Alec Mahar

Lara is a Postdoctoral Researcher and Module Coordinator for the Architectural Cognition in Practice group at Future Cities Lab Global, Singapore-ETH Centre. Her research focuses on empirically understanding how properties of the built environment impact cognition, behaviour and emotion, and explores how this research can be translated into design practice. This involves running research collaborations with industry partners to study real-world spaces, and translating findings into design outcomes. Prior to that, Lara gained her PhD from UCL's Spatial Cognition Lab, in which she sought to bridge the worlds of Spatial Cognition and Neuroarchitecture by exploring architectural experience as a combination of spatial, aesthetic and affective processing through fMRI-neuroimaging studies, combining neural, behavioural and subjective responses. She also holds an MSc in Health, Wellbeing and Sustainable Buildings from the Bartlett, UCL.