion over commercialism.
For the future city, that's my vision.
Annetta Benzar: To finish off, I'd like to ask you, how do you keep yourself mentally resilient. What advice would you give our audience to fuel their mental resilience and feed their connection to nature as well as support their communities in doing the same?
Erin Sharp Newton: I have a ton of techniques. I have to have a bunch of tools because I'm pretty mentally active.
[Rest] Sleeping and rest is really, really important and I can feel my brain recover after a good night's sleep. I will wake up with the answers to my most difficult questions that I may have spent all night thinking about.
[Contemplating] Sitting. Being contemplative. The contemplative landscape is a therapy.. I have a couple places that I like to go to: one is a cemetery, it's high up on a hill. It's quiet. You can't hear the cars. You can see majestic nature. And then there's all kinds of different things going on, not to mention different kinds of critters, animals, deer, hedgehogs, groundhogs and foxes. If you sit there quiet enough, bunnies. And if you sit there long enough, this whole little community will come out. You can see all kinds of things from there. I also like to go to a convent. There's a convent that's super quiet. I probably spend at least 20 minutes a day in my own world. Whether it's in my meditation garden or on the patio.
[Silence] I wear earplugs when everything's loud to shut things down and be in my own mind.
[Sensory Awareness] I do meditations, depending on how much time I have, where I go through all my senses. Let's say I'm having anxiety about something, [or] I'm stressed, [or] I have a lot of energy and if I have the sense that I'm with people whose energy level is not where mine is, I'll do this to tone myself down: I'll sit and go through all my senses. Depending on the time, it might be one thing each, but if I have the time, I prefer to go through at least five. So, five things I see, and then really say them in my mind: “I'm looking at the weeping cherry outside the window as it is reflected as a shadow on my white curtains.”... Or “I'm looking at the two big leaves of the plant I thought I was gonna kill.” And I smell… A lot of times I have to go around and pick something up to smell it. I feel my body sitting on my couch and I feel the difference of the fabric on one part and on the other…. [etc.]
[Winter] In the winter, because I live in the Northeast where we get snow and it's cold, it can get to you. We get Seasonal Affective Disorder. This kind of goes full circle to the eating disorder unit and other projects with the murals and and the images of green space or the images of nature. Watching YouTube videos for mediations as well as putting on drone videos of different places. The 4K drone videos and sitting and watching is really incredible.
[Community] Now to be mentally resilient, it's also all the advocacy stuff, which I already talked about a lot, so I'm not going to go into that, but being engaged in change-making in my community, and also reaching out all the way to the Centre [UDMH].
[Advocacy] I feel my mind gets really strong when I see somebody who has been silenced or afraid and talk with them. There are so many talented, kind people out there and people who want to do good in the world. People who have a lot to offer. Underneath they're marked by their “thing”, whatever that “thing” is, and all this great stuff about them gets masked. So I feel like it's really good for my mind to try to interact with people and helping to bring them up out of that.
[Support] Different things I've done for support, whether it's having a life coach, a professional coach, a therapist. I also think not being too proud if you're having a challenge to ask for help. If I'm feeling a little down, I'll pick up the phone and go help somebody and I'll feel better. Or I'll call somebody and say I'm feeling really down, I need some help.
[Tuning] I think being focused on reducing stigma around mental health and helping people get to their individual true nature has been very good for my brain and has really helped my own life force.
