Using his background as a musician, Nick combines highly diverse fields in his research and teaching, from science and engineering through to performing arts and policy. To do this he has created, with Perkins&Will, PEARL – a multiscale multisensorial Person-Environment-Activity Research Laboratory. PEARL allows him and his team to study the interactions of environments, people and their activities at life-scale - a new way of examining how people perceive the environment, using a combination of theoretical neurobiology, neuroscience, psychology, physiology, engineering and creative arts to inform the synthesis of these results to create new ways of designing safe, accessible, aesthetic, effective and energy-beneficial environments that work for both people and planet. This has resulted in changes in the design of buses, trains, stations, streets and pedestrian facilities around the world. 

 

Nick’s approach is to work with Capabilities (what people can do, rather than what they can’t), and this has meant a holistic view of the range of Capabilities encountered in the population and how people really encounter the environments they live in.

 

Nick is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Institution of Civil Engineers, the

Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation, and the Royal Society of Arts, was

appointed CBE in 2011 and awarded the CIHT Institution Award in 2022.