A Space for Being is Google's exhibition at Fuorisalone 2019, an ideal follow-up to Softwear, its debut installation last year. It's a multiroom experience set in Spazio Maiocchi; before they enter, visitors are invited to wear a wristband with a sensor. “There are three different environments with different design, build, and furnishings, and then you go to the end and the band will tell you how you felt, using amazing graphics created by Google Design Studio”, says Suchi Reddy of Reddymade, the architecture and design studio that collaborated with Google to create this exhibition. The whole installation is based on the principles of neuroaesthetics, the field of research that explores how different aesthetic experiences have the potential to impact our biology and well-being. “This is what we always do as architects and designers, to make people feel something: we do it naturally but don't know why”, Mrs Reddy explains.
“This exhibition is an amplification of the principles that we use at work”, says Ivy Ross, Google’s Vice President for Hardware Design, UX, and Research, while visiting the first of the three rooms. In the space, that's perfumed and filled by soft music, you can spot some Google products. There is a Google Home speaker, and a smart screen showing pictures. Their presence is the only constant in every room. Even the books, and there are lots of books which visitors can flip through, are different from room to room. 

Did you choose the books?
Yes, but not on myself, three of us chose the books. Books were chosen for images that arrive in the senses. The idea of neuroaesthetics is something that designers and artists know intuitively but it's great that neuroscience is proving how all these things are affecting our senses, our well being and physiology.

Why did you build these three environments?
These particular three? As opposed to any other three? (Ivy Ross laughs). We partnered up with Muuto, the furniture company. There's mutual respect of aesthetics and mutual appreciation. Arts + Mind Lab at Johns Hopkins University was also involved: it's a group studying this idea of aesthetics in art, design and even filmmaking.

Will people interact with the environment?
People are allowed to sit, engage, as it was your living room. This is not an art experiment, we want people to just sit and interact as they would. Our biggest problem will be people want to spend more than 5 minutes in a room. It will be a pleasure but also a mess! 

In what sense does this exhibition amplify the work you're doing at Google Hardware?
When you enter the hardware arena, you consider things like colour, texture, form. My team considers how do you feel it in your hand. Google Home Mini was designed as you're holding a pebble, nature, versus some piece of electronics. This exhibit is making people experience the same principles but on a bigger scale.

Is there a relationship between this exhibition and Softwear?
With Muuto I wanted to do something that was both an amplification of what we did last year, but also something that was surprising, unexpected from Google. And so I thought about this collaboration that uses these aesthetics principles to create rooms with Muuto furniture, our hardware, Reddymade architects, and Johns Hopkins that had to validate the algorithm of the bracelet that comes up suggesting in which room you were more comfortable. Sometimes it matches to what you think, and sometimes it does not.

At the end of the exhibition, visitors will sit down, put the wristband on a tray and have a graphic representation about how they felt in each room.
Design has an impact on people and we wanted to make people see it back, with data. It also empowers designers, because it tells you that their work has an impact on life. Ours is serious work! 

So, coming here you'll sense something, but also have feedback of that feeling. That's an extra layer compared to the usual stuff that you see at a Design Week.
We've become a little numb about the sensory. We should sense more.
Our hope is that you just walk away being more thoughtful.

Is this some kind of technology that you're working on in Google?This was made just for this exhibition, so there's no plan for something specific like this. But Google is always looking for technology that can be useful for people. But in this case, it was just done to amplify what we do when we design Google hardware.

My feelings look beautiful on the postcard that you gave me. It resembles more a watercolour abstract painting than some computer-generated image.
Data can be beautiful! We have to choose how do we use technology in our lives, and how we use data, but we have not to abandon the beauty of things.