Tower 25. Atelier Jean Nouvel.
Except for a few inhospitable geographical typologies—deserts, ice sheets, and volcanic islands, for example—the built environment is omnipresent. From the smallest hamlet to the biggest city, architecture dominates the landscape. In turn, these structures have a profound, if underappreciated, impact on the physical and psychological well-being of the people interacting with them.
Ever since the late 1960s, when the environmental psychology movement began gathering steam, the effect of our surroundings has become a subject of research and theorizing. In the mid-1980s, the concept of sick building syndrome underscored the negative impact a poorly planned building could have on its occupants. (As far back as 1969, Robert Sommer published Personal Space: The Behavioral Basis of Design, which detailed how architecture shaped interaction.) Today, after decades of technological progress, architecture, and health intersect in ways that once would have been unthinkable.
A few years ago, Dr. Sergio Altomonte, Professor of Architectural Physics at UC Louvain in Belgium, underscored this new paradigm: “Buildings and urban spaces should be designed first and foremost around their occupants. The importance of architecture as a trigger to physical, physiological, and psychological well-being is nowadays becoming a topic of significant relevance.”
Since then, architecture and well-being have increasingly dovetailed, both in the construction industry and in the collective psyche of the public.
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health on its website as follows: “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” In that sense, many indoor environments are antithetical to maintaining health: the headaches, fatigue, and runny noses so common to the everyday workplace, for example, are possible signs that poor design is responsible for the low-grade ailments often found in shared spaces.
In the post-Covid age, perhaps no other aspect of the built environment has attracted as much attention as indoor air quality. Similarly, after the smoke storms that enshrouded much of the East Coast last summer, articles and features on the importance of clean air inundated local media outlets. But the everyday stale and stuffy air found in most underventilated buildings can also have a negative effect on you.
And indoor air quality is just one element of the built environment that affects us. Whether or not we are readily cognizant of the fact, our surroundings play an important role in how we feel on a day-to-day basis. Although it may be subtle or even subconscious, we react to the permanent stimuli we see in various ways—physically and psychologically. We know that some colors, for example, can have a soothing effect on occupants while other colors can boost creativity.
Another element that affects people is lighting, which has proven beneficial to patients in hospitals and, especially, to children in schools. Exposure to natural light in classrooms can enhance cognitive ability, allowing students to concentrate longer and retain information better. In the workplace, where employees can spend more than forty hours a week, lighting design has become a common way to mitigate fatigue and improve mood. Using circadian-attuned technology to mimic the natural processes of the body clock can be beneficial for everything from depression to high blood pressure.
Of course, the simplest way to ensure a certain amount of comfort in a work environment is by adopting layouts that encourage concentration and flow and reduce stress and discomfort. Open-plan offices, which are nearly ubiquitous, not only discourage collaboration among colleagues but, as spaces with poor air ventilation, they may also make their occupants ill by spreading pathogens.
One of the most overlooked factors for improving well-being is noise reduction, which can cause troubles beyond headaches and insomnia. For example, excessive noise in a restaurant can actually affect the way your food tastes. By introducing acoustic design into an environment, occupants become much more comfortable.
Over the last decade or so, architects have begun experimenting with biophilic design, incorporating flora and natural elements into their schemes. Adding plants to offices, for example, can brighten moods. At the same time, an office window that provides a view of green space can also be helpful. Similarly, avoiding straight lines and sharp angles in favor of curvilinear shapes often found in the natural world (and which are often seen in art nouveau design as reflected in this quote from Antonio Gaudi: “There are no straight lines or sharp corners in nature. Therefore, buildings must have no straight lines or sharp corners.”) bring a sense of serenity to an office.
Amazon in the Regrade. NBBJ.
Designing with well-being in mind is a key component of progressive architecture. Although Passive House design is associated with sustainability and energy efficiency, there are also health benefits. Because of their emphasis on air-tightness, passive houses reduce noise and lessen air pollutants, both important to physical and psychological well-being. But it is high-performance architecture that stands out as the benchmark for health. Combining air-tightness, indoor air quality, acoustic design, and natural light, high-performance buildings have a marked impact on the everyday life of their occupants.
While enriching or improving the physical environment is not a panacea, it is an important step to offsetting stress, reducing illness, and improving productivity. In other words, designing for well-being means keeping the human factor in mind at all times.