In this episode of Extreme Living, Anchal speaks with Professor Charles Spence, an experimental psychologist at the University of Oxford whose work explores multisensory perception and how our senses shape the way we experience the world.

The conversation looks at architecture beyond the eye. How do sound, smell, touch, taste, light, atmosphere, and sensory control shape life in confined and extreme environments such as space stations, submarines, hospitals, prisons, and Antarctic research bases?

Charles discusses why architecture has often prioritized the visual, what happens when environments become sensory monotonous, and how lack of control over sound, smell, light, and privacy can affect wellbeing.

The episode also explores flavor perception in space, sonic seasoning, sensory agency, windows, natural light, and what healthcare design might teach future space habitats.

Chapters

• The Power of Multisensory Design
• Confinement and Psychological Effects
• Why Architecture Is Dominated by the Eye
• Sensory Deprivation in Modern Buildings
• Sound, Taste, and Perception
• Food, Flavor, and Dining in Extreme Environments
• Sensory Complaints in Hotels and Built Environments
• Sensory Agency and Neurodiversity
• Windows, Natural Light, and Space Habitats
• What Healthcare and Space Design Can Learn From Each Other

Papers Discussed

Senses of Place: Architectural Design for the Multisensory Mind
https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-020-00243-4

Factors Affecting Flavor Perception in Space: Does the Spacecraft Environment Influence Food Intake by Astronauts?
https://doi.org/10.1111/1541-4337.12633

In this episode of Extreme Living, I speak with Dr. Sheyna Gifford, an aerospace medicine physician, analog astronaut, and science communicator.

In 2015, Sheyna entered a 1,200-square-foot dome on the slope of Mauna Loa in Hawaii with five crewmates for a 365-day Mars analog mission called HI-SEAS IV. Inside the habitat, there was no fresh air, no real-time contact with the outside world, limited food variety, and no simple way to step away from the people around her.

What makes Sheyna’s perspective especially unique is that she was both living the mission and caring for the crew. She served as the crew’s health and safety officer while also documenting the experience as a crew journalist.

We talk about what isolation does to the body and mind, how stress shows up in confined environments, why control and choice matter, what future habitats need beyond medical equipment, and what happens when people return to normal life after a year of extreme living.

Sheyna also discusses the TIME article she wrote during COVID-19, drawing lessons from her Mars analog experience for people suddenly living through isolation on Earth.

TIME article: https://time.com/5814128/tips-mars-quarantined-earthlings/

Extreme Living explores how people live, heal, and adapt in confined and extreme environments from space habitats and polar stations to hospitals, prisons, and other places where design meets the edge of human endurance.

What does it take to deliver real healthcare inside a system built for control?

Dave Redemske is an architect and healthcare planner with 30+ years of experience designing at the intersection nobody talks about correctional facilities and clinical care. He's walked through mental health crisis rooms that would break a stable mind. He's fought for exam rooms that look like clinics, not cages. And he's made the case that design isn't decoration, it's treatment.

In this episode, we get into:

• Why prisons became America's default mental health system
• The triangle room under a staircase that says everything about what's wrong
• How trauma-responsive design is quietly changing corrections
• What the Netherlands gets right that the US refuses to try
• The real question: When they walk out, are they better or worse than when they came in?

This one will change how you see a prison. And maybe, what you think people inside one deserve.