Happiness by design
In an increasingly fast-paced world, anxiety has set in. In order to recalibrate and bring our health into focus, the simple notion of home as a nurturing sanctuary is gaining momentum. By Michelle Ogundehin
We are in the midst of ‘The Age of Anxiety’ wherein the digital realm appears to have superseded reality and technology has accelerated the speed of life beyond our capacity to cope. Being constantly on the go, juggling jobs and family in pursuit of ‘a good life’ has meant that instead of working to support our wellbeing, rising levels of chronic illness and poor mental health are being recorded worldwide.
However, I have always believed that the fundamental purpose of design is not to reflect the zeitgeist, but to respond to it with solutions to the spiralling expectations of the everyday. Besides, today’s increasingly informed consumer demands it — we’ve seen a rejection of plastic, escalating engagement with environmental issues, and a growing openness to mindfulness and meditation. Thus the foundations have been laid for a new pillar of success in design: biophilia, meaning love of nature, and the enhancement of health.
Certainly, science has repeatedly proven that rooms with a garden view help children to learn faster at school and hospital patients to recover more quickly. Simply put, nature contributes to making spaces more restorative, energising and relaxing, lowering blood pressure
and boosting the immune system. But with more and more people now living and working in urbanised surroundings, a tangible sense of the natural world is being lost — in fact, by 2050 it’s estimated that 66 per cent of the world’s population will live in cities. Luckily, biophilia can be brought into any environment in three main ways: experientially through the very architecture and construction of the space around you (curves, natural materials and the use of wood in particular feature heavily); indirectly with colours, patterns and textures that mimic the natural world (for example, leafy prints on fabrics or wallpaper, or textured flooring that looks like moss); and lastly through an unfiltered direct connection to plenty of daylight, greenery and water features.
And such architectural ‘wellness’ can now be certified. The International WELL Building Institute, set up in 2014, offers a global rating system for achieving a ‘healthy building’. So far, more than 2000 projects have been commended worldwide, at least 140 of which are in Australia. And many of its core recommendations — optimal air quality; easy access to clean water, healthy foods and good natural light, alongside a soothing environment that encourages physical activity — are transferable to the domestic realm. ››
‹‹ Nevertheless, when it comes to our most intimate environments, I believe we must go much further than this. My research, and the subject of my book (Happyinside: The Power of Home To Boost
Health and Happiness, published next year) seeks to empower the creation of homes, and crucially a way of living within them, that not only reconnects us to our essential humanity but also enables us to be our best selves. After all, true happiness is much more than the sum of healthy external criteria; and it has very little to do with the acquisition of new possessions.
There’s no doubt that how you choose to finish, furnish, craft, cloak and colour your home is indeed vital, as are the materials that you choose to surround yourself with. But it’s also about asking yourself, how do I want to feel? By way of illustration, when you walk through your front door, what do you see? Does your eye rest upon calm, order and something you love? Or a tangle of shoes and a pile of post? Mood-breaker or mood-maker, the entrance to your home is a space of great subliminal power, for it is here that the story of your home starts. And a holistically supportive environment starts with your ability to harness every possible opportunity to give yourself an energy boost, and this begins the minute you cross the threshold.
Sleep is essential, too; without it we cannot be effective or efficient, let alone energetic in the way we live our lives. As such our bedrooms must be devoted solely to sound slumber — no multi-tasking as a home office or doubling as a sneaky storage space — hand-in-hand with prioritising what I call ‘a ritual of readiness to sleep’ because no amount of calming decor will make one jot of difference to your snoozing if you don’t first address what you do before you get to your bedroom.
Likewise, I challenge the long-assumed place of the kitchen as the de facto heart of the home in favour of returning our living rooms to centrestage in order to promote the concept of ‘active rest’. This is the sort of sustaining activity that Dr Alex Pang, author of the book,
Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less, calls “deep play” — think old-fashioned hobbies like painting, jigsaws, playing a musical instrument or even chess. In other words, activities that offer some of the same psychological rewards as your job but in a different setting and without the frustrations of toil. As he puts it, “Deep play is especially important for people who don’t have a lot of control over their daily schedules, have to work long hours, or who love their jobs but are prone to overdoing it. For them, deep play is valuable because it provides a more compelling alternative to work than just sitting on the beach.” It’s also an entirely analog way to spend your time.
Finally, as we try to re-create a sense of interior solace by any means possible, metals like brass and copper, which are naturally anti-bacterial, alongside humble materials like hemp, rattan and even cork will see a resurgence as their very elemental authenticity serves to ground us. Indoor air quality, too, will be the hot topic, as recent findings demonstrated that the average home was more polluted inside than outside. Thankfully, studies by none other than NASA also revealed that many common houseplants can remove up to 87 per cent of air toxins within 24 hours, plus regularly opening your windows goes a long way to help — here Australia scores highly being blessed with a climate conducive to highly healthful indoor/outdoor living.
Indeed, when life is so hectic, it is essential that our homes become nurturing, sensory, tactile retreats because for all our technology and supposedly sophisticated artifice, we are at heart primal, emotional beings, which means to feel centred, we also need to feel safe, secure and protected — not so much as insulation from contemporary living, as using everything in your armoury to strengthen you to deal with it. And to be happy at home is no wishy-washy conceit — according to decades of research, happy people live longer, exhibit fewer mental health issues, have more friends and do better at work. As the saying goes, “Peace. It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.”
There’s no doubt that how you choose to finish, FURNISH, craft, cloak and colour your HOME is indeed VITAL, as are the materials that you choose to surround yourself with.