Quick Recap – Places to Focus
People learning need to be focusing on what they’re doing. Design supports focus when it: Uses colours that are not very saturated and are relatively light—a sage green or smokey blue with lots of...
Optimising Mental Energy Levels via Design
We do mentally easier tasks in spaces that are relatively energising places to be and those that require us to be more thoughtful, that are more challenging, in spaces where the design vibe is...
Using Spaces to Remember…
Human minds really are fascinating and the way they work means that using spaces in particular ways can help us remember things. When we’re working or just musing, we offload thoughts to the world...
More than what’s in your wine glass…
Professor Joy (I am not making this up!) and team from the University of British Columbia assessed “a number of items including the material features of the winery and the sensorial theme, such as...
Age of the Modern Farmhouse
Ronda Kaysen shares lots of details about modern farmhouse residential design, labelling it the replacement for McMansions in the psyches of many American residents. As Kaysen shares (“The Modern Farmhouse is Today’s McMansion. And...
Keeping up with the Jones – Home decor and market forces!
Grant and Handelman determined that “while consumers readily turn to the home décor marketplace for objects that help them reflect their personal identity, lifestyle media have clearly influenced an emergent cultural understanding of the...
Nature vs Malls – places and thinking
Scherz and colleagues found that people have different sorts of thoughts about other people and about places in different sorts of public spaces. The researchers determined that “Self-related thoughts were less likely in a...
Using Wood in Offices
Ojala and colleagues share that they gathered data “in two rooms: a room with wooden elements and a control room without wood. The participants first performed cognitive tasks by the computer to imitate typical...
Designing for Health and Happiness
Design can definitely make you feel happy, what’s technically known in the psych biz as improving your mental health. Being happier can be good for your physical health, it can make your immune system...
How to design for creativity – The Long Read
The findings that follow are place-independent; they hold, and can be applied, whether people are at home, in a corporate workplace, at a co-working site, or somewhere else entirely. Also, always remember, that a...
Wood for healthy minds
As you ponder your re-design options keep the benefits of using wood in mind. Working natural materials into spaces is an important tenet of biophilic design—and particularly positive results ensue from using materials—such as...
What shape and colour apartment?
Kleeman and Foster’s study of the implications of spending extended periods of time in home apartments during the COVID-19 lockdowns are fairly predictable: “Compared to the pre-pandemic period, after the lockdown residents reported less satisfaction...
Adding Water
Water can be a great addition to an interior space—not the random water burbling in through a broken pipe or flooded field—but water in a gently moving desktop fountain or in an aquarium stocked...
Don’t always Follow Trends…
A lot of people make a lot of money creating and publicising trends, in design and elsewhere. They’d like you to think that your only option as a rational human being is to follow...
Buy the Right Lightbulb for the Right Spot!
The lighting research is clear: Warm light, particularly when it’s dimmer, helps us feel relaxed, creative, and sociable.It’s no coincidence that the Scandinavian way-of-life, hygge (described in detail here), features candles and firelight. Cooler...
Ventilating a Space!
You may or may not have much control over the ventilation where you live or work, you may be able to open or close a window or be able to change the flow rate...
Speaking and Designing
It may not seem that the language we’re speaking should have much effect on our responses to designed spaces but indeed it does. We pick up on social cues such as the language being...
Living Your Best Life in a Small Space – Intro
Living small is living thoughtfully. You may be living small for all sorts of reasons, but it’s unlikely that you’re doing so by mistake. To actually live and work in a small space, and...
Wellbeing and Small Spaces
So, how can you design living and working small spaces that increase your wellbeing and, gasp, your pleasure?= Keeping our early days as a species in mind, when we may even on occasion have...
Minimalistic Living
There’s a lot of push today for living in a minimalist way. Aaargh! Using resources thoughtfully is always a good idea, for many a reason, from saving the earth, to conserving your bank balance,...
Create Refreshing Views – Garden Design 101!
We’re not apt to think how our gardens can work for us, the way our home offices and kitchens do. Your garden can refresh your mind and cut your stress levels just as it...
Building in Good Neighbours!
We can build and use our homes in ways that increase our positive bonds with the people who live nearby. Sit on your front porch or steps if you have them from time to...
How to design so people… behave…!
Want people to do something particular in a space? Sit quietly and read? Enjoy a movie with others without interjecting comments for all to hear? Eat using the table manners their grandmother would be...
Movie Houses…
Oscars have just been distributed, so movies won’t be completely dominating the news again for a few more months yet, but the homes we see and cherish after we catch sight of them in...
Making the Metaverse
Programmers out there are actually creating the metaverse, but clearly in no time at all it is going to have as big an effect on how we think and behave as the physical world...
Biophilic Facades
Berto, Barbiero, and Salingaros share that “Built environments that integrate representations of the natural world into façades and interiors benefit occupant psycho-physiological well-being and behavior. However, the biophilic quality of buildings does not depend...
Benefits of Being in a City
Movies and television shows and books and magazine articles (every sort of media, it seems) makes city living seem oh so exciting and in many ways quite irresistible. Country living is presented as fine,...
Your Personality and Your In-City Home
Although there’s always the chance (day or night) to pop out of an urban residence, it’s even more important that that a home in the city aligns with your personality than that one outside...
Take “Advice” With More Than One Grain of Salt
When you are selecting a home, in the city or elsewhere, it’s important to make up your own mind about the options available to you and not be cajoled into living here or there...
What you can learn from Urban Design for Wherever you Live
Urban designers have done oodles of studies over the years, and some of the lessons that their work teaches are relevant whether you live in a city or not and their research outcomes align...
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