nothing if
not.


Architectural & Spatial Research
Design Practice

Zoë J.S. Skinner
2025






In the Wake of Thought:

Harbouring Cognitive Shift through
Spatial Practice

Supported by the Byera Hadley Travelling Scholarship
NSW Architects Registration Board
+
University of Sydney School of Architecture
Design & Planning



About the project:
In the Wake of Thought.

This research investigates how architecture might sustain presence, relationality, and a sense of belonging for individuals experiencing dementia. It focuses on the sensory and environmental conditions that support coherence and connection as cognitive and perceptual processes shift, while also attending to the ways built environments might uphold autonomy, purpose, and dignity in daily life. The study moves away from clinical frameworks that centre safety or behavioural regulation, as well as from the aestheticisation of care environments that may reflect external ideals rather than lived experience.

The project draws on concepts of prehension, precognition, and affect to understand experience as something that unfolds through relation. These frameworks move away from cognition as the dominant lens and invite a way of thinking that stays responsive to changing states of perception and embodied rhythm. Architecture, in this context, is approached as an active participant in how a person encounters the world. The research attends to how spatial and material conditions support presence when cognitive reference points shift, and how environments might sustain continuity without relying on recognition or rational coherence.

Fieldwork is an essential part of this inquiry. Site visits in Japan, Denmark and Norway will enable direct engagement with architectural case studies and care settings that offer distinct, embedded models of dementia support. These visits will allow for close observation, interviews, and spatial documentation, with a focus on how buildings in these contexts contribute to embodied experience and relational care. The travel component provides the conditions for a close reading of space in practice, allowing theoretical ideas to be tested and refined through the environments encountered. The aim is not to evaluate best practice, but to encounter and interpret how architectural conditions contribute to the experience of those who inhabit them.


About Zoë Skinner:Zoë Skinner is an Honours researcher in architecture at the University of Sydney. With a background in architectural design and object-making, her practice spans project management, teaching, and hands-on material work. She has taught sessionally at the University of Sydney and UNSW, and previously coordinated a fabrication lab in the architecture school focused on design experimentation and prototyping.

Her current research, supported by the Byera Hadley Travelling Scholarship, explores how architecture contributes to presence and relation in contexts of cognitive change. Informed by critical and process-oriented theory, her work considers how care environments mediate perception and affective experience.



PDF JP+EN（日本語＋英語）

 Contact 

Photo credit © Damien Drew