With most of our lives spent indoors, the spaces we occupy play a major role in our behaviour. The discipline that explores this interaction between people and the spaces they inhabit is called Environmental Psychology.
The way we feel shapes the way we behave and how we feel and behave impacts upon every single aspect of our lives, from our relationships with others, our physiological health, cognitive ability, creativity, states of rest and arousal, to our mental health, happiness and wellbeing.
It is possible therefore, to condition the way we feel and behave through clever, science-based design. We are now able to design interiors with the ability to promote learning and enhance productivity, to induce calm, to energise and to motivate. Clever ‘Designology’ has been applied to help ADHD groups to hone focus, to aid memory recall in dementia patients and within the arts, design and literary communities, to aide the creative thought process. It is even possible to engineer environments that can elicit appetite, counteract addiction and aid pain relief and recovery.
