How the built environment affects human health.
Architecture is not neutral. It heals or it harms.
The project begins as a photographic exhibition, but it is conceived as a long-term platform examining the relationship between architecture, urban development and human health.
Neuroscience and environmental psychology have documented this for decades. Daylight affects how we sleep and think. Impoverished environments affect our self-esteem. Disconnection from nature increases stress and reduces performance.
Yet cities keep growing denser. Higher buildings, smaller units, less daylight, more noise, fewer places to rest. The health consequences are built into our cities and they show up long after the decisions have been made.
What happens to people when cities are built without the human being at the centre?
This exhibition makes that visible. Not as data, but as something you feel when you stand in front of the photographs.
Not to decorate, but to confront.
Through a combination of documentary photography and more abstract, artistic imagery, the exhibition documents what happens between people and the spaces they inhabit. Short interviews, quotes and textual fragments accompany the images, grounding them in lived experience.
The exhibition functions as a visual confrontation. It makes visible how the ways we develop cities and territories directly affect human health, emotional states and everyday life. The first case study in a broader international initiative.
A cross-disciplinary team working across Norway, Germany and the Netherlands.
Former Norwegian Minister of Climate and Environment
Buildings designed for the planet are buildings designed for people.
Daylight saves energy and improves sleep. Natural ventilation reduces CO2 and lowers stress. Green facades cool the building and calm the mind.
Meeting climate goals and sustainability targets is no longer enough. We must include the impact of the built environment on human health as a non-negotiable condition for any new development.
The science behind this is extensive. See the evidence.