Building connections to Artwork
Carbon reports that “When we attend sculptures in museums, they might fascinate us due to the mastery of the material, the inherent dynamics of body language or due to contrapposto or the sheer size...
Health Implications: Light at Night
New research confirms that experiencing higher levels of light at night may not be healthy for people, particularly pregnant ones. A study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology Maternal Fetal Medicinereports...
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...
Virtual Reality Forest Bathing
Frigione and colleagues report that their “study investigates the effects of natural and indoor virtual environments (VREs) on psychophysiological and cognitive responses. . . . participants were exposed to two VREs (i.e., a forest...
Locate Schools Near Greenspaces for Best Effects
Rahal, Wells, and Evan “examined the [relationship between] school greenspace . . . and a standard literacy enrichment program . . . over a one-year period for a large sample of ethnic minority (95%)...
Trees make for Safer Streets
Zhu, Sze, and Newnam report that a “street tree is considered a traffic calming measure.” Findings from the Zhu, Sze, and Newnam study “indicate that road width, bus stop, tram station, on-street parking, and...
Confirming the Benefits of living near Green Spaces and Water
Vegaraju and Amiri found that “Living closer to outdoor spaces and water sources may reduce older people’s risk of having serious psychological distress, which can lead to mild cognitive impairment and dementia. . ....
Asleep at your Desk?
Goel and colleagues report that “Data from 225 office workers were collected for perceived fatigue, perceived sleep quality (Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index [PSQI]), physiological stress response (standard deviation of heart rate variability [HRV]), and...
Does where we live change our values?
Chishima and colleagues report that “person-environment fit between individual values (traditional vs. modern) and environmental characteristics (rural vs. urbanizing communities) promotes place attachment and participation. . . . we qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed one...
Walkable Neighbourhoods and health
Wang, Narcisse, and McElfish share that “Data from the 2020 National Health Interview Survey were analyzed. . . . Compared with those in low-walkability neighborhoods, participants in high-walkability neighborhoods had increased odds of sufficient...
Sights and Sounds Interrelated!
Isaacson and team fount that when study participants “asked to choose one of three realistic or abstract paintings, evaluate their perceptual characteristics on five semantic differential rating scales and answer three questions. The participants...
Potential Visual Clutter Epidemic
Apparently, wallpaper is making a comeback and it’s becoming popular to put it everywhere, even on the ceiling (Lia Picard; February 2, 2023; The New York Times, “Wallpaper Everywhere All at Once;” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/02/style/ceiling-wallpaper.html). Do...
Separate Bedrooms it is!
February 10, not coincidently, probably, just before Valentine’s Day, Ronda Kaysen writes, in The New York Times, about people who live together, who love each other, who choose to sleep in separate bedrooms (“I...
Design affects kids too…
On January 31, in an article for The New York Times, Tim McKeough writes about designing spaces for children, that are, miraculously, developed keeping kids’ needs in mind (“How to Create a Playroom that...
More on Nature Benefits!
Phillips and colleagues report on experiences during the COVID pandemic: “we examine which types of nature engagement (i.e. with nearby nature, through nature excursions and media-based) are more strongly associated with well-being. . ....
Mental Repercussions of Dirty Air…
A Gawryluk-lead team “performed the first controlled human exposure study using functional MRI with an efficient order-randomized double-blind crossover study of diesel exhaust (DE) and control (filtered air; FA) in 25 healthy adults. . ....
Green Spaces and Medicine
Turunen and colleagues link green and blue spaces and quality-of-life: “associations of the amounts of residential green and blue spaces within 1 km radius around the respondent’s home (based on the Urban Atlas 2012),...
More on At-Home Distractions…
Bergefurt and colleagues determined that “Previous research showed that office workers are mainly distracted by noise, influencing their mental health. . . . at home, employees were distracted by noise and when having a...
Uncertainty makes us want to Savour Experiences more…
Gregory and colleagues report that “Savoring—an emotion-regulation strategy that involves deliberately upregulating positive affect—has many benefits, but what enhances savoring in the present moment? Drawing from life-history theory, affective and developmental science, and social-psychological...
Planning Storage into New-Builds
Marco found that “The stuff that inhabitants own is largely overlooked in current debates on housing policy and design. Yet, householders can have their quality of life, well-being, and happiness negatively affected by the...
Get Outdoors after Work!
Klotz and colleagues studied how employees experiencing outdoor nature after spending a day at work indoors affected their lives. The scientists determined that “Our results, based on three studies employing different methodologies (i.e., an...
Does taking photos ruin your memory?
Soares and Storm report that “The photo-taking-impairment effect is observed when photographed information is less likely to be remembered than non-photographed information. Three experiments examined whether this effect persists when multiple photos are taken....
Packaging Colour and Taste!
Wang and Chang report that their “study takes popcorn packaging as an example to explore the impact of packaging colour on consumers’ taste perception and preference evaluation. . . . Four experimental package design...
The Smell of Lockdown…
Allen probed experiences in New Zealand during COVID-19-related lockdowns and found that “changes in suburban smells signal disruption to daily life as a result of the government’s social and economic pandemic-response measures. For instance,...
The Hotter is gets, the Stuffier it feels…
Zhang and colleagues found that “Perceived air quality was reduced significantly as indoor temperature increased. . . . Higher outdoor air supply rate is recommended when indoor temperature rises. . . . The subjective...
Playing to boost Creativity
Mercier and Lubart share that “Games are powerful educational tools, and several early studies have shown the potential of video games and role-playing games to improve creativity. . . . the first study [Marcier...
Why you should Garden!
Research on the benefits of gardening continues to accumulate. Scientists at the University of Colourado Boulder report that “the first-ever, randomized, controlled trial of community gardening found that those who started gardening ate more...
Dressing for Work
Kim, Holtz, and Vogel report that “the results of a 10-day field study of employees from four organizations generally supported our predictions, showing that daily clothing aesthetics and uniqueness had effects on state self-esteem...
Historical Origins of the De-Cluttered Home
As those of us to whom Santa was generous this holiday season start to think seriously about where they’re going to put our gift haul, de-cluttering is getting a lot of attention, again. In...
Free Zones – in Praise of Basements!
Spaces where we can relax as we explore our own minds and work toward goals that are important to us are vital for our mental health. In “In Praise of Unfinished Basements,” Brady Brickner-Wood...
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