Managing Sightlines

Most of us, happily, have well-functioning eyes that make it easy for us to look around us, but what are the best sightlines for us through a space?

• Having a sightline view of at least 50 feet through a window into the space outside or at least 15 feet into the distance as we work is best for our mental performance and our eye comfort.
• The very best views for us across a space allow us to see outside.We reap all sorts of benefits from being to see outside.  Being able to see outside even helps us better keep track of where we are inside and find our way through a space, for example.  Being able to see outside also makes an inside space seem larger and more comfortable, it helps boost our mood, lower our stress levels, and refresh us mentally, for starters, which means our brains are better at problem-solving, thinking creatively, and getting along with others, for example.  When we’re looking outside it’s great if we can see some fresh, gently moving water (even a small-ish water feature in an otherwise barren courtyard can help), whether that water is part of a naturally occurring feature, like a lake or the ocean, or manmade, like a rill.  The nature environment on view should seem like one that the viewers would be comfortable to be in.  The safest and best, design-wise, is a meadow-like area with clumps of trees and gently rolling terrain.
• What we can see through our windows can also increase the safety of the areas we can see into; areas outside are generally safer the more “eyes” can look into them.
• Many of the same benefits of seeing welcoming nature outside also accrue when people can see natural materials and green leafy plants inside. The same goes for art (photographs, paintings, etc.) depicting nature scenes. Biophilic design, as discussed in this article, always makes us feel the most comfortable.
• Seeing other people always makes us more alert; in our earliest days as a species, we had to very carefully monitor what the other members of our species were up to so we could coordinate our actions with them.As a result, even today, if you want people to be able to concentrate/focus mentally in a space or to relax while they’re there, you’ll need to incorporate calming design elements into those spaces, as discussed in this article.   Spaces for people to relax, and decompress should be more relaxing than areas for professional work, for example, but if people will be together, and you are interested in having them use their brains effectively or to be their most cordial around others, you’ll need to be dampening too-high energy levels via design, more or less depending on the exact situation.  When other people can see us, we modify our behaviour, concerned about how we’ll be judged based on whatever is seen, and those modifications in behaviour can be pluses or minuses, depending.  Research related to what is known technically as “social facilitation” shows that if we know others can see us we do tasks that we find simple (perhaps because we’ve done them lots of times before) better but perform more poorly on ones we find more difficult, than we do when we don’t think we’re “on view.”
• In biophilically designed spaces we have a view of our nearby area from a place we feel secure, we have prospect and refuge. Designing in prospect and refuge, and the many benefits of doing so, are discussed in this article.  All else being equal, we’ll choose to spend time, to sit in the seat, with the longest sight line through an area, particularly if that sight line includes the entrance to the area we’re in.
• If we can see food, we’re more apt to eat it, so kitchens and other places with food in them potentially need to be visually isolated, or not, as users prefer.
• We prefer to sleep with a view of the entrance to the place where we are sleeping. In our perfect worlds, our bed is located so that an opening door initially hides us from whoever might be entering our sleeping area.
• As discussed in this article, we’re all more comfortable being in spaces that nonverbally communicate what we value about ourselves, via their architecture and interior design (right down to the content of the photos on view) than we are in less personally appropriate and customized spaces. The same goes for the homes we prefer to visit—when we go to someone’s home, learning about them when we’re there helps us understand what they hold important, which is handy not only for picking conversation topics but also for determining things such as how far we should stand or sit from them as we talk (people who are more formal prefer larger distances than those who have a more informal approach to life).
• People who are more extraverted prefer more open environments and those who are more introverted find floorplans with shorter sightlines, those with more enclosed, dedicated spaces more positive places to spend time. Homes, and areas within homes, should be planned to accommodate the personalities of users, via architectural features or interior design (for example, floor-standing screens), as appropriate.