Environmental Psychology in Architecture.
We’re architects with a difference. We are deeply immersed in environmental psychology – and we uniquely understand how our physical environments make us tick.
How the built environment affects our mental health with Jan Golembiewski
On her podcast, “With, not For”, Manisha Amin speaks to Jan Golembiewski. Jan is a world leader in researching architectural design psychology, with a focus on the relationship between experiences and the neurological mechanisms that cause them.
December 6, 2021
Design makes a place a prison or a home. Turning ‘human-centred’ vision for aged care into reality
We’ve been weighing in heavily into how architecture should respond to the Australian Royal Commission to Aged Care Report (March, 2021)
https://architectureau.com/articles/design-makes-a-place-a-prison-or-a-home-turning-human-centred-vision-for-aged-care-into-reality/
Published on ArchitectureAU and The Conversation, March 2021
Good design improves mental health
Good design improves physical health
Good design enables creativity
Good design improves learning
Design can be used to subtly moderate behaviour
Psychologically speaking, our physical environment is like an extension of our brains – it leads us to certain actions, prevents us from others, it makes us feel things, changes our behaviour and even moderates health. In fact, as far as health is concerned, it’s our first layer of defence. But when the environment fails us, we suffer – it makes tasks difficult or dull or intimidating. And it puts pressure on us mentally and physically – so much so that our motivation and health can become casualties of poorly designed workplaces, homes and urban environments.
Little things that most architects know about help – views into nature are a well-cited example. They improve recovery times in hospitals by 10 or more percent, and interestingly a bit of greenery fundamentally improves outlook and behaviour. But it’s rarely possible to plant a forest outside our windows, so detailed design inside our buildings help also.
Psychological Design is geared to help our clients understand the nexus between health, behaviour and architecture. Good design choices have been found to reduce violence, absenteeism and improve social contact, creativity and even sales.
For hundreds of years, architects have made assertions about how their wonderful ideas will modify behaviour and otherwise benefit property owners, but Psychological Design is big on the detail and rigorous architectural science. In this website, we’ve included thousands of pages of peer-reviewed original research. No other architects anywhere have dived deeper into the science or have published nearly as much. So please come in and take a look around. We bring this to the world for free, so you too can benefit from our research, deep insight and approaches to architecture.
