The Impacts of the Built Environment on Human Sensation, Health, and Wellbeing
A special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Health".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2023) | Viewed by 3683
Special Issue Editors
Interests: health and wellbeing; design and management of intelligent buildings; sustainable liveable buildings; environmental sensory design; creating productive and creative workplaces
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Human existence is enlivened every moment by a symphony of environmental stimuli from people, objects, building exteriors and interiors and, of course, nature. This rich array of inputs into the mind and body generates the multi-sensory experiences that can enrich the many environments in which people live and work. Indeed, architecture can be understood as an extension of nature into the person-made realm. It provides the grounds for many forms of perception, and a basis from which people can learn to understand and enjoy the world. Because people now spend most of their lives inside buildings, it is imperative that homes, offices, schools, hospitals, public, and industrial settings alike must not only be environmentally sustainable, but also designed and understood as humane places where individuals can thrive and flourish. Now, in the wake of a global public health crises, generating theoretical, practical, and interdisciplinary knowledge about the features of buildings that afford positive sensory experiences, as well as physical and mental health outcomes, is both timely and responsible.
In 1964, Maurice Merleau-Ponty noted that the task of architecture is to make visible how the world touches us. Accounting for building occupants’ sensations and perceptions in indoor spaces has been central to the discipline of environmental psychology for decades, as well as to the different fields of design and urban planning. Architecture deals not only with materials and form, but also with people and their emotions in relation to built spaces and their affordances for human health and wellness. Indeed, our thoughts and experiences, occurring via the senses, are stimulated not only by the molar environments around us and the people in them, but also by the specific architecture of a space—the shapes, lighting, sounds, textures, and other cues that can sculpt the outline of our behaviours, memories, and impressions.
One of the aims of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is to publish research that merges the environmental health sciences with public health. It links topics concerning engineering, occupational safety, biology, and environmental quality. Each of these topics (and more) relate to this Special Issue titled “The Impacts of the Built Environment on Human Sensation, Health, and Wellbeing.” This issue will serve as a hub for some of the latest research on how the built environment affects our sensory experiences, our physical health, and our mental wellbeing. A number of psychosocial and physiological outcomes correspond to these lines of enquiry and are relevant to this Special Issue, such as learning, pro-social behaviors and attitudes, work performance measures, cognitive performance, clinical outcomes, and so on. We also hope to attract work that reviews holistic urban or community planning models which are designed to foster mental and physical health, modern design and management processes that consider the human condition as a primary requirement, and architectural case studies where occupants’ attitudes, emotions, and sensory experiences are measured and interpreted against the breadth of studies that exist in the realms of environmental psychology, public health, planning, and design.
Prof. Dr. Derek Clements-Croome
Prof. Dr. Lindsay McCunn
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- human health
- mental wellbeing
- sensation and perception
- environmental psychology
- architecture
- planning
- interior design
- phenomenology
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