Evolution and Biophilic Design
Humans are a young species and still working with the same sorts of mental apparatus and ways of processing incoming information from our physical world that we had in our first few generations as...
Green Plants and Biophilic Design
Plants are important in any biophilically designed place, but biophilic designing involves much more than just distributing a few plants around. But since plants have come up, let’s start with them. Seeing green leafy...
Colours and Biophilic Design
We have special relationships with some colours. Around the world, wherever you ask, people are more likely to tell you that the colour blue is their favourite colour than any other shade. Coincidentally, or...
Light, Sound and Movement
Flooding a space with natural light (minimizing glare with blinds as needed during certain times of the day, as needed) is biophilic design at its finest; it elevates our mood as well as our...
In conclusion – Biophilic Design in situ
Not surprisingly, research has shown that it’s best for our brains and our bodies if we layer multiple biophilic experiences together, so we’re hearing nature and seeing natural materials, and feeling the tickle of...
How to Design your Garden
There’s all sorts of science that can be applied to create a great garden—from studies of what sorts of fertilizer are best for dahlias when to how many hours of daylight petunias actually need...
Having a Positive, Productive Conversation
There are ways that design can make it more likely that you’ll have a constructive, mutually-beneficial conversation with someone else—whether you’re trying to negotiate world peace or help your teenager understand that they do...
Open the windows!
It’s open window time, pretty much worldwide! As long as you live in a place with clean air, there’s no time like the present to let some fresh air in. Lots of people like...
Keep those blinds open!
Satish, Joseph, and Nanavati, recapping the benefits of natural light, report that “Exposure to daylight, in particular, plays an outsized role in our overall well-being and mental health. Like almost all animals, humans have...
Odd Spaces can make Great Spaces!
If when you read “odd places” in the title of this article and thought, “at last, what I should do with that weird space under the stairs OR that 2 foot by 3 foot...
How to fix an Odd-space?
If your odd space is wrong-sized there are things you can do to alter how big or small it feels that don’t involve paint. A more brightly lit space seems larger than a less...
Nook spaces and visual complexity…
Your odd space may have spent part of its life as a nook and time as a nook can have a serious and powerfully negative effect on your future efforts to keep random stuff...
Scents and Sounds in your Odd Space
You’ll need to breathe when you’re in your odd space and in the oddest of the odd spaces, that can be a challenge. The best of the odd spaces have windows in them or...
Burnout – What You Can Do in Your Home Office
“Burnout” may be the word of the moment. Many of us seem to be feeling some sort of malaise, and “burnout” seems like an appropriate label for our mental (and sometimes physical) exhaustion, and...
Weather affects our opinion!
Reviews may not be as objective as they seem. Brandes and Dover researched how weather conditions influence user reviews; they report that their study “uses a unique dataset that combines 12 years of data on...
We chose Air Purifiers and think they make our rooms cooler…
Cooper and associates have learned that “One of the most widely available technologies to clean the air in homes of particulate matter of less than 2.5 µm in diameter (PM2.5), known to have negative health...
Pollution actually stops us from making green choices…
Ming, Deng, and Wu found that “People are less willing to engage in PEB [pro-environmental behaviours] (e.g., purchasing pro-environmental products, recycling, sustainable travel, donation to environmental organizations) when air pollution is severe. . ....
What does your home say about you?
At least according to the experts in these sorts of things, it seems most likely that people will form their most useful opinions of others when they actually have some idea who those other...
Starting Anew – Aargh! to Aahh!
People putting together plans for new homes pass through a set of predictable phases. The first is euphoria: “Wow, I’m going to have the opportunity to do something new, to create the sort of...
Did you know that your home design can help you eat healthily?
We are writing this as we enter a new year, but you might also be preparing to design a new home, a new space or getting ready to move completely. Well, we have some...
Creating places to mingle in your home
Places where people will have positive, pleasant conversations: Will allow everyone who wants to make eye contact at any time they feel like it. Parties require the sorts of everyone sits in a ring...
Post Pandemic Homes
Neuroscience is clear about the sorts of homes where people will live their best future lives, particularly if future pandemics arise. In these spaces: There will likely be a sort of transition zone as...
Encouraging Good Behaviour
Do you have a house of unruly inhabitants? Or work with a bunch of messy sausages? Well, here at The Space Doctors are here to help! Design can encourage people to behave in ways...
Time for the Familiar!
During the holidays, and actually throughout the year, familiar really can be best—we do like spaces to change or evolve slightly over time and even to vary slightly by time of day or season...
Open the windows!
Want to perform better? Joseph Allen, Director, Harvard’s Healthy Buildings program, details in a recent article in The Atlantic (free at the web address below) why ventilation, particularly in workplaces, is important: “My team...
Windowless dorms? Really?
Did you see all the discussions in the news about Charlie Munger’s windowless dorm? We speak elsewhere on The Space Doctors site about the basic human need for natural light (circadian rhythms, stress, mental refreshment,...
Greenspace is better for childhood development
New research from Jarvis and colleagues has been published. They looked at how living near greenspace impacted childhood development. It turns out, that it does 🙂 How did they do it? They report that...
Biophilic Design enhancing performance, and more.
From the previous post, another study by essentially the same group: Aristizabal and colleagues also report that they collected data in spaces “allowed individuals to perform their typical workday task for 10 weeks. ....
Awe is good for you…
Want more creativity in your life? Then add a bit of awe! Zhang and team found that “on days when participants [in their study] felt more daily awe than they typically do, they reported...
Let there be Light
As we move toward the solstice and beyond, if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, you’ll have fewer hours of day light every day and that means less natural light in your home. This...
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