Rooms Are Not Neutral

An architect designing a hospital asks about the number of beds and the budget. Okay, that’s simplified, but what I’m getting at is whether the question of how much daylight a patient needs to get well faster is also asked, in time or at all.

The answer does actually exist. Joarder and Price published it in 2013 (Joarder & Price, 2013, Lighting Research & Technology). 100 lux more daylight in the room shortens the hospital stay by an average of 7.3 hours. That comes from a controlled study.

That figure sits in a specialist journal and in online archives. But does an architect read it? It’s only one of thousands worth reading. And on its own it helps no one, because it only addresses one variable. A patient room has light, temperature, acoustics, materials, a view, room proportions. Each of these affects the patient and none of them in isolation. The research on all of this exists in large volume, but has it been brought together for practice?

The Numbers

Patients in rooms with a view of trees need less pain medication than patients looking at a wall. Roger Ulrich already researched this in 1984 (Ulrich, 1984, Science). The study has been replicated hundreds of times since.

Depending on the intervention, biophilic design increases productivity by 6 to 15 percent (Ryan et al., 2023, Terrapin Bright Green). Just nature sounds instead of an urban soundscape raise cognitive performance by 13.9 percent (Van Hedger et al., 2019, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review). Biophilic means: plants, wood, water and natural patterns in the room. Things the body recognises from evolution and that the nervous system responds to supportively.

Office workers without a window seat sleep 46 minutes less per night than their colleagues at the window (Boubekri et al., 2014, Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine). A person gets 46 minutes less sleep because someone planned the floor plan in a way that placed their desk away from the window.

If the room temperature is too cool or too warm, performance drops measurably (Seppänen, Fisk & Lei, 2006, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory). The temperature range in which a person can work productively is narrow, but it is technically achievable.

Why This Doesn’t Get Through

Results are sorted by discipline, not by use case. Lighting research, acoustics, indoor climate: each topic has its own journals. Anyone planning a concrete building would have to work through hundreds of journals to find all the relevant studies for their project and the different situations.

I dare to say that only a few do this. So buildings are still designed for people without knowing what they actually do to the people inside them.

The Principle

In an experiment I structured a slice, albeit a very small one, of the existing research in a vector database so that for a concrete situation you get a solid body of data that gives concrete statements and therefore answers for those who implement these solutions.

A query would start with a description of the context: what kind of building, who uses it, for what, the surroundings, intensity and so on. Then the stimulus: which element of the space is under consideration, daylight, ceiling height, acoustics, materials and so on. The system then shows which effect is documented, how strong it is and which study it comes from.

A child reacts differently to ceiling height than an adult. A dementia patient reacts differently to noise than a healthy visitor. An office worker has different needs than a hotel guest. The answer always depends on context.

Clinic

Daylight shortens the length of stay, a view of nature reduces the need for pain medication. Add to that natural materials that lower cortisol levels and quieter acoustics that improve sleep.

Most of this costs nothing extra. Whether a patient looks out the window at trees or at a wall can be decided by the floor plan or the outdoor planning.

Office

The industry’s rule of thumb, often cited as “3-30-300” (JLL/World Green Building Council, 2014): 90 percent of a company’s operating costs are personnel. Rent and energy together account for 10 percent. A small improvement in the work environment brings more than all the energy savings of an ecologically optimised building.

Ecological building is important. But whether the room temperature is right, whether enough daylight comes in, whether the acoustics are tolerable, that’s what decides whether people can work productively and contentedly. The feedback I took from many conversations is that these decisions today are mostly made on the basis of an architect’s personal experience, but too rarely on the effect the design should have.

The Question

There is no general recommendation for “the good building”. Biophilic design raises cognitive performance by 6 to 15 percent, depending on the intervention. But in a classroom for children with ADHD, that means something different than in a hotel lobby.

The effect is always specific. The precision of the answer is not in the average values of the studies, but in the context: what kind of space is built, who uses it and what the person does there.