FreshAIR Framework

bridging arts + science, research + practice

Emerging Insights

FreshAIR made its global debut at Aesthetics 2025 with our cascading, collaborative framework for translating aesthetic intelligence into applied innovation. This was a rare space for global exchange between artists, neuroscientists, psychologists, educators, and practitioners around a shared question: how can arts + science inform, challenge, and enrich one another?

For us, one of the deeper takeaways from this gathering is that bridging the gap between arts + science is only the beginning. 

The next big opportunity? Bridging the gap between research + practice.

Since aesthetic experience shapes our attention, perception, and landscapes of memory, emotion, and meaning, it also has practical implications for how we design the spaces and systems that produce our shared futures. Research becomes even more powerful when it moves from observation to application — through aesthetic intelligence, we can introduce new ways of seeing, build trust across disciplines, and design environments that support wellbeing, imagination, and collective intelligence.

FreshAIR (Aesthetic, Interdisciplinary, Regenerative) is a space for the in-betweens. A space for research, innovation, and translation. We embrace the scenic route, inviting slowness, sensory immersion, and ecological awareness into our process. Rather than seeing art merely as individual expression, we sees the arts as early signs of collective intelligence: a way to surface patterns, find meaning in complexity, and build bridges between disciplines, cultures, and ways of knowing.

At Monte Verità, breathing in the bohemian history where the sierras meet the sea, the air itself became part of our DNA. We loved the balance of rigorous academic exchange and casual conversation. Featuring wonderful dialogues with our global peers and pioneers like Anjan Chaterjee, Fredric Ullen, and Susan Magsamen — this gathering reinforced our creative core: knowledge is not only produced in papers and presentations, but also emerges through relationship to people and place.

We are encouraged by the new connections we made, and opportunity to ask new questions for our shared horizons. As we returned to Texas, we are excited to bring these insights to life in the field, in ways that are both timely and tangible. 

Where could society use a breath of FreshAIR? From research to practice, let's get creative in how we use beauty to guide behaviour, creativity to navigate complexity, and aesthetic attunement to support regenerative futures for people + planet. 

ETH Zürich Mission

“We serve society by educating the next generations of critical and creative thinkers and engaged citizens.”

—Joël Mesot, President of ETH Zurich

“With our research, we create knowledge and develop technologies to meet the global challenges of our time. We project a sustainable, future-oriented, and innovative image of Switzerland to the world and connect with the global community. Together with our partners from science, business, politics, and society, we rely on the power of teamwork and strive for excellence in everything we do.”