IA Leadership Team - IA Design

Different Brains, Better Places

James Morgan — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:47:13 +0000

Different Brains, Better Places

Why Designing for Difference Benefits Everyone

By Bruce Khajehnoori, Regional Director NSW, IA

A 2-part series on my lived experience of thinking and learning differently, by Bruce Khajehnoori.

I wasn’t officially diagnosed with ADHD until my mid-twenties. It was only later that I began to understand the role dyslexia had also played throughout my education.

Ironically, the child who struggled to learn within traditional environments would eventually build a career designing them.

For much of my school life, I assumed the problem was me.

Looking back, learning was difficult.

Not occasionally difficult.

Consistently difficult.

I watched classmates grasp concepts that seemed obvious while I struggled to understand what teachers were explaining. Reading took more effort. Following instructions sometimes felt overwhelming. Tasks that appeared straightforward for others often felt frustratingly complex.

Years later, I began to ask a different question.

What if some of the challenge wasn’t individual capability?

What if part of the challenge was the environment itself?

Today, as a designer, I find myself returning to that question regularly.

Throughout my career, I’ve worked on workplaces, educational facilities, government environments and public spaces.

That question becomes even more important when we consider one of design’s most persistent assumptions: the idea of an average user. The average employee, student, customer or visitor may be a useful abstraction, but they do not exist in real life. Every person brings different experiences, preferences, strengths, challenges and ways of thinking. If our environments are designed around an imagined average, many real people are required to work harder simply to participate.

One observation continues to stand out.

People experience the same environment very differently.

Some thrive in busy settings.

Others perform better in quieter spaces.

Some process information best through discussion.

Others need time to reflect independently.

Some gain energy from constant interaction.

Others lose it.

Yet many environments continue to be designed around an assumption that people work, learn and engage in broadly the same way.

Historically, we’ve often designed around expectations such as:

Sit still.
Focus for long periods.
Learn in one way.
Work in one way.
Process information at the same pace.
Engage in the same manner.

The challenge is that very few people fit that model perfectly.

My experience of learning differently taught me something that has influenced my entire approach to design.

Attention and understanding do not exist in isolation.

They’re influenced by environment.

Factors such as:

Lighting
Acoustics
Visual clutter
Spatial organisation
Movement
Access to choice

can significantly influence how people focus, process information and perform.

I’ve seen this play out repeatedly during stakeholder engagement sessions.

People rarely ask for larger spaces.

More commonly, they ask for:

Places to focus.
Places to collaborate.
Places to think.
Places to recharge.
Greater flexibility in how they use a space.

Whether we’re talking about a student, an employee or a visitor, the underlying need is remarkably similar.

People want environments that support the way they work best.

Importantly, these responses are not specialist accommodations that benefit only a small group. Better acoustics improve concentration for everyone. Clear wayfinding reduces uncertainty. Flexible settings support different working styles. Retreat spaces give people somewhere to reset. Designing with neurodiversity in mind is not a separate layer added to good design; it is one way of achieving good design.

Designing for the edges often improves outcomes for the middle. The goal is not to create one perfect environment, but to create environments flexible enough to support different ways of thinking.

The more I reflect on my own experiences, the less convinced I become that there is a normal way to learn, work or engage with the world. Once we accept that there is no average user, we can stop asking people to adapt to our environments and start creating environments that adapt to people.

Perhaps the better question is this:

As designers, clients, educators and leaders, what would change if we treated human difference as our starting point rather than an exception?

Coming next in the series

Part 2: Choice Matters: Designing Better Learning Environments for Different Minds

About the author

Bruce Khajehnoori
Regional Director NSW, IA

Follow Bruce on LinkedIn

IA launches IA Group LLC USA, establishing a dedicated presence in the United States

admin — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 12:40:19 +0000

IA launches IA Group LLC USA, establishing a dedicated presence in the United States

IA is pleased to announce the launch of IA Group LLC USA, marking an exciting new chapter in our growth and establishing a dedicated presence in the United States.

Joining as Vice President is Matt Mansfield, who will lead the establishment, growth and operations of the US business from Los Angeles.

Matt brings more than 35 years of experience across the construction and building industry, including nearly 20 years specialising in commercial fit-out and construction.

In his new role, Matt will focus on establishing the foundations for IA Group LLC USA and driving its growth in the US market. This will include developing new business opportunities, building the client pipeline and establishing relationships with contractors and industry partners.

Working closely with IA’s broader team, Matt will also play an important role in bringing IA’s established architecture and design expertise and project capabilities to the US market.

The launch of IA Group LLC USA represents a significant step in IA’s continued growth. A dedicated US presence provides a platform to better support existing clients with international requirements, develop new client relationships and expand IA’s project capabilities internationally.

With seven studios across Australia and now a dedicated presence in the United States, IA continues to build on the strength of its national expertise while creating new opportunities for our people, clients and partners across international markets.

We are delighted to welcome Matt to the team and look forward to seeing IA Group LLC USA take shape and grow under his leadership.

The post IA launches IA Group LLC USA, establishing a dedicated presence in the United States first appeared on IA Design.

What Unpriced Risk Actually Costs

admin — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 12:22:00 +0000

What Unpriced Risk Actually Costs

A note on fees, rigour, and who pays later

One of our teams has been asked to sign off on a set of drawings in four days that, done properly, needed three weeks. The fee had already been agreed. The risk didn’t go away, it just stopped being covered.

That’s the quiet trade happening across our industry right now. Australia’s regulatory framework is becoming more demanding by the year, yet many design consultants are being asked to carry more statutory responsibility and accept greater professional risk for lower fees than ever before. Something has to give. It’s always time. And time is the one thing the rules were meant to protect.

At IA, we operate as a national design consultancy spanning architecture and interior design across seven Australian studios and now one in the US. Our teams take real pride in the work, and a significant part of that work is producing documentation that carries genuine statutory weight. Done well, it protects builders, developers, clients, and the communities we design for. When the fee doesn’t leave enough time, that documentation gets harder to hold together. Not because anyone wants to cut corners. Because there just isn’t time left to do it properly. Coordination gets thin. Checks get skipped. None of that shows up on the fee proposal. It shows up later, when it’s expensive to fix.

The good PMs we work with understand that procurement isn’t about finding the cheapest number, it’s about paying for the outcome you actually need. That’s a collaborative relationship, built on a shared understanding of what risk and rigour actually cost to deliver properly. It’s also, in my experience, increasingly rare.

What’s more common is a race to the bottom. Lowest bid wins, then gets cut again in a best and final round, on the assumption there was still room to give. Sometimes there was. More and more, there isn’t. Every extra cut comes straight out of the hours the project actually needs.

This isn’t a criticism of procurement, it’s a call to change what procurement optimises for. The conversation our industry needs isn’t “how low can we get the fee” but “what does this project need to be done properly, and are we paying for that.” Those are different questions, asked of different people, and they lead to very different outcomes for everyone at the table, including, ultimately, the client.

Here’s the test. Before asking a consultant to do it faster and cheaper, ask yourself honestly whether you’ve actually accounted for the risk you’re handing them.

If you haven’t, you haven’t saved money. You’ve just put off the bill. Someone always ends up paying it.

Andrew Whitelegg

CEO & Managing Director, IA Group

The post What Unpriced Risk Actually Costs first appeared on IA Design.

IA Leadership Team - IA Design

Different Brains, Better Places

Different Brains, Better Places

Why Designing for Difference Benefits Everyone

Coming next in the series

About the author

Related reading

IA launches IA Group LLC USA, establishing a dedicated presence in the United States

IA launches IA Group LLC USA, establishing a dedicated presence in the United States

What Unpriced Risk Actually Costs

What Unpriced Risk Actually Costs

A note on fees, rigour, and who pays later