We can realise the true power of well-designed buildings
In April this year the Government issued its “Mental health and wellbeing plan: discussion paper and call for evidence”, all part of its commitment to level up and address unequal outcomes and life chances across the country.
This then, is our chance to tell the Government how they can improve the mental health of the nation.
As an architect, I have a huge interest in the impact that the built environment has on our mental health and wellbeing. We spend around 90 per cent of our lives in buildings, and poorlydesigned buildings are now being linked to everything from ill health to underachievement in schools and reduced productivity in the workplace.
We all saw very clearly during the pandemic how having enough indoor space, fresh air, and access to green open spaces really matters when it comes to maintaining our health, both physically and mentally.
Winston Churchill once said: “We shape our buildings, and afterwards, our buildings shape us.” What he meant by this is that while an architect may design a building’s form and appearance, the building will go on to influence the people who use it over its lifetime.
They shape our behaviour, give us a feeling, they can inspire us, nurture us, and even make us feel calm.
Buildings also shape how we interact with each other socially, they affect our comfort and our sense of safety and our feeling of connection with one another.
Design in healthcare settings from the Victorian era onwards has long recognised the therapeutic benefit of providing buildings that have good natural light, fresh air, views to nature, have stable temperatures and where harsh noises are reduced.
In my recent work designing schools for children with emotional and mental health issues in Barnsley and Leeds, I worked closely with the Wellspring Academy Trust senior leadership team to ensure that the environments we were shaping enabled students to feel welcomed, safe and “at home”.
Traditional school environments simply don’t work for these students so we made spaces where students and teachers could interact in different settings, from intimate and homely, where students could explore emotional empathy, to large and boisterous spaces where drama and creativity is used to improve expression and emotional perceptions.
This attention to how our environment shapes our behaviours and interactions was key to enable relationships and confidence to flourish.
The three new Leeds schools are soothing places with landscaped courtyards, calming colours, good levels of natural light and warm acoustics.
The new found success of Leeds’s special school provision is, I believe, in no small part due to the humane qualities of the new buildings and grounds.
Workplace studies have shown the enormous impact buildings can have on our performance. By providing employees with better working environments we can help ease mental health problems, estimated to cost employers
£30bn a year.
So, designing buildings that will improve our health and wellbeing is something we can’t afford not to do. The payback in terms of mental health and productivity is potentially enormous. Visit www. gov.uk/government/consultations/ mental-health-and-wellbeingplan-discussion-paper-and-callfor-evidence