Beaches are best!
Hooyberg and colleagues, using virtual reality, determined that “beaches caused lower breathing rates than urban environments and lower SCR [skin conductance responses] than green environments. . . . the heart rate, HF-HRV [high-frequency heart...
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,...
Ceilings to Look up to… the Long Read…
It’s easy to take ceilings for granted. Most of the time for the majority of us they’re a non-event, they’re up there blocking our view of the sky, part of a structure that keeps...
Flooring to Ground a Space
When we’re developing a space, we tend to think a little more about what’s under our feet than what’s overhead, but often not much more. The single best surface for any floor is hardwood...
Managing Acoustics
Sometimes people create a whole space without considering what the ambient soundscape will be. They may consider where to place speakers for the sound system they will install but not what user ears will...
Feeling Better Physically, Via Design – The Long Read
You may be thinking that the only way your design decisions will influence your physical health is if that oh so pretty throw you buy to make your winter sofa cozy or that incredible...
Lessons Learned During the Pandemic
Lots of environmental psychology research was conducted during the pandemic and investigators largely confirmed findings from previous studies. Data collected during the pandemic, mainly during 2020 and 2021, verified that: Ventilation has a significant...
Live a Full Life – Clutter Free – THE LONG READ
The end-of-year holiday season is an interesting time, environmental-psych wise. When we massage our homes into just the right spaces to mingle with others and get in some badly needed time for solo revitalization,...
Designing for High-energy parties!
So far, we’ve been talking about creating a pleasant space for mingling and low-key social gatherings, not ones where people will fall asleep, but ones for pleasant, upbeat, maybe even meaningful, conversations with others....
Seasonal Scenting
When people visit our homes we want it to smell “good”—the amount of air freshener sold during the holidays, particularly of holiday scents like cinnamon-y ones, indicates that we may actually be desperate to...
The Science of Hygge
At this time of year hygge gets a lot of press, and it turns out that there is a lot of scientific support for it. Penelope Green wrote an article about hygge in the...
Spiritual/Meditation Vibes
Even those of us who are not particularly religious are likely to have spiritual thoughts in conjunction with our end of year holidays. How can you boost the “spirituality” of your home? Make the...
Resolutions you should make for the year
Looking for New Year’s resolutions to ring in 2023? Yes? Then resolve in the year ahead to: Cut the clutter in your home, as discussed in this article. Add opportunities to mentally refresh, as...
Seeing, Hearing birds
Hammond and team studied implications of seeing or hearing birds. They “used the Urban Mind smartphone application to examine the impact of seeing or hearing birds on self-reported mental wellbeing in real-life contexts. A sample...
How much are views worth?
Crompton and Nicholls report that “Twenty-seven empirical studies were identified that empirically estimated the impact on property values of views of open space. The review differentiated between street level and high-rise building views. Among...
Pregnant People in Green Spaces
Sun and colleagues had “pregnant women between 8 and 14 weeks’ gestational age . . . view one of three, 5-min, VR [virtual reality] videos of an urban scene with different green space levels...
Don’t forget Fido and Fifi!
Pets or animal companions are important to many of us and we want them to live happy lives. Living a happy life, for a pet, may not mean getting to do whatever is desired—shredding...
Turf Houses – Biophilic Design on Steroids!
Goodness, I LOVE these! The BBC brings worldwide attention to the turf homes that have gotten people from Iceland through the winter for many generations. Their use of materials, placement in situ, and really...
Re-nesting – The Long Read
Even if as you read this it isn’t officially autumn yet, you know that summer is past and we are beginning to settle into another winter slog toward Spring and a return to indoor-outdoor...
Hygge please
The Scandinavians have been doing it for aeons – they hygge (different languages use different terms but “hygge” is the one that English speakers are most familiar with). Hygge makes a space cosy and...
Picking Colours
As the days grow shorter, your opportunities to paint whatever might need painting in your home fewer. So, the question of the moment becomes: what colours should you select for those walls, ceilings, doors,...
More on how colours influence how we think…
More on how colours influence how we think: Colours that are not too saturated but relatively light are relaxing for us to view while ones that are more saturated and darker are energizing to...
Designed Pleasure
Patrick Jordan, in a short but incredibly important book (Designing Pleasurable Products – An Introduction to the New Human Factors, 2000, Taylor and Francis), lays out how design can make our lives better. His...
Way, Way too Hot…
Stress of any sort is bad for our physical and mental health. That’s why The Space Doctors often cover topics such as aligning environments with the task at hand and personality and culture, for...
Connecting to a Place
We build relationships with places just as we do with other people and those relationships can be good or not so great. Also, as with humans, there are advantages to positive relationships, the sorts...
Building in familiarity
Humans usually like to be in places that seem familiar to them—but familiar does not mean exactly the same as spaces previously encountered, just consistent with those other places in important ways, areas where...
What is Home-y?
Many a quest is underway to create a place where someone or other, or some group or other, will feel at home. Workplaces, restaurants, stores, healthcare facilities . . . you name it, even actual...
What makes a happy home?
In 2019 the Happiness Research Institute released The GoodHome Report 2019: What Makes a Happy Home? and their findings echo those shared above: “after surveying over 13,000 people and interviewing nearly 80 people in 10 European...
Designing for Bonding
Design can influence the bonds we form with other people, just as it can affect how attached we feel to a space. We’ll form more positive and lasting attachments to other people in certain...
Moving beyond Bonding to Trusting
Design can make it more likely that people trust each other in few very concrete ways: Design that eradicates bad moods will lay a strong foundation on which trust in others can build. Designing...
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