An Architecture for Empowerment: Exploring How Physical Environments Co-Create Human Capacity for Sustainability Transformation

This thesis serves as an introductory exploration to the idea of how environments are, and can become, a key leverage point for change towards a sustainable future. It reframes sustainability challenges as a crisis of adaptability, where our environmental conditions—both inner psychological states and exterior physical environments— are recognised as actively constraining or enabling our capacity to create necessary change. The investigation introduces "Environments for Empowerment", proposing that physical spaces function as active co-authors of human capacity rather than passive containers, operating as "narrative infrastructures" that shape embodied experiences through both exteroceptive and interoceptive senses. Through a novel mixed-methods design combining narrative literature review with a global phenomenological survey (n=58 across 23 countries), this research demonstrates that we are more than brains transported by bodies— and thus our capacities to live, transform, and create positive change are distributed across our embodied interactions with our inner and exterior environmental conditions. The survey instrument, grounded in Theory U and Inner Development Goals frameworks and informed by Arts-Based Research, employed multiple response modalities including quantitative ratings, qualitative descriptions, visual sketching, and metaphorical completion. Key findings reveal three environmental support archetypes via K-means clustering: Spatially Constrained (20.7%), Moderately Supported (53.4%), and Spatially Empowered (25.9%). Factor analysis identified a two-factor structure comprising Transformative Empowerment (78.8% variance) and Relational Empowerment (14.5% variance). A strong correlation between multiple variables supports this structure, demonstrating that variables measured an underlying environmental empowerment construct. Universal patterns emerged across cultural contexts, suggesting environmental empowerment operates through learnable, designable principles. Significantly, 83% of participants considered environmental changes following survey completion, indicating the assessment functioned as intervention. The research identifies six mechanisms of environmental disempowerment whilst revealing spatial awareness as a master skill amplifying other capabilities. Practical applications span individual spatial literacy development, organisational environmental intelligence, and recognition of environmental conditions as missing infrastructure for sustainability transformation—offering direct leverage points for addressing our collective adaptability crisis.