Enriched Environments
How can we create environmental, physical, mental, and sociological health where we live, play, work, learn and heal? How can the elements of our physical space encourage “activated optimal health”? Evidence shows that space is not neutral. Where we heal and work is effectively a prescription which can improve our health, or limit our ability to thrive.
Enriched Environments are the result of the combination of seven elements that act as architectural ‘super vitamins’. These elements stimulate and nourish our brains biological and chemical operating systems.
With the power to improve health – as measured though neurological, physiological, psychological and sociological feedback – they are central to our work in creating salutogenic spaces for healing, working, and knowledge-sharing, and growing.
Design and Total Health
Environmental and Physical Health
Over the last decade we have come to realize how design can impact total health. Environmental health encompasses our relationship with ecological systems. Physical health references design’s influence on bodily movement, this concept has been particularly relevant for adults working in hospital environments. With the realization of the connection between design and total health, we have subsequently found ways to measure said relationship.
Measurable Aspects of Design
The design community has responded by adopting a variety of rating systems, rules, checklists and standards. A few examples include, the LEED Building Certification, the Living Building Challenge: the Delos WELL Building Standard, and the Fitwel Rating System. These standards and systems focus on quantitative assessments of the physiological impacts of indoor or outdoor environmental aspects, and how qualities like air, water and light affect health and physical fitness.
But are there measurable and qualitative elements of design that affect psychological, physiological, and sociological health? Can design affect our ability to heal, learn, collaborate, and work together? Can we create a measurable dimension of comprehensibility, manageability and meaningfulness of our physical spaces, that encompasses stress reduction, peace of mind, and comfort? And, most importantly, can we create the “sense of purpose”, that is a predictor of strong health and wellness?
Neuroscience and Architecture
Mind Health
Emerging research in neuroscience on architecture indicates the answer is yes. Imagine the three legs of a stool that work together to form a seat, that seat is the host for total health. Environmental health and physical health make up two of the three legs. But this research reveals a third element that supports total health. The final leg of the “health stool” is Mind Health. This third element of total health is caused through place-making in the environments where we live, work, learn, heal and play.
Connecting the Dots Through Design
We can connect the dots between psychological cognitive and pre-cognitive reactions that have physiological responses. These responses fundamentally affect human performance through complex neurological procedures. We can create “enriched” environments that enhance human performance through specific spatial fundamentals, both cultural and causal, and thus support optimal health.
Architecture Is Like Food
In many ways, architecture is like food: it can enrich the mind, body and soul or it can starve them; it can encourage collaboration and engagement, or create a sense of disconnect, through the way we make and consume our nutrients. For many, the buildings we engage with are “empty calories”. They are sensory-deprived and mentally unfulfilling. Neuroscientists have confirmed that our built environments can alter and enhance our performance: they can either heighten, or suppress our emotions and behaviour.
Qualities of Enriched Environments
The qualities of enriched environments are non-cartesian, innate, distinctive. They create an architectural aura of place – Stimmung – activated by the cycle of action-perception-learning-memory-emotion-mood and offer two types of attributes: those associated with the emotional realm, and those related to the physical space. In addition to the functional purposes of a space, they define a set of feelings that the architecture can convey.
These qualities include:
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The notion of generosity in architecture is generally perceived to be synonymous with abundance. But it is more than an extension beyond requirements, it means doing more with less, it means economizing. We respond positively to surroundings that give us more than what is asked of them.
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Spaces with variety and vitality offer a range of experiences and a sense of discovery. They stimulate positive emotions and subconscious bodily feeling of seeking, curiosity, a sense of freshness, and energy that moves us into action through both motor and metaphoric affordances.
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Authentic environments exude a sense of reality and rootedness – we feel that time has passed there. The moment we enter a space we consciously and subconsciously experience its atmosphere and mood, just as when we meet someone new and intuit immediately whether they are genuine or not.
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Areas with hope radiate youthfulness, abundance, and life. They often project a sense of weightlessness, light, lightness, and flight that defies gravity and encourages upward gaze. Places that shape our embodied cognition invigorate us and make us feel more alive. They expand our horizons and allow us to contemplate new possibilities.
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Human perception is and always has been deeply influenced by nature and its cycles. The idea of paradise has deep roots in the ancient myths and traditions of many cultures as a symbol of fertility, abundance, harmony, spirituality, and an idealized representation of world and our place in it.
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Rapid, vigorous, deafening, attention-grabbing, entertaining, and psychologically all-consuming. With the shock, speed, spectacle and constant bombardment of culture expressed through social media, a lot of architecture is now designed to be an eye-catching novelty that competes for our attention. It sometimes seems we have forgotten the pleasure of silence.