Your body still reads every room the way it once read the open land.
The senses never stopped scanning for danger. Every sound, shadow, surface, scent and taste is information the body uses to decide whether it can rest. A space either helps answer that question or keeps it open.
Youreading the roomSoundLightTouchScentTaste
Designing for the human
Most spaces are designed around tasks, budgets and square footage. Holistic health design starts somewhere else: with the person inside the room, as a whole body and a whole nervous system, not a set of jobs to get done.
The whole personBody, senses, mood and memory, all at once. Not only the eyes, and never only the floor plan.
Every sense, togetherLight, sound, texture, scent and space reach you as one experience, so we design them as one.
Settling as the measureA space works when the body can stop scanning and settle. That is what we design toward.
The mismatch, to scale Each bar is the roughly 300,000 years our species has existed. The coloured end is how long we have lived with each change.
Farming and settled life12,000 years · 4%
Electric light145 years · 0.05%
Smartphones19 years · 0.006%
The last two are too thin to see at this scale. That is the point: our senses were tuned in a world without any of them.
The five senses
Explore the science of each sense.
Choose a sense to see what the body is still asking, what many spaces do now, and what design can do about it.
Sound
Hearing
What the body listens for
Ears never close, even in sleep. Sudden, unexplained or approaching sounds were once the first warning of danger.
What many spaces do now
Constant traffic, ventilation and crowd noise keeps the alarm half on. The WHO links long-term road noise above 53 decibels with harm to health, and advises under 45 at night.
Design that supports
Quiet refuges, soft absorbent surfaces, sound zoned by activity, and natural sound such as water to soften the hum.
Sources: WHO (2018) · Basner et al. (2014)
Light
Sight
What the body watches for
Daylight set the body clock. Darkness meant vulnerability. We feel safest where we can see out with something solid at our backs.
What many spaces do now
Dim days indoors and bright evenings on screens confuse the clock. Ordinary room light in the hours before bed can suppress melatonin and shorten its night.
Design that supports
Daylight and a view out, ideally of nature; warm, low light at night; open sightlines with protected seats.
Skin reads temperature, texture and pressure without pause. Slow, gentle touch is carried by its own nerve fibres, thought to support calm and social bonding.
What many spaces do now
Hard, cold, uniform surfaces, and an air temperature nobody in the room can change.
Design that supports
Natural, varied materials; something to lean against; warmth and airflow people can adjust themselves.
Sources: Löken et al. (2009)
Scent
Smell
What the body smells for
Smoke, rot and spoiled food were matters of life and death. Smell has an unusually direct line to the brain’s emotional and memory centres.
What many spaces do now
Stale, under-ventilated air and synthetic fragrance. In a controlled study, office workers scored higher on decision-making tests in better-ventilated, lower-pollutant air.
Design that supports
Fresh air first; low-emission materials; scent, if used at all, subtle and optional.
Sources: Allen et al. (2016)
Taste
Nourishment
What the body tastes for
Taste screened for poison and for energy: bitterness warned, sweetness promised fuel. Sharing food signalled that the group was safe.
What many spaces do now
Meals eaten alone, fast, at a screen, with water out of reach.
Design that supports
Water within reach; tables that invite shared, unhurried meals; food as part of the experience, not an afterthought.
Sources: Dunbar (2017)
Sources
Sources (21)
Allen, J. G., et al. (2016). Associations of cognitive function scores with carbon dioxide, ventilation, and volatile organic compound exposures in office workers. Environmental Health Perspectives, 124(6), 805–812.
Appleton, J. (1975). The Experience of Landscape. London: Wiley.
Basner, M., et al. (2014). Auditory and non-auditory effects of noise on health. The Lancet, 383(9925), 1325–1332.
Cannon, W. B. (1915). Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage. New York: D. Appleton.
Craig, A. D. (2002). How do you feel? Interoception: the sense of the physiological condition of the body. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 3(8), 655–666.
Dunbar, R. I. M. (2017). Breaking bread: the functions of social eating. Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology, 3(3), 198–211.
Glass, D. C., & Singer, J. E. (1972). Urban Stress: Experiments on Noise and Social Stressors. New York: Academic Press.
Gooley, J. J., et al. (2011). Exposure to room light before bedtime suppresses melatonin onset and shortens melatonin duration in humans. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 96(3), E463–E472.
Hippocrates (c. 400 BCE). Airs, Waters, and Places. Hippocratic Corpus.
International WELL Building Institute (2014). WELL Building Standard, version 1.
Kaplan, S. (1995). The restorative benefits of nature: toward an integrative framework. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 15(3), 169–182.
Klepeis, N. E., et al. (2001). The National Human Activity Pattern Survey (NHAPS). Journal of Exposure Analysis and Environmental Epidemiology, 11(3), 231–252.
LeDoux, J. E. (2000). Emotion circuits in the brain. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 23, 155–184.
Löken, L. S., et al. (2009). Coding of pleasant touch by unmyelinated afferents in humans. Nature Neuroscience, 12(5), 547–548.
McEwen, B. S. (1998). Protective and damaging effects of stress mediators. New England Journal of Medicine, 338(3), 171–179.
Nightingale, F. (1859). Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not. London: Harrison.
Selye, H. (1936). A syndrome produced by diverse nocuous agents. Nature, 138, 32.
Ulrich, R. S. (1984). View through a window may influence recovery from surgery. Science, 224(4647), 420–421.
Ulrich, R. S., et al. (1991). Stress recovery during exposure to natural and urban environments. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 11(3), 201–230.
Wilson, E. O. (1984). Biophilia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe (2018). Environmental Noise Guidelines for the European Region.
Plain-language summaries of published research, written for design. Not medical advice.
Dare to be more connected.
Book a conversation. Tell us about the space, the people in it and what you hope they feel, and we will come back to you with times.