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. . ....
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),...
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...
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...
Get Your Kids to Wild Nature
Weiss, Kahn, and Lam found that “Interaction with nature is vital for children’s physical and psychological development. . . . [we] tested our hypothesis that relatively wild areas of this environment would be positively...
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...
Go for a Winter Walk!
Researchers determined that “spending time in snowy surroundings can improve how you feel about your body. . . . Before and after walking in a snowy woodland in the Silesia region of Poland [people...
Why do we love the sea, lakes and rivers?
In “The Surprising Benefits of Blue Spaces” Frankie Adkins and Katherine Latham (https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20221108-the-doctors-prescribing-blue-therapy) talk about the benefits of time on the ocean and in blue spaces: “When Homo sapiens first evolved some 300,00 years...
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...
Nature Urban Strolls
Sudimac, Sale, and Kuhn share that they “conducted an intervention study to investigate changes in stress-related brain regions as an effect of a one-hour walk in an urban (busy street) vs. natural environment (forest)....
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...
Robert Downey Junior’s home
Here in The Space Doctors’ newsletter we often talk about how seeing curves (in 2-dimensions in patterns in wallpapers and upholstery and 3-dimensions in the gently rolled arms of a sofa or walls of...
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...
Art and Real-life
Stone-Ferrier studied paintings depicting 17th-century Dutch neighborhoods and her findings highlight the cultural information that art can convey. A press release related to Stone-Ferrier’s work reports that “The importance of knowing what’s going on...
Water experiences as a child – lifelong implications
Vitale and colleagues report that via “data from an 18-country sample (N = 15,743) the current work extended previous research by examining: a) blue spaces (coasts, rivers, lakes, etc.) in particular; b) associations between adults’ recalled...
Measuring Cognability
A research team based at the University of Michigan is making available, without charge, an easy-to-use tool that can be used to determine how well a particular area supports the cognitive health of aging...
Garden Rooms
Margaret Roach reports on “garden rooms” (“The Art of Making Garden Rooms,” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/10/realestate/the-art-of-making-garden-rooms.html) in The New York Times. She focuses on the development of the Sakonnet Garden, “a private landscape in coastal Rhode Island”...
Ah the Trees of Paris…
Trees matter, a lot. Looking at them helps us revitalise our tired brains and they help keep temperatures, and stress levels in check just for starters. Writing about trees in Paris, Vivian Song (“Admiring...
Natural environments and positive effects
Koivisto and colleagues share that “Exposure to natural environments has positive psychological effects. These effects have been explained from an evolutionary perspective, emphasizing humans’ innate preference for natural stimuli. . . . The source...
Reduce stress – exercise outdoors!
Das and Gailey studied the implications of exercising in green spaces during the pandemic. They report that “Previous cross-sectional literature reports protective effects of outdoor exposure on mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. We...
Views outside help prevent us from getting lost…
New research confirms that being able to see outside as we travel through a building helps us keep from getting lost. Qi, Lu, and Chen report that “General hospitals in China always present significant...
Gardening is good for you – more evidence!
Researchers determined, via a study published in PLoS ONE, that “many people may indeed reap mental health benefits from working with plants — even if they’ve never gardened before. . . . gardening activities...
Why do we love the smell after it has rained?
Nabhan, Daugherty, and Hartung report that “Desert dwellers know it well: the smell of rain and the feeling of euphoria that comes when a storm washes over the parched earth. That feeling, and the...
What design features encourage active play?
Hunter and colleagues had this goal: “To identify features parents perceived as being relevant for their child’s active play, their own active recreation, and their coactivity. Parents . . . with preschoolers . ....
What to Take on a Trip Anywhere
It’s nice to feel at home even when you aren’t-but unless your luggage is much, much larger than the suitcase I travel with, you can’t take much of your home with you when you...
Effort and Reward
Liu and colleagues’ conclusions are likely applicable more broadly than the tested condition. They found that “participants wearing a heavy backpack gave higher esthetic scores to and generate a strong attentional bias toward the...
Does how fast we walk impact how we perceive space?
Jia and colleagues studied when people feel crowded. They determined “that walking velocity depicts pedestrian perceived congestion more accurately than density. . . . the larger the gap between the desired and actual velocities,...
Get your children playing outside!
A research team at University of Exeter has identified some cognitive benefits of playing outdoors. They report, in a study published in Child Psychiatry and Human Development, that “children who spend more time playing...
Does living in a green space help us live longer?
Brochu and collaborators link how green an area is and the death rates of residents. They “conducted a nationwide [in the United States] quantitative health impact assessment to estimate the predicted reduction in mortality...
Living Near Green Space and Brain Performance
Jimenez and colleagues link exposure to green space and higher levels of cognitive functioning. They share that that by studying data from 13,594 women (mean age 61), they determined that “increasing green space was...
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