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Questions and answers

What people ask Mu.S.Ex., grouped by who is asking: clients, academics and students, and anyone curious about interactive websites, design, architecture, art, health and wellbeing.

About Mu.S.Ex.

Who founded Mu.S.Ex., and why?

Nikita Sheth founded it. Early in her professional life she noticed that spatial design lacked an understanding of human behaviour and emotion, so she set out to build a platform for the Person-Place Relationship.

What is Mu.S.Ex.?

Musing Spatial Experiences is a think tank at the intersection of architecture and psychology. Its work runs in three strands: Research, Design and Pedagogy.

How can I get in touch?

Email us at musingspatialexperiences@gmail.com and we will write back.

For clients

What does Mu.S.Ex. design?

Mu.S.Ex. is a think tank and design firm that creates nature-inspired spaces using sustainable materials such as wood, stone and metal, from resorts to sound studios.

Where can I see the work?

On the Design page: each project has its own page with its pictures and its story.

How do I start a project?

Email us at musingspatialexperiences@gmail.com and tell us about the space.

Can I have a website like this one?

Mu.S.Ex. designs spaces rather than websites, but the thinking is the same: a visit should feel like walking through a place. Nikita is glad to talk about how she built this one with Claude Code; email us at musingspatialexperiences@gmail.com.

For academics and researchers

What is Project E?

A multi-decade study of architectural psychology, in three phases: Theorising, Analysing and Experimenting. It is divided into twelve research areas.

Who carries the research?

Each area is credited to its contributors, with their own pages and links. Nikita Sheth leads the project.

Can I read the full studies?

Each of the twelve research areas has its own page with its focus, aims, contributors and keywords. They are listed on the Research page.

Can I contribute?

Mu.S.Ex. is a platform for designers, researchers, academics and anyone interested in these fields. Email us at musingspatialexperiences@gmail.com.

Can I cite or share what I read here?

Yes, please credit Mu.S.Ex. and the named contributors, and link to the page. If you would like to reuse a figure, a recording or a longer passage, write to us first.

What are these essays about?

The relationship a person builds with a space over time, and how design leaves its mark on people and people on their spaces.

Who writes them?

Each essay carries its author's name and date at the top.

Can I write for Mu.S.Ex.?

Email us at musingspatialexperiences@gmail.com to begin the conversation.

For students

What is Design Dialogues?

A podcast series for younger generations to watch and understand what architecture is about, with seven long conversations and fourteen stories drawn from them.

Who is it for?

Anyone planning a career in architecture, or already studying or practising it.

Where can I watch or listen?

Every episode is on YouTube, and the series is also on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. The Design Dialogues page has them all.

How can I use this site for my studies?

Read the Research pages for thesis questions and keywords, listen to Design Dialogues to hear how practising architects think, and open the Design projects to see how ideas become spaces. You are welcome to share any page with your class.

For fans of interactive websites

Why is this website a maze?

Because Mu.S.Ex. studies how places shape people, so the site is a place you walk through rather than a menu you click. It also nods to the maze in our logo. The corridors lead to Research, Design and Pedagogy, and each one ends in a dead end where questions like these wait.

How do I find my way around?

Scroll, swipe or use the arrow keys to walk, and choose a door at a junction. The map in the corner (the Map button on a phone) shows where you are and the ways you have not taken. The little figure at the bottom is your guide (not you): tap it to say hello. Every page also exists as plain readable text, for example /about/ and /research/, which is what screen readers and search engines can use.

How was it made?

Nikita built it with Claude Code, using plain web technologies (HTML, CSS and JavaScript): no website builder, no framework and no 3D library. It runs on about 300 KB of JavaScript of our own, plus a zoom viewer that loads only when you open a zoomable picture. The corridors and rooms are drawn live on a 2D canvas by a small perspective engine written for this site, and the cards are ordinary page elements placed with the same perspective, so the words stay sharp and readable. The length of the page is the length of the path: scrolling moves a camera along it, and scrolling back retraces your steps.

Where do the water sounds come from?

They are not recordings. The browser makes them live, from filtered noise and small tones, shaped to sound like a wall of falling water, a small fountain, a river and birds. Each swells as you walk close to it and is gone the moment you leave.

Is anything hidden?

A few things. Stand still and your guide plays; tap it and it says who it is. The Reach out circle drifts to wherever there is empty space. Behind the Zuiora door is a room you can look around in, with a voice that walks with you. And when the water is high at the bridge, wait: it goes down.

Can I share or bookmark a place in the maze?

Yes. The address in your browser follows you as you walk, so you can bookmark where you are or send it to someone, and it opens at the same place. A shared link also shows a preview picture made for that place.

How do you build a website with an AI?

Nikita built this one by talking it through with Claude Code. She described the feeling she wanted and checked every screen on a laptop and a phone; Claude Code wrote the code, tested it in a browser and offered options; Nikita decided. Each idea was tried, looked at and changed until it felt right.

Is the voice a real person?

No person recorded these. The narration is generated by a synthetic voice reading scripts written for this site, and the same voice is used in every recording, so the site speaks in one calm tone.

Was the content written by AI?

The research, projects and ideas are Mu.S.Ex.'s own. Nikita used Claude Code to write the site's code and to draft some of its copy and narration, which she edited and approved before it went live.

Who built this website?

Nikita Sheth built it, using Claude Code, Anthropic's AI coding assistant. There was no agency and no web team. Nikita conceived it, directed every step and approved every screen; Claude Code wrote the code and drafted some of the copy as she directed.

For designers

What design principles shaped this site?

Move through it like a building. A visit is a walk with turns and thresholds, not a menu. Words sit on calm, glassy cards, and the drawing behind them fades wherever text appears, so nothing competes with reading. Colour stays warm: the darks are maroon rather than black, and the lightest tone is a soft off-white.

Which typefaces does the site use?

Headings and labels are set in Quint, links in Ubuntu Bold and reading text in Barlow. The Mu.S.Ex. logo is registered artwork, lettered in Azonix.

How does environmental psychology change a design brief?

It adds a question before the first sketch: how should the people who use this space feel, and what should it let them do? Light, materials, layout and sound are then chosen to answer it. At Aesthetics, a sound shop in Navi Mumbai, that meant a living-room feel, warm light and a wall of reclaimed wood that absorbs sound. At a Pune office it meant seven different ways to work and rest.

Do the projects show the process as well as the result?

Yes. Each project's pictures begin with the finished space, then show the drawings, sketches and plans, and then the construction on site where we have it. The order is deliberate: you see what it became, then how it came to be.

How can I use the research in my own design work?

Treat Project E as a reading list for your brief. Each of its twelve research areas lists its focus questions, aims and keywords: for example how the parts of a space combine to shape emotion (area 07), how materials engage the senses (area 11) and how design can include or exclude people (area 12). Pick the area closest to your project, follow its keywords into the literature, and credit Mu.S.Ex. if you quote us.

What principles are behind the Zuiora room?

Seven, each answering a human need. A gathering corner arranged so people can see each other's faces. A water wall that gives privacy without taking away light. A reading corner with a wall behind you and the room open ahead. A plant within your field of vision. Daylight beside the quietest spot. One place for work, so that rest can have its own. A fountain as the threshold between outside and home. A voice walks with you through the room and explains why each one is there.

For architecture enthusiasts

What architecture am I walking through?

A mix of traditions, drawn in line: Roman and Gothic arches, Mughal scalloped arches, vaults and domes, a Japanese torii gate, Art Deco steps, brutalist blocks, parametric curves and a city skyline, seen along arcades, colonnades, courtyards and bridges. The path itself is marked the way an architect marks a drawing, with centre lines, dashes, dots and scale ticks.

Which projects should I look at first?

Corbett House is a good start: a farm resort at the edge of the Corbett Tiger Reserve, rebuilt from its own old walls with local materials. For ideas at city scale, see Mather Square, a climate-conscious retrofit of a Kochi landmark with a timber façade that opens and closes on solar power (Honourable Mention, Mather Square Design Competition 2023), and a school for Djilakh in Senegal, roofed by one bamboo arch, repeated.

What are architectural and environmental psychology?

Environmental psychology studies how the places where we live, learn and work shape the way we think, feel and behave, and how we shape them in return. Architectural psychology is the part of it that looks at buildings. Project E, our long-term research, explores both across twelve areas.

What is neuroarchitecture?

The study of how the brain and body respond to buildings and places, using tools from neuroscience, such as brain imaging and EEG, alongside surveys and observation. The Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture, founded in 2003, has helped bring the two fields together. Mu.S.Ex. draws on it alongside environmental psychology.

Is this the same as Vastu or feng shui?

No. Environmental psychology tests how people actually respond to spaces, while Vastu and feng shui are older traditions of thinking about space. Mu.S.Ex. is curious about both: one of the twelve research areas looks at the psychology behind traditional geomancy.

Does Mu.S.Ex. work with local and vernacular traditions?

Where the place calls for it. Corbett House was rebuilt from its own old walls with local materials, and the Djilakh school design uses treated bamboo and natural ventilation. One research area reads heritage architecture for what it reveals about people, and Design Dialogues includes conversations on sustainability and vernacular architecture.

For art enthusiasts

Is the maze drawn by hand or by code?

By code, live in your browser, line by line, rather than played back from a film or a 3D model. The arches, vaults and skylines are drawn the way architects draw, in outline, and the sky changes from corridor to corridor.

Where does art meet Mu.S.Ex.'s design?

In the making of the spaces. Bella Vida, a guest room in Goa, has hand-painted ombre walls, hand-made lamps and restored timber doors. The Aesthetics sound shop has a ceiling of stars in optical fibre. A Pune office uses upcycled denim.

What is the Psi-fig?

The Greek letter ψ (psi), the symbol of psychology, woven into a human figure. It is Mu.S.Ex.'s mascot and your guide through the maze, and it stands for the bridge between people and places: a reminder that a place is meant to be built, and experienced, consciously by human beings.

Does colour change how a space feels?

It does, but less simply than "blue calms, red excites". What a colour does depends on the light, the surfaces beside it, the viewer's culture and what the room is for. That is why Project E looks at a space as a whole: area 07 asks how its parts, colour among them, combine to shape emotion and arousal.

Is there research on imaginary and surreal spaces?

Yes. Research area 10 studies the emotions stirred by magical realms, science fantasies and psychedelic visuals, and by the few real spaces that come close to recreating them, to understand the mind's enchantment with the not real.

Does art really matter for wellbeing?

The evidence points that way. A 2019 review for the World Health Organization's European office, drawing on more than 900 publications, found that the arts have a role in preventing ill health, promoting health, and managing and treating illness across a lifetime. The evidence covers visual art, music, dance, theatre, writing and visits to galleries and museums.

For health and wellness enthusiasts

Can a room really affect my health?

In measurable ways. Daylight helps keep sleep steady and supports mood, noise and clutter are linked with higher stress, and views of greenery help people recover from it. Design cannot cure illness, but it can make rest, recovery and focus easier.

What is biophilic design?

Design that brings people closer to nature: daylight, plants, water, natural materials and views of the outdoors. Studies link it with lower stress and better focus. The Corbett House resort and the Zuiora room are examples.

Does a view of nature really help?

The best-known evidence is from a hospital. Patients recovering from gallbladder surgery in rooms that looked onto trees left a little sooner and needed fewer strong painkillers than matched patients who faced a brick wall (Roger Ulrich, 1984). Time outdoors points the same way: in a 2019 study of nearly 20,000 people, those who spent at least two hours a week in nature were more likely to report good health and wellbeing.

How does light affect sleep?

Morning daylight tells your body clock that the day has begun, and light late in the evening tells it the opposite. In one study of 116 young adults, ordinary room light in the hours before bed delayed the body's melatonin signal for sleep in almost everyone and shortened it by about 90 minutes, compared with dim light. So aim for bright daylight by day and warm, low light at night.

Does noise at home matter?

Yes. The World Health Organization's 2018 noise guidelines for Europe, built on a review of the evidence, link long-term exposure to environmental noise, such as road traffic, with annoyance, disturbed sleep and heart disease. Distance, soft surfaces and sound-absorbing walls help, and the sound of water can mask noise you cannot remove, which is one reason the Zuiora room has a water wall.

How do you design for neurodiversity?

By starting from the senses. Autistic people, for example, can find bright or reflective surfaces, harsh light and loud rooms overwhelming, so steady light, calmer colours, matt materials, clear circulation and predictable routines help. Our essay Spatial Design For Autism, on the Writings page, explains the science and points to architect Magda Mostafa's ASPECTSS design index.

Does Mu.S.Ex. research healing and therapeutic spaces?

Yes. Two of the twelve research areas in Project E look at it: the influence of the built environment on mental wellbeing (area 05), and the therapeutic milieu (area 09), which studies how architecture has long been used to create meditative, focused and positive places, and the reformative properties of such spaces.

How can I make my home feel calmer?

Start with light: let daylight in, and use warm, low light in the evening. Give work its own corner so that rest can have its own. Keep something living in sight. Keep one seat with a wall behind you and a view of the room. Lucy, Zuiora's design companion, can help you apply this to your own home.

Is any of this medical advice?

No. Mu.S.Ex. is a research and design practice, not a medical service, and what we share here is general information about how places affect people. Design can support rest, recovery and focus, but it does not replace medical or mental health care. If you are unwell or struggling, please speak to a doctor or a qualified professional.

More questions, answered elsewhere

These pages answer their own questions in full:

Walk through the maze →