We constantly sense beauty and seek meaning.

Years ago, I was reading Victor Frankl's Men’s Searching for Meaning and one of the scenes stood out to me the most. A Jewish prisoner survivor recalled his days in a camp and said, "There was a window in my cell. From that window, I saw two trees. Sometimes birds came to rest there. Because of this window, I survived.”

What the Jews saw through the window was a precious aesthetic experience, albeit under difficult and extreme conditions.

I'm fascinated by such potency of aesthetics - the form and meaning of things. The artwork Wrapping the Reichstag in Plastic (by the artist duo Christo and Jeanne-Claude, June 1995) further inspired me. In order to assess its significance, the artist wrapped the Reichstag into a new form. To uncover the hidden regularities of phenomena between architecture and power, I carried out an interdisciplinary research project centered on bank buildings. Drawing on historical contextualization, case studies, and institutional analysis, my monograph Aesthetics and Power - Symbolism in Bank Architecture investigates how banks express organizational identity and institutional innovation through the materiality of their built environment. It examines how management intentions shape architectural design, how the meaning and purpose of headquarters are conveyed both internally and externally, and how employees perceive power dynamics within these spaces.

My broader research interests lie in aesthetic creativity in widely differing domains such as visual art, workplace and public space. I am particularly drawn by the association between aesthetic means and emotions, identity and meaning. Taking interdisciplinary approach to study this process, I offer perspectives on how aesthetics is appreciated, judged and communicated to individuals and groups and organizations.

Currently, I am a guest researcher and lecturer at the Chair of Organization, Leadership, and Human Resource Management, School of Economics and Business Administration, Friedrich Schiller University Jena. I offer a course and seminar titled Innovation and Culture: Institutional Innovation and Cultural Materiality.