Design and Physical Health

Use of safe materials, ones that don’t off gas toxins, for example, is an obvious design-based route to physical health.

Design can make our physical health better in lots of ways that don’t relate to the fundamental biology of what we breathe in or absorb through our skin, however.

Reducing the stresses we encounter in our everyday lives is an important way that design can improve our physical health.  When we’re stressed all sorts of bad things happen to our bodies.  Our blood pressure goes up, for example, and that wrecks havoc on all sorts of biological systems.  Also, stress compromises the functioning of our immune system which leaves us more susceptible to all sorts of diseases. Stress also reduces our ability to deal with new challenges, our resilience.  Wellbeing, which is linked related to stresses experiences, has been directly tied to physical health as well, higher wellbeing, better health.  Just being in a good mood has also been shown to improve our health.

Our Environment.

Environmental conditions can make us feel stressed.  When we’re too hot or too cold, when our field of view is filled with glare, when there’s an unpredictable un-ignorable sound, when we’re touching something that feels slimy, or sticky, or makes us itch, we are stressed.  These sorts of fundamental sensory experiences can’t be ignored by our conscious or unconscious minds or our immune systems.

One of the major ways that design can stress us out is when it doesn’t support our efforts to do whatever it is that we’ve planned.  If we need to concentrate, because we’re writing great poetry (or at least trying to write great poetry), or balance our checkbook or do some other sort of thing that requires concentration, we need to be able to concentrate.  To dance we need an open space so we can twirl and leap without negatively interacting with floor lamps or coffee tables.

When we don’t have a place that aligns with our task at hand, or one that can’t readily be modified to do so (a dining space that can easily be converted into a dance space because all furnishings are on wheels is an easy conversion, for example), we have to compromise our plans in some way.  We need to continually begin work on that tricky line in our poem after each interruption or re-choreograph our dance, and those corrective actions make us feel stressed.

The Space Doctors has written about how design can support thoughtful work here , and physical work here for example.

Privacy

Not being able to have privacy when we want it also adds dramatically to our stress levels.  All humans need, at the times they desire, to not be seen or heard by others and, similarly, not to be see or hear anyone else.  Groups also need privacy from time to time, separating themselves from other groups.  Pairs of people who are romantic partners (or might be romantic partners) are an example of a group that can want privacy. Space Doctors has written about privacy, why we need it and how design can support it, here. 

Have control over your space

When we don’t have much control over our physical world, we’re stressed.  When we don’t have control we can’t fine tune it to our personal preferences, which means we might be experiencing stressful conditions, but control’s effects on us run deeper than that.  We have to be able to make some changes to where we are to feel like we’re welcome there.  Those changes can be anything from opening or closing a window or the blinds/curtains that cover it, or slightly repositioning a chair, turning on or off a light, or selecting to sit in the middle of a couch or near its left or right arm.  The point is simply that we need options.  Our health requires it.

Your own Culture

If a space where we find ourselves isn’t consistent with how people in our cultures, group and national, think it should be, we’re stressed.  Design that aligns with group and national culture is discussed here.   Our national culture might mandate, for example, that public spaces in our home be completely separated from the private ones—if our home doesn’t comply with our national culture’s rules, and people are going to be visiting our home, we become stressed.  The same goes for rules imposed by groups we’re members of.  If a group we’re part of links a certain colour with a philosophy we don’t agree with, and we find ourselves at the home or office of someone who has extensively decorated with that colour, we feel stressed.  If our group prides itself on being egalitarian, but find ourselves sitting down at a rectangular table with two short ends that people are sitting at, we feel stressed until one of us slides the chairs at the short ends of the table over to one of the longer edges.

This need to align with our cultures also starts to get at one of the most significant ways that design can stress us.  Places or objects that send out messages that we find inconsistent with who we are as a person lead to stress.  If we are proud that we live in environmentally responsible ways but get to the airport rental car lot late in the day and end up having to drive a gas guzzler, we feel stressed.  If we feel that we make an important contribution to our employer’s success, but find ourselves assigned a seat in at-work Siberia, we are stressed.

Avoid creating isolating areas

Just as we’re stressed when a place silently says things about us we know (or at least hope) aren’t accurate, we are stressed when a place doesn’t allow us to talk to those we wish to communicate with.  Humans are a social species and when we can’t mingle with others when we want to, as we want to, we become stressed.  A classic punishment for children is forcing them to leave a group that they want to be part of, to take a “timeout,” and as we grow older forced, unwanted separations from others are not something that we start to feel better about.

De-Stresssssssss

Just as environments stress us, and compromise our bodily systems and immune function, spaces can also help us de-stress.

Our stress levels drop when we look at green leafy plants and nature, indoors or outdoors (scenic and naturally occurring or gardens created by humans ), in images (still shots or videos) or art.  The same goes for seeing wood grain, curving as opposed to rectilinear lines (in patterns, furniture forms/shapes, etc.), hearing nature sounds (for example, burbling brooks, gently rustling leaves or grasses or quietly calling birds) or being (indoors or outside) in the sort of warm light you find outdoors at the beginning or end of our daylight hours or being in a day lit area.  Seeing water, particularly fresh, gently moving water is great for our blood pressure levels, it calms us.  The best sorts of water, from a psychological perspective, are those that bring to mind a refreshing spring where our ancestors could have slacked their thirst after a long day of trying to find enough food to survive and not get eaten by something themselves.

Shades of Green

Being around colours that are not very saturated but relatively bright, such as a sage green with lots of white mixed into it, ILLUSTRATE can help us feel relaxed and so can smelling scents such as lavender, most other florals, vanilla, lemon, mango, and orange, for example.  More information on relaxing scents is available here.

We’re likely to experience lower stress levels in biophilically designed spaces;  the principles of biophilic design are discussed here.

VanessaChampion.co.uk

Fresh Air

Effective ventilation has also been shown to directly benefit health and being able to open a window also helps us feel in control of our world as described above.  With man made ventilation systems, 4 -6 air changes and hour is best (share this with your HVAC tech and they’ll know how to tune your system).

Stay active by using helpful design elements in your home 

By encouraging us to stay active, at a room or building or city level, design can boost our physical health.  Adding a sit-stand desk to a home or commercial office doesn’t get someone actually moving, but standing up as we work makes us use leg muscles to keep upright.  Designing functional inconveniences into routes in homes and offices can add a little extra motion to our lives.  If you put the kitchen trash can in the back hall and not in the kitchen itself, you’ll have to walk further each time that you visit it and over time all of those extra steps can make a difference.  If you work in a building with a stairwell, and it’s safe to be in that stairwell, you might encourage more people to use it by making it a nicer place to be.  Add some posters, and change them every so often, for example, and people might change their attitude from “having to use the stairs” to “getting to use the stairs.”

Eat Healthy

Design can also encourage us to eat healthy foods, as discussed in this article.

Sleep

Sleep is important for our physical health and design can support sleep.  Places for sleeping should be very relaxing spots to be, designing for deep relaxation is discussed here.  We also sleep best in a place that’s as dark as possible, investing in black out curtains can be money well spent if you live in a city.  We sleep well when we aren’t disturbed by noises from outside our room, so a sound masking system in our bedroom—white noise or nature or whatever you choose—can be a good investment.  Our bed needs to be comfortable for us and our feet need to feel warm for us to fall asleep.  Generally, a bedroom temperature around 65 degrees Fahrenheit gives us a good launching off pad for Dreamland.  Lavender scent has been shown to help us travel to the Land of Nod and we feel more comfortable in bedrooms where we have a direct view of the door but where someone entering a room might not see us immediately—so placing a bed so people entering’s view of sleepers would be obscured by the door is a good idea.

Design can stress us but it can also relax us and support our physical health in other ways—it can help us live the sort of life we’ve planned, healthy, as well as happy.

Additional Resources:

Joseph Allen and John Macomber.  2020.  Healthy Buildings:  How Indoor Spaces Drive Performance and Productivity.  Harvard University Press;  Cambridge, MA.

Esther Sternberg.  2009.  Healing Spaces: The Science of Place and Well-Being. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA.