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...
Recycling for the Planet and our Minds
In “The Most Ingenious Recycled Homes,” Clare Dowdy (2023, https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20230302-the-most-ingenious-recycled-homes) makes the point that recycling is not only good for the planet but can also give us a psychological boost because it makes us...
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...
More Benefits of Feeling Awed
We can be awed by design in a variety of ways, for example, via exquisite workmanship or use of unique or special materials. Prade and Saraglou share that “Given that awe experiences promote collective...
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...
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...
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...
Cities and Pets
Pets living in cities lead very different lives than their country cousins. In this era, city dogs are likely to have some access to nearby green areas, but that’s not necessarily the case. City...
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...
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...
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...
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