Maayan is an Anthropologist and urban designer who specialises in psycho-social approaches to spatial design, with a particular focus on health and wellbeing. Before setting up her own independent consultancy she established the role of Anthropologist-Urban Designer at the international studio Foster+Partners. With public-sector clients including the GLA, Network Rail, the NHS and numerous London Boroughs, she combines ethnographic and participatory research methods with spatial design expertise to derive characterful, locally-particular, equitable responses to place-based design, policy and infrastructural intervention. She works across a number of scales from individual buildings to mixed use masterplans; pocket parks to regional strategies.
She has a particular specialism in spaces of care. She received her PhD from the LSHTM; was appointed to the UK’s High Streets Task Force; is a frequently invited public speaker on the topic of relations-centred design; sits on a number of design review panels in London and across the country; and has taught, guest lectured and critiqued on various Masters courses including the LSHTM, RCA, Ravensbourne College of Art and Design, and Confluence Institute (Paris).