Anahita Sal Moslehian

Anahita Sal Moslehian is an architectural researcher investigating how everyday living and care environments function as active socio-spatial systems through which care, connection, and wellbeing are produced. She earned her PhD in Architecture from Deakin University in 2022, where she developed a novel mixed grounded theory research design to examine the evolution of hospital building design, understand how research informs practice, and identify the contextual factors that trigger building design innovation.

Anahita is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the HOME Strategic Research and Innovation Centre at the School of Architecture and Built Environment. In this role, she collaborates with multidisciplinary teams across the built environment, health, social enquiry, economics, and law to design, deliver, and translate research into design knowledge that informs policy and practice. Across sixteen transdisciplinary research projects, she has investigated how housing and aged care environments influence health, social connection, and everyday living practices. She has served as Chief Investigator on approximately 75% of these projects, including three competitively funded studies she initiated and led with cross-institutional collaborators. She has contributed to research collaborations involving academia, industry, government, and community organisations, producing publications in leading interdisciplinary journals and evidence-based reports that support policy development and professional practice. The quality of her research was recently recognised with the 2025 Deakin University Early Career Researcher Award.

Her work draws on evidence-based design and practice-informed research approaches. She holds the Evidence-Based Design Accreditation and Certification (EDAC) awarded by the US-based Centre for Health Design. Anahita's work focuses on housing and healthcare environments, investigating the socio-spatial pathways through which the built environment influences physical, psychological, and social wellbeing. Her research explores the lived experiences of diverse end-users, including healthcare patients, aged-care residents, individuals experiencing homelessness, apartment dwellers, and office workers, to generate actionable design knowledge that supports healthier lifestyles, strengthens social connection, and improves quality of life. Her current research extends this work by examining how housing design and governance models can support intergenerational living and everyday care, contributing to new housing models that integrate social connection, health, and care within mainstream urban development.