Architecture is never neutral.
The built environment affects human health, cognition and behaviour. Here we publish a selection of findings from published research, each with its source.
Loneliness
Neighbourhoods, homes and isolation
The public space people stay in5 studies~100%5 studies on outdoor space and who stays in it, the oldest of them a count of 262 children at play in 1998.Green space and loneliness4 studies29.4%4 studies with loneliness itself as the outcome. The largest followed 3,043 Australians for 16 months, and time in nature predicted relief only among those already lonely.Loneliness measured where people live5 studies27.44%5 studies that put loneliness next to the home itself, and one of them found the environment explains transient loneliness and not chronic loneliness.
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How crowded a place feels5 studies3.7–18.3%In two Johannesburg neighbourhoods 57.6% of dwellings were overcrowded in 2006, and the same share in 2016.Feeling safe enough to go out5 studies50% vs 17%5 studies on what makes a street feel safe, including one in which giving an alley a function beat planting it.Attachment to a place5 studies60%5 studies on what makes people feel they belong where they live. The largest has 35,005 respondents and reports no single figure.Growing old in the neighbourhood5 studies21%5 studies on ageing in place, running from a cohort of 3,171 in Yokohama down to eleven people walking two routes.Working from home during the pandemic4 studies56%19 survey rounds, 41,147 Dutch workers, and home workers 56% higher on social isolation than people working at a location.Living alone7 studies69,1367 studies on the household of one, including one in which every environmental risk to falling was significant for people living alone and for nobody else.Habits
Everyday routines and health
Sit-stand desks and prompts6 studies82 minA Cochrane review of 34 trials puts sit-stand desks at 100 minutes less sitting a workday, and rates its own evidence low quality.Steps in a working day5 studies1,029.99614 German desk workers walk for 12.9% of their working hours and would like to walk for 22.8.Taking the stairs5 studies52%50 sign-at-the-stairs studies since 1980 move stair use by a median 2.2 percentage points, from a base of 8.1%.
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Intelligible speech and concentration5 studies21.9%Moving from the noisy zone of an office into an individual room raised concentration-task scores by 21.9%. 2 of the studies here found no effect of office noise on performance at all.Temperature, air and performance6 studies35 studiesAcross 35 studies, Jose Ali Porras-Salazar could find no relationship between air temperature and office work anywhere between 18 and 34 °C.When mistakes happen5 studies26.3%Every 10 micrograms per cubic metre of fine particulate in a tournament hall raises the chance of a bad chess move by 26.3%, across 30,000 moves scored by an engine.Sick days and leaving early5 studies6,779Open-plan office workers in Norway retired on disability at 1.95 times the rate of people in cellular offices. In one Platinum-certified building, sick leave did not fall at all.Working near each other5 studiesabout 70%2 headquarters took the walls out to get people talking, and face-to-face contact fell by about 70%.Moving into an activity-based office6 studies36.4%7 months after a move into an office designed for standing, 36.4% of the staff were still using the height adjustment on their desks.Taking a break5 studies10 min10 minutes of sitting or walking somewhere green was enough to move the measures in fourteen studies, and thirteen of the fourteen used college students.Deciding in bad air5 studies1,000 ppm22 people made worse decisions at 1,000 ppm of carbon dioxide. 15 people showed nothing at all below 5,000.Empty Spaces
Vacant and unused space
How full an office is5 studies20%The 42% utilisation figure comes from Strategy Plus, a consulting and design firm, by way of the introduction to a systematic review. No study in this literature measured it.Open plan and cellular offices5 studies−0.86Across 42,764 responses from 303 office buildings, open-plan occupants gain 0.21 units of workspace satisfaction from easier interaction and lose 1.07 to acoustics and privacy.Openness and the view out5 studies6%A window view instead of closed blinds improved short-term working memory by 6% in a real room. In a virtual copy of the same room the improvement was the same size and did not reach significance.
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How closed a room is5 studies47%Visual privacy was the worst-rated feature of three activity-based offices, at 47% satisfied, below storage and below acoustic privacy.Ceiling height5 studies64%Low ceilings took 48% of the ratings. Tural tracked eye movements and found the ceiling changed where people looked but not how spacious the room felt.The shape of a room5 studies30.60 vs 23.9435 people felt better in a curved virtual room than a rectangular one. Tawil rebuilt the test with 42 people and better-matched rooms, and of 33 measures only two differed, both favouring the angular room.Finding your way through a building5 studies153.82 sWith a floor plan that was hard to read, people took 153.82 seconds to reach the nearer staircase, longer than others took to reach the farther one from a plan they could read.How private a workplace feels5 studies95%Of 175 employees in seventeen open-plan banks, 95% were annoyed by the background noise, and the speech in the room was more intelligible than the standard calls satisfactory.Culture
Privacy, control and satisfaction at work
Moving from a cell into open plan5 studies2×31 people moved out of private rooms into an open-plan office and their self-rated loss of performance to noise doubled.How far speech reaches5 studies15 m → 7 mA masking sound of 44 dBA cut the radius over which speech distracts from 15 metres to 7, in a department of fifteen people.Measuring speech privacy5 studies25%Across 28 offices and 349 people, having nowhere to speak unheard predicted acoustic dissatisfaction 25% more strongly than the noise itself did.
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Which place supports the work5 studies57,286Across 57,286 employees surveyed between March 2020 and May 2021, support for concentrated work and support for collaborative work both related to perceived productivity, at home and at the office alike.What pushes people out of the office5 studies923In four Finnish workplaces, too few quiet workspaces, too little collaboration space and too little storage all pushed people towards home. Wellbeing and work ability predicted nothing.Satisfaction in the office5 studies81%81% of occupants of over 600 office buildings were dissatisfied with at least one thing, and acoustics led the list.Air, noise and a day's output5 studies23%Of 7,441 workers in 167 modern European office buildings, 23% rated their overall comfort below four out of seven, and noise was the commonest reason.Personal control over the workspace5 studies26 °CWith a fan they could control, 56 people in Singapore were as comfortable at 26 and 29 °C as at the usual set point of 23.Being visible to other people5 studies58%The average desk in one headquarters had 66 other desks in its line of sight. Half a standard deviation more cut the odds of a good rating for working productively by 58%.Ventilation and sick days5 studies4,407Insulating 1,350 New Zealand houses raised bedroom temperatures by half a degree in winter, and adults in them took fewer days off work at an odds ratio of 0.62.Green
Nature in the built environment
The view from the window5 studies3×5 studies on what a window shows, from 15 windows rated inside one building to a climate chamber held at 28 degrees.Greenery in the room6 studies6.5 mmHg6 studies on plants indoors, from 24 men repotting a Peperomia to two call centres where the effect did not appear.Nature where there is no window6 studies22.2%6 studies on rooms with no window, from 195 pictures counted on office walls in 1986 to virtual reality at the South Pole.
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Wood in the room5 studies5–16 s5 studies on timber and other natural materials indoors, three of which ask people to rate their own productivity.Nature sound in the office4 studies86%4 studies on birdsong and running water at work, all four run in a booth or in virtual reality.Getting outside during the working day6 studies15.68%6 studies on nature at work, one of them with 9,386 people and the rest with between 8 and 94.Water in the built environment5 studies2.5×5 studies on water indoors and out, from 60 colour slides in 1981 to 7,975 smartphone assessments in 2022.Green walls and living facades5 studies1/35 studies on plants built into the fabric of a building, four of which measure the building rather than the person.Green around the workplace5 studies14.6 vs 13.5 min5 studies on the greenery outside the door, from a meta-analysis of city-scale data down to 25 people on a cycling test.How much nature is enough4 studies25%4 studies on the dose, and each of the four measures it in a different unit.Daylight at work7 studies5–6%7 studies on the light itself rather than the view, one of them measuring what 170 indoor workers get in winter.Trees where people live1 study52%1 study on the vegetation around 98 apartment buildings in inner-city Chicago and the crimes reported there.Diversity
Individual responses to space
Men and women in the same room5 studies−0.61 vs 0.23Men in one office were most productive at a thermal sensation of −0.61, on the cool side of neutral. Women in the same office were most productive at +0.23.Sensitivity to noise and light5 studies25%A quarter of 1,934 people working from home named the noise other people make as their main disturbance. 57% described themselves as sensitive to noise.Autistic people and the buildings they use6 studies−1.71 vs −0.85Under the same cold condition, autistic participants rated the room at −1.71 on the thermal sensation scale and the control group at −0.85. Under the warm one it was 1.53 against 0.90.
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Older people and the same building6 studies30%Under identical acoustic conditions, older listeners scored 30% lower on Chinese speech intelligibility than younger ones.The same room in different countries5 studies21.2–24.8 °C80% of people in European classrooms were comfortable between 21.2 and 24.8 °C. In Darjeeling the same share was comfortable between 16.0 and 21.6.Personality and the room5 studies−13%Every 5 °C of maximum temperature cut the probability of a bad mood for the whole day by 7% overall and by 13% among people scoring high on neuroticism. Among people with schizophrenia it went the other way.The nervous system
How the body responds to a room
Light, sound, air and surfaces act on the nervous system. It puts the body on guard or lets it settle, and heart rate and blood pressure change with it.
Survival state
Sympathetic activation
Fear, anxiety, overwhelm.
In the body
- Heart rate1up
- Blood pressure1up
- Cardiovascular strain2up
- Immune function3down
- Memory and attention4,5down
In the room
- DaylightNone, or glare
- SoundNoise, no acoustic control
- AirPoor air, thermal stress
- MaterialsHard, cold, artificial
- FormRepetitive high contrast
- SpaceCrowding, nowhere to rest
- NatureNone in sight
Recovery state
Parasympathetic activation
Calm, clarity, energy.
In the body
- Heart rate1down
- Blood pressure1down
- Cardiovascular strain2down
- Immune function3up
- Memory and attention4,5up
In the room
- DaylightDaylight and a view out
- SoundAcoustic balance
- AirFresh air, thermal comfort
- MaterialsNatural materials, texture
- FormHuman scale and proportion
- SpacePlaces to rest and move
- NaturePlanting, and a view of it
Both states are active at the same time, and the balance between them shifts.
- Ulrich et al., 1991, Journal of Environmental Psychology, 10.1016/S0272-4944(05)80184-7
- Münzel et al., 2014, European Heart Journal, 10.1093/eurheartj/ehu030
- Segerstrom & Miller, 2004, Psychological Bulletin, 10.1037/0033-2909.130.4.601
- Arnsten, 2009, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10.1038/nrn2648
- Thayer et al., 2012, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2011.11.009