DESIGN PHILOSOPHY AND THINKING
Good domestic design boosts wellbeing
Richard Mazuch, an architect and designer, and the director of Design Research and Innovation at IBI Group, looks at some of the effects of different domestic environments, designs, and characteristics, on mental health. Drawing on research, he emphasises the profound impact that a well-designed home can have on residents’ mental wellbeing, positivity, mood, sleep, and the ability to meet life’s ‘ups and downs’ resiliently, and highlights some of the key elements to consider in a sympathetic design.
Unusually and inexplicably, mental health is seldom addressed in the design of the home (Fig 1). It can be a ‘Sanctuary’, as well as a ‘Hades’ – a place of major stress. Research informs us that it is here that most mental health issues are incubated and germinate, especially from early childhood, and go on to be established by adolescence. However, when assessing the broader picture, emotional health issues inhabit all stages of our lives – from childhood to adolescence, family life to parenting, working lives to relationships, and finally to issues related to a rapidly increasing elderly population. Such issues include ‘cabin fever’, loneliness, poor self-worth/esteem, post/prenatal depression, personal spaces, isolation, OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome), ‘walkabout’, boundaries, raging adolescent hormones, ‘sundowning’, sleep deprivation, eating disorders, bipolar depression, dementia, bereavement, hypo/hyper sense sensitivities, and ‘post-op’ recovery/ rehabilitation.
An issue for ‘one in four’
Mind, the mental health charity, tells us that ‘one in four people in England experience a mental health problem each year, costing the UK more than £94 billion annually’.1 Focus is normally set on dealing with the effect and not the cause, or ‘causal nexus’ –
Figure 1: Mental health is seldom addressed in the design of the home. It can be a ‘Sanctuary’, as well as a ‘Hades’ – a place of major stress.
by solely investigating new ways of designing/planning more mental healthcare facilities, secure units, ‘halfway houses’, long- term care facilities, open units, and medium secure units etc. As we enter the Third Era of Health, where knowledge is well distributed virtually, we have a real opportunity to make a difference by investigating, almost forensically, the source of mental health issues in the domestic setting, and harnessing assistive design and technology to be supportive of neurodiversity and the varying profiles of mental soundness.
‘Home, sweet home’
Figure 2: Homes should offer ‘shelter and protection from the elements, and the vagaries and intrusiveness of everyday living’.
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Ideally homes should be places of comfort and safety, offering shelter and protection from the elements, and the vagaries and intrusiveness of everyday living (Fig 2). Homes are crucial cardinal points of reference in our everyday lives, and are extensions of ourselves containing signature preferences and unique comfort needs of space, light, temperature, food, music, furniture fittings, etc. They embody our memories, history, and provenance. The home should be a supportive environment in which to grow and discover ourselves, a place of happiness, mindfulness, and wellness.
Shades of grey
When home is not an idyllic sanctuary it can be a place of solitude, loneliness, and social isolation (Fig 3). Retirement, old age, absence of filial support, physical disabilities, ‘empty nesting’, working from home, medication, managing a health condition, increased morbidity, pressures of work and education, and relationship breakdowns, can prove to be disempowering and debilitating, reducing self-esteem.
Figure 3: When home is not an idyllic sanctuary, it can be a place of solitude, loneliness, and social isolation.
OCTOBER 2019 | THE NETWORK
All graphics hand-drawn by Richard Mazuch
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