The Light Therapeutic – article on current research into the effects of light on health, with far-reaching implications for the design of buildings and cities, especially healing environments. What is most startling is the way our bodies respond to light. Gloomy winter days are known to trigger …
Neil Gaiman: Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming – an impassioned and thought-provoking argument for the value to society of reading, libraries, librarians, and how the daydreaming that reading can stimulate leads to imagining a better future and the innovation that our social and economic well-being depends …
Toynbee tiles – If you’re in the mood for a real-life mystery that involves imagination, single-mindedness over spans of time, great ingenuity, a fair amount of what many might describe as wackiness and that remains, despite knowing who the person behind the tiles is, at its heart still an enigma, …
Opinion: Bright Nights, Big Problems – recent opinion piece in National Geographic on the growing rarity of true darkness, due primarily to our unthinking use of artificial light. Because of the rapid growth of light pollution over recent decades, most Americans under 40 have never known real …
How Will Smart Cities Transform the Future? – post about Cisco Systems Smart+Connected Communities initiative. It combines data, technology, city services, and infrastructure into a network they say offers unprecedented opportunities (a “potential value of $14.4 trillion over the next decade“) for economic, social, and environmental sustainability. This is …
Center for Active Design: Resources – links to design guidelines aimed at architects, urban designers, planners, policy makers, communities, developers, and educators wishing to promote health “through the design of buildings, streets, and neighborhoods.” The original publication Active Design Guidelines has been followed with four supplements: Promoting Safety …
Architecture: Steiner – editorial on WAN (World Architecture News) about wholeness in architecture, particularly in the work of the Austrian “scientist, philosopher, and writer Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925)” who designed and built the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland that is familiar to students of architecture around the world. A link in the …
Living Walls Effectively Mitigate Air Pollution – investigators in Karlsruhe, Birmingham, and Lancaster have established that plantings like green walls or even trees, bushes, and creeping plants can improve air quality in cities by up to 30%. Biochemist Thomas Pugh and colleagues … conducted the street canyon study by utilising …
Blue light has a dark side, an article from Harvard Medical School, and a 12-min video clip of Russel J. Reiter, M.D. PhD of University of Texas talking about Melatonin’s role in Cancer are both worth your time, especially if you’re involved in the design of healthcare facilities. The …
New textile technologies developed for emergencies – a Spanish technology transfer group, Tecnalia Research & Innovation, has developed a smart textile with the ability to change shapes. Verstiff is a flexible textile that, when subjected to a vacuum, becomes as hard as conventional plastic. Releasing the vacuum reverts the textile to …
The Color Red for a good Night’s Sleep? – the design team for a nursing home in New York used a recent corridor lighting upgrade as an opportunity to test current research into the effects of light and color on health. The results were published in the Oct 2012 …
Why architects should use their ears more – June 2012 TED talk by sound expert Julian Treasure on the physiological, social, psychological, and behavioral effects of sound. In this short talk, Treasure demonstrates how statistics reflect the sound qualities of space. The louder the spaces, such as hospitals, …
Check out the series of articles in Healthcare Design – “Research in Practice” – written by healthcare design researchers at HOK, Nick Watkins and Erin Peavey. It offers practical advice for anyone in a position to make decisions regarding the design of a hospital or healthcare facility. Research in Practice: …
Study: School Design Can Significantly Affect Children’s Grades – UK study of primary schools finds that the design of the physical learning environment can influence children up to 25%. The results, published in Building and the Environment, revealed that the architecture and design of classrooms has a significant role …
The Secrets Of Making Time Fly While You Wait – an NPR story about how people hate waiting in lines and how they occupy that time to make it seem to go quicker. It also highlights how designers can play a role in relieving the accompanying boredom and/or frustration. …
Here’s a start on collections of ‘the best’ of 2012. Check back for more, suggest your favorites – this a live list. PSFK’s Top 20 of 2012 – with source of image Best of the best of 2012 science and tech articles – from the BBC; thanks to Oleg Kravtsov …
The website Find a Spring lists natural springs from around the world. As you can see from the map, North America and Europe have by far the most listings, but it looks like other regions are starting to be filled in – India, Thailand, Japan, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, …
The Importance of Soil and Its Conservation [Video] – this 5+ min video is packed with statistics about soil and how we use and thoughtlessly misuse this most valuable of resources. See more at Global Soil Forum, a European partnership that recently sponsored the first Global Soils Week. The Global Soil …