EDITORS NOTE

E D I T O R S

N O T E

After a long and bleak winter, and frankly a long and bleak year, imagining bright mornings, fresh air and a change of scene feels almost impossible. This March, of course, marks the anniversary of the first coronavirus pandemic lockdown in the UK. The pandemic has created stresses of illness, isolation and financial insecurity for many; the lockdowns have limited our exposure to nature, reduced physical activity, and have increased our screen time (who would have thought that we would still be in Zoom meetings and virtual pub quizzes???). The pandemic has become a possible turning point in health and wellbeing. Now, more than ever, we must move beyond conversation and towards implementation that encourages both physical and mental health in as many ways as possible. As the lockdown briefings often place responsibility on individuals to look after themselves and their community, it is equally important to remember the huge external influences on humans, such as the built environment.

How much of our lives do we spend indoors? 80 per cent? 90? More? The design of the average building often leaves room for improvement. Emphasis is often placed on the time efficiency and profit of builds, as investing in real estate, land, and technology is sometimes considered over the actual purpose of buildings: to live, work, learn, or recover. Avoiding health and safety risks comes as a given, but a healthy environment is one in which there is not only an absence of harmful conditions but an abundance of health-promoting ones.

The World Health Organization now defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing”, rather than purely an absence of disease. In the context of an ageing population, increasing obesity and rising mental health problems, a more holistic approach (where health is interdependent with wellbeing) is a necessary means of longterm prevention. In turn, productivity can be increased in schools and offices, whilst the length of hospital stays can be reduced. With collaboration between the disciplines and industries of construction, architecture and urban planning, this magazine can almost serve as a design toolkit that can produce successful projects across a range of sectors (residential, commercial, healthcare, etc.) to encourage the health and wellbeing of building users. This magazine aims to encourage readers to change their mindset around health and wellbeing by providing an insight into the biology behind the impact of building design on humans.

Check out the glossary at the back for terms highlighted in bold!

Below: sketch of the

Psychiatric Center Caritas project, Belgium

A BRIEF HISTORY

Top: St. John’s tuberculosis sanitarium, early 20th century Bottom: an ancient healing sanctuary in Epidaurus

Pandemics have shaped cities around the world over the centuries, and Covid-19 will be no exception. White walls and smooth surfaces that characterise the modern architectural movement were born out of the design for sanitariums that treated tuberculosis (TB) patients, as the medical profession blamed the rise of TB on the dark and dusty interiors of the 19th century. The legacy of Covid-19 has already shifted focus onto health, hygiene, safety and onto our relationship with nature.

Looking back through history, we can see that we are, in fact, returning to ancient principles of design for health and wellbeing. In Ancient Greece, Epidaurus was a landscape of wellbeing as it embraced temples, clinics, houses for sleeping and dream cures, as well as an athlete’s stadium and a theatre for cultural, spiritual and physical relief. Stunning views out to sea were as important to healing as surgical procedures. Vitruvius, a Roman architect, wrote about the importance of light, the winds and the water and how a house should not be imposed on a landscape but work within it. Further still, Hindu traditions of vastu shastraand Chinese feng shui just show how many cultures valued health and wellbeing in the built environment. With the medicalisation and institutionalisation of life, birth, death, and even the domestic, the idea of architecture for health was removed from mainstream construction. In response to slums, denser cities, confinement and ‘miasma’ (bad air), modern sterile environments became the norm.

Nowadays, architecture attempts to deinstitutionalise space, where distinctions between spaces collapse. At the extremes, offices start looking like industrial lofts or nurseries, whilst homes look more and more like hotels. However, with global health issues and problems of climate change, interiors become an important retreat, that go beyond serving as mere shelter.

THE SCIENCE OF WELLBEING

The notion of wellbeing consists of two key elements: feeling good and functioning well. The science of wellbeing in the built environment is a relatively recent area of inquiry that is, nevertheless, beginning to reveal consistent and widely accepted findings.

Whether you’ve seen it on the app store or on television, “wellbeing” is cropping up everywhere and becoming a popular buzzword, alongside trends of “selfcare”. The term can often be associated with middle-class health endeavours and conjure up images of crystals and meditation. However, the pursuit of health and wellbeing is firmly rooted in science and is absolutely not limited to the middle-class.

Wellbeing can be difficult to quantify, making it hard to prove that buildings can have a positive impact on human life. However, as scientific research shifts towards an approach of both quantitative and qualitative (listening to experiences and feedback) methods, wellbeing within buildings has been shown as a critical element to health (especially for those in poorer areas).

Whilst we are all different, buildings can universally affect how we feel and act in a space and can even be personalised to meet the variety of preferences and needs of different users. Designs should ‘nudge’ users into positive behaviours. With an overall theme of bringing the natural outside world in (to stimulate the senses), health and wellbeing can be encouraged in buildings through interior design, the use of light, and by making physical activity easier.

“Whether people are healthy or not, is determined by their circumstances and environment. To a large extent, factors such as where we live, the state of our environment, genetics, our income and education level, and our relationships with friends and family all have considerable impacts on health” -World Health Organization: The determinants of health