Could beautiful spaces actually make us healthier?

2019-07-02 10:02 Blog

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If you need to choose your workplace in the office environment, we would guess that the many of us would pick a spot close to a window. Probably because when the soft beam of sunlight reaches us, it make us feel good. It affects the human senses. We are made to love the natural light and the beautiful spaces it creates.

Beauty is something subjective and something said to be in the eye of the beholder. But there are definitions of what beauty is in the context of design. Jay Dee Dearness, artist and designer, with an Phd focused on the intersection of beauty and design, says in an interview to International Well Building Institute “Beauty is not aesthetics alone, beauty is the melding of functionality and aesthetics in just the right proportions to achieve the desired result.” The Well Building Standard™, (WELL™), has beauty and design feature as a requirement for all projects. This requirement encourages people to incorporate beauty into their own context, for example what could be of importance for their own culture.

A report by UK Design Council states that the visual experience and appreciation of beauty in built environment is achieved by the presence of natural light. Without natural light, places is more likely to be seen as doomed and unpleasant. In the report, there were also an expression for feeling pity for those people having their workplace in areas without natural light.

How could we then say that beauty in design could contribute to human health?

Research shows that there is a relationship between the perception of beauty and the impact of design on human health and well-being. One filed of research that captures the psychological effects of beauty incorporated into design is the neuroaesthetics. Design with the thoughtful intention to integrate beauty has an impact to the human psychological well-being. It give positive effects on learning, social behavior, and emotional wellness.1

The natural light in our buildings could not only affect us humans in a biological way, but also help us create beautiful spaces impacting us humans in a psychological way.

SUNLIGHT DEEP INTO BUILDINGS AND FAR AWAY FROM WINDOWS

With Parans’ solution you are able to create sunlight filled spaces in every building. Thin, flexible fiber optic cables lead the sunlight far from windows and deep into the building where the sunlight from windows cannot reach. As common as it is to have windows along the facade and that way lead the natural light inside, as common it could be to lead sunlight via a Parans system deep into the building – to every room, on every floor.

Want to know more about the value of the Parans system? Download our Light Guide.

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