Hotspots and Borders
Macro-scale zoning
Enhance Experience
Color and Personality
Signaling extraversion and openness to experience
Experiences in Tall Buildings (09-26-19)
What’s it like to live or work in a tall building, one with 30 or more floors? Ng reviewed “recent empirical studies on occupants’ perception of tall buildings, and physiological and psychological experiences in relation to its tallness. Occupants perceive better view, less noise, and better air quality as benefits for living and working on higher floors than on lower floors. However, occupants also expressed concerns about height, difficulty with vertical transportation, strong wind, and escape in case of fire.”
Workplace Personalization (09-25-19)
Research conducted by Felix and Cavazotte confirms that workplace personalization can have psychological benefits. The duo report that “Individuals are sometimes unable to realize their callings in their formal careers. . . . We developed a grounded theory regarding how people cope with their unanswered callings through . . . workplace personalization. Our study revealed that through this strategy, individuals retain the aspects of an unanswered calling in their self-concept and then reduce the consequences of not realizing the calling.
Body Perceptions Linked to Smells and Sounds (09-10-19)
Researchers from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, the University of Sussex, and University College London investigated how scents and sounds influence our perceptions of our bodies. The team found “that olfactory stimuli combined with auditory stimuli can change our perception of our body. . . . People feel thinner and lighter when exposed to the smell of lemon, while feeling heavier and more corpulent when they smell vanilla. . . . Through a device adapted to a pair of shoes . . . .
“Beautiful” Music (09-09-19)
Omigie and colleagues probed the implications of listening to “beautiful” music; their findings may be applicable to other sensory experiences. Via an online survey and lab-based research, during which physiological data were collected, the investigators assessed how “self-identified beautiful passages (BPs), in self-selected music, may be distinguishable in terms of their affective [emotional] qualities. . . . three BP subtypes that we labeled Low-Tension/Low-Energy (LTLE), Low-Tension/High-Energy (LTHE), and High-Tension/High-Energy (HTHE) BPs [were identified].
Moving into Activity-Based Workplaces (09-06-19)
Haapakangas and colleagues studied the experience of moving into an activity-based workplace (ABW). Over an extended period, at multiple offices, they evaluated via survey data “the effects of moving into an ABW on satisfaction with communication, on social relations (i.e., social support and social community) and on work demands (i.e., quantitative demands, emotional demands and work pace) 3 months and 12 months after the relocation. . . . Satisfaction with communication and the sense of belonging to a community had decreased 3 and 12 months after the relocation.
Public Space Soundscapes (08-12-19)
Bild and colleagues studied responses to soundscapes in public spaces. They determined via data collected in Amsterdam that “solitary and socially interactive respondents [people in the public spaces investigated] evaluate their soundscapes differently. . . . The sounds of people were considered as the main source of both disruption and stimulation for both groups; while conversations and the sounds of others in general were referred to as stimulating, loud conversations and children crying were disrupting.
Seat Selection (08-08-19)
Staats and Groot investigated where solo individuals choose to sit in a crowded café when there are already people sitting in some of the coffee house seats. The researchers report that “we manipulated two aspects of intimacy (eye contact and distance to others), and one aspect of privacy (architectural anchoring) in separate scenario’s and registered participants’ seat choice on floor plans of the three hypothetical cafés. We found that more often participants chose a seat that was at a larger distance to other café-goers. Study 2 . . . replicated the design of the first study. . . .
Healthcare at Home (07-25-19)
Melissa Piatkowski, Addie Abushousheh, and Ellen Taylor have written the whitepaper “Healthcare at Home,” which is available to all at the Center for Health Design website indicated below. This useful, comprehensive text is described on the noted website: “Within the past decade, advances in medical technology, changes in reimbursement structures, the desires and complex care needs of an aging population, and innovative care delivery models have initiated a shift from providing care in hospitals to outpatient settings.
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