What we See and Touch
It probably won’t surprise you at all to know that touching soft things, such like the flannels that baby pyjamas are made of, is relaxing. If you want to banish the stress demons, make...
Clear that Clutter once and for all!
Visual clutter, known in the psych trade as visual complexity, is a sure-fire way to work your internal stress meter up to dangerous levels.If getting rid of clutter was straightforward, however, you would already...
How to REALLY relax in a Space?
To really relax in a space, people need to feel in control of it, that no one can intrude visually or acoustically without their permission—in other words, no one can see or hear them...
Theatre for 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...
More Walkable, Lower Healthcare Costs
New research confirms that walkability is good for us. Wali and colleagues examined “high resolution data for 476 participants in the Rails and Health study on health care costs, mode specific MVPA[ moderate-to-vigorous physical...
Things to note as you travel
Some things to note as you begin to travel far from home again: Climate varies dramatically based on distance from the equator and leads people to want to use spaces in different ways.For example,...
Where we grew up affects whether we get lost or not…
Ever wondered why some people you know always seem lost? Coutrot and colleagues report that “how the environment in which one grew up affects later cognitive abilities remains poorly understood. Here we used a...
It makes sense, so I see it better!
Rossel and teammates report that “Our study investigated the influence of expectations based on prior experience and contextual information on the perceived sharpness of objects and scenes… We manipulated the availability of relevant information...
Windowless Dorms
We wrote before about the windowless dorm being built for students, and the negative impact it could have on them. Recent articles which report on the experiences of living in a windowless dormitory room...
Healthcare Costs Near Green Spaces
Van Den Eeden and teammates report that they “sought to determine if residential green cover was also associated with direct healthcare costs. We linked residential Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) satellite data for 5,189,303...
Curvy Lines and Balloons
Curvy Space The new American Museum of Natural History takes the use of curving lines to an extreme. How do you think it would feel to be in this space? Images of the museum: ...
How to build a communal space
Communal Living, Lessons Learned THE OPEN WORKSHOP developed the House of Commons exhibit “presenting over thirty-five case studies of past and present collective housing projects primarily in San Francisco and the Bay Area. In...
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...
De-clutter and then move those plants in…
If you live in a place with bad natural light, if you always forget to water (if this is you, please don’t ever bring home a kitty, puppy, or baby), or if things just...
Why we need Natural Materials
In biophilically designed spaces there are plenty of natural materials, slate and stone on floors, for example, and wood with visible grain on floors, walls, table tops, wherever it might be. Using wood with...
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...
The Science of Plazas, for Patios
What have neuroscientists learned about plaza design that you can apply in your patio: Design for what you actually want to happen on that patio.If you enjoy barbequing, not compromise on space for the...
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...
Health and Neighbourhood Walkability
Howell and Booth tie neighborhood walkability and the presence of outdoor amenities to better health and fewer cases of diabetes among residents. They share that “researchers and policymakers alike have been searching for effective...
Looking at the Desert
Yin, Bratman, Browning, Spengler, and Olvera-Alvarez evaluated how seeing the desert scenes through a window affects stress levels. The Yin-lead team reports that they studied “the effect of a virtual reality (VR) exposure to...
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...
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...
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...
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