Architect. Author. Inspiring Speaker.
Architecture shapes how we live, learn, and work. It also has the power to go beyond those, to help us thrive in everything we do.
Project By: Shinberg Levinas Architects
Photo Credit: Alan Karchmer
Welcome
Drawing from five decades of practice and teaching, informed by groundbreaking research in the human sciences, Milton Shinberg redefines priorities and strategies for architectural design. He creates a nexus for architectural intuition, the sciences that can enhance it, and the wisdom of non-architects about architecture to coexist happily, productively, and inspirationally. That re-centering creates portals to make wise architecture.
Through designing award-winning projects, including many for underserved communities, along with his ongoing engagement teaching generations of architects, Shinberg has developed innovative approaches that transform how we create spaces that serve both the functional and emotional needs of people. People-Centered Architecture, Driving Design, Practice, and Education, offers insights that propel practical, actionable frameworks for architects, educators, and students to design environments that give the highest priority to enhancing human well-being and dignity.
This is architecture reimagined, beyond theory, building on design intuition, leveraging the sciences of people while making space and time for the Muse to land in the work of architects. Assembled with deep knowledge of how architects think and work, the strategies Shinberg advocates for create opportunities for healthy and beautiful places to emerge from enhanced project processes and deepened collaboration. Design can be richer and, at the same time, easier. Surprisingly small changes in practice and education can create surprisingly big improvements.
Milton Shinberg
Milton Shinberg, AIA, is principal emeritus of Shinberg Levinas Architects, an internationally recognized practice known for design excellence and highly innovative solutions, many receiving public recognition through design awards and publications. The firm’s work has been featured in the U.S. and internationally, including extensive firm profiles in Italy and South Korea. Milton founded the practice with partner Salo Levinas in 1995.
As a long-time adjunct professor at the Catholic University of America, Shinberg has shared what he’s learned and what he’s developed with his many students, nearly two-thousand of them over the years, who frequently credit their work with him as critical to their own growth in school and beyond. His decades-long acclaimed "Beauty & Brains" seminar, along with studio assignments, is the primary vehicle for helping his students. He has led studios, developed courses on drawing and architectural technology, and contributed to enriching the curriculum. His innovative teaching approaches earned him the prestigious 2021 Architectural Educator Award from the AIA.
Tempered by his long career as an architecture firm owner, Shinberg brings a deep understanding of the realities and constraints of real-world practice in selecting what and how he shares ideas that can have a real impact.
Project By: Shinberg Levinas Architects
Photo Credit: Alan Karchmer
Inspiring Thought Leader
As an architect, educator, and consumer of advanced research, Shinberg brings a unique perspective for creating spaces that enhance human well-being, dignity, and agency. He has shared his people-centered design strategies at AIA conferences in the U.S. and internationally, inspiring enthusiastic audiences for over four decades. Shinberg also teaches in Germany, Italy, and Brazil, and has been on faculty at the NAAD luav University in Venice, Italy.
Among the growing community of architects and scientists, he is well-known for finding effective and often unexpected ways to land theory and research in the real world of architects and students of architecture. His ability to translate research and bridge scientific understanding for architectural practice has made him highly-regarded, a compelling voice for reframing design, and redefining how we think about architecture and the people architects design for.
Sharing helpful ideas is his goal and the architectural profession has demonstrated a hunger for what he offers, including a thoughtful approach to evidence-based and evidence-inspired design thinking. As just one example, given a 7 am slot on the first day of a national AIA conference to introduce that perspective, 250 architects got up early to attend Shinberg’s talk and stayed long after to continue the discussion.
Photo Credit: Milton Shinberg
Art
Milton's artistic practice is integral to his architectural thinking, providing another lens for exploring how human perception drives our experience of space. His work across drawing, watercolor, and photography embodies the same principles that guide his architectural approach: careful observation, empathic engagement, and a deep appreciation for how environments shape human responses.
Photo Credit: Milton Shinberg
The Book
People-Centered Architecture: Driving Design, Practice, and Education offers a transformative approach to architectural design. It integrates insights from the human sciences with insights from architects and non-architects to increase the power of design to discover practical and inspiring solutions for humane environments.
This groundbreaking work helps architects and non-architects better understand how people instinctively perceive and interact with their environments. Both will find tested tools to design, and design astutely, with erudition, and with empathy. For architects, it’s an opportunity to revisit their own assumptions and consider new ones. For non-architects, it’s a look behind the curtain.
Whether you're an architect, educator, student, or simply curious about how buildings shape our lives, this book provides a thought-framework, along with strategies and ideas for reimagining architecture to nurture people and inspire life-enhancing connections between people and with the environment.
Why People-Centered Architecture?
This book is a culmination of the author’s journey to land in the realm of architectural design what he’s learned from other architects, architecture students and their teachers, along with the “Coalition of the Curious,” the non-architect community that wants to know more about architecture. It emerged from a simple but powerful motive, to help architects find and use new and better ways to design for people, using strategies developed to integrate easily into practice and education.
Sharing those ideas through the medium of a book is simply an engine for engaging a wider audience to engage with, but using the ideas developed in each chapter is the core goal. Architects can create environments that go beyond convention and that feel particularly right. Ultimately, the book is an invitation to meet and build on the authentic internal realities of the people who use architecture. Those are the accessible and crucial ingredients for wise architecture.
"Shinberg has done something truly impressive: He has created a practical framework for architectural thinking and design grounded in the latest research on human perception and cognition. His ideas and insights offer a fresh perspective that
has helped me clarify many aspects of my own approach to design."
—Stefan Behling
Senior Executive Partner, Head of Studio, Foster+Partners, London