The Psychologic-based Interior Design of Housing

3，Here is an assessment criteria

1, Demonstrate critical understanding of historical and contemporary debates within interior and spatial design based on a coherent and detailed analysis of key aspects of practice and theory (Knowledge).

3, Apply appropriate processes, skills and methods to referencing (Process).

4, Use effective communication and presentation skills appropriate to theoretical and practical outcomes in order to articulate complex ideas and arguments convincingly and clearly (Communication, Realisation).

I think we are missing: sustained, systematic critical/practical research and appropriate methods of analysis, enquiry and experimentation, and demonstrating the distinction between your ideas and those of others

4, you can improve what I marked, with your psychology knowledge. If it is hard for you to write about art, then you left it for me, but please finish this paper before 21th ,06:59am in the morning (American time) , so that I can have time to review and finish.

Comment by Microsoft Office User: All the comments are my personal opinions based on the Dissertation Handbook(which I sent you in the beginning) and my tutors’ suggestions. You also can read the handbook and have your own thoughts;(Some of the text I wrote in the beginning are also wrong) I've sited and highlighted the Dissertation handbook texts in red, which must be revised. I hope these can help you, so that we can write a good paper.

The Psychology-Driven Housing Interior Design Comment by Microsoft Office User: The title may require a bit of deliberation, as it is mostly about how psychology and architectural design interact. identified and discussed key issues that relate to the discipline (interior and spatial design)

Unit 10 History and theory 3 (Consolidation)

word count：7500

20/01/2020

PROBLEM： How to tap on psychological knowledge for effective and better housing design

KEYWORDS

Psychology, architecture, interior design, wellbeing, housing

ABSTRACT

TABLE OF CONTENTS Comment by Microsoft Office User: applied the appropriate historical and critical perspective to the subject matter is required for this unit.

LIST OF TABLES

CHAPTER

1. INTERODUCTION

1.1 Defining Interior Design

1.2 Definition of a ‘home’

1.3 Architectural Psychology and Interior Design Comment by Microsoft Office User: Please can you change a few titles to make the article more coherent.

2. ARCHITECTURAL PSYCHOLOGY

2.1 History of Architectural Psychology

2.2 Architectural Examples of Applying Psychology

2.3 Housing Architecture

2.4 How to apply psychology to architectural design conception.

3. HUMANIZATION AND PSYCHOLOGY

3.1 What is Psychology

3.2 The Relationship Between Design and Psychology

3.3 How Psychology Reflected in Design

4. INTERIOR SPACE AND PSYCHOLOGY

4.1 The Effect of Indoor Light on People's Mood

4.2 How does indoor air affect people

4.3 The effect of home colors on people's mood

4.4 How to harness psychology to improve residents’ wellbeing

5. EXPERIMENT AND TEST Comment by Microsoft Office User: A Primary Sources must must be included, It can be an experiment or questionnaire (like “A record of the effects of interior design on the psychology of subjects”) with your result. (It doesn’t has to be a real result, can be fake)

5.1 design of experiment

5.2 method and process

5.3 result

6. CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INTRODUCTION

Although the term ‘interior design’ is very common, a more definitive definition for the concept is yet to be created. Thus, in this paper, the working definition for the term is that it is the art and science involved in enhancing a building’s and structures’ interior spaces. The main of interior design of housing is providing a healthier and aesthetically pleasing environment for its actual, expected, probable or imagined users. Additionally, as a discipline, interior design entails studying the art and science of interior design. Accordingly, interior designers are people who plan, research, manage and coordinates interior design projects aimed at enhancing the buildings’ and structures’ interior spaces.

Contemporaneously, an interior spaces’ foundation has become a fundamental concept for exploration and understanding as this knowledge is critical to helping and better equipping users to harness the spaces that are available for them. Usually, even though interior designers may have the will and resources to change these available interior spaces, effectively achieving such a resolve and desire is often hard. A primary reason for this challenge in interior design is that designers are often limited to working within the applicable rooms’ or spaces’ physical confines and boundaries. To fill in this void, modern designers are increasingly relying on light, color and patterns. First, natural or artificial light is increasingly becoming one of the most critical aspects of any spatial designs since other elements would not be able satisfactorily achieve their full architectural design function without light. Mood lighting, accent lighting and task lighting are the major categories of lighting used in the architectural field. Interior designers use mood lighting to add ambience, accent lighting to emphasize objects and task lighting to define purpose.

Secondly, color is increasingly become an extreme element available for interior designers to master and harness for their trade. When properly leveraged, color can help designers to define unity, create mood and alter how users of a space or room perceive its size. Additionally, when combined with light and color, patterns provide benefits offered by texture in that it can significantly add a visual appeal to any space where it is used. Essentially, modern designers create patterns in rooms by using repetitive designs, and can be found on many of the accessories that are used in modern houses, including fabrics, rugs, soft furnishings, and wallpaper. Furthermore, there are different types of patterns, including in terms of their stripes, prints, motifs, and prints (organic, pictorial and geometric).

2. Definition of a ‘home’

The term used to describe a pattern of activity and peoples’ role in such activities and in a particular environment is domesticity. Additionally, the term also describes a home or family life, especially when pertaining to the quality or state if being domestic or domesticated. Whereas any form of domestic inhabitation and physical access are critical approaches used by people to connect to their homes, it is also apparent that psychological ideas and connections are equally profound.

According to Clare Cooper, a psychologist and architect drawing from psychoanalyst Carl Jung’s work, a home is a shared archetypal experience that enables people to express their experiences, perspectives, ideas and emotions through symbolic languages. His definition is strongly based on Carl Jung’s ideas that home encompasses an amalgamation of a strong tower and sheltering cavern. For instance, Clare Cooper relies on Carl Jung’s symbolic interpretation of homes to explore people’s desires in their homes and the impact of these desires on the people’s psychic elements.

Additionally, Clare Cooper argues that 85% of Americans value single-family residences as the ideal residence type because she is definitively convinced that such a residence type meets the idea of an ideal home as based on an expression of the “separate, unique, private, and protected” family unit. Furthermore, she observes that the people’s psychic desires are normally evident at the social level; both in suburban housing’s cultural patterns and in the way people describe the concept of a home. Unfortunately, she significantly questions the sustainability of these attitude-based approaches demonstrated by people (Section 5: Meanings of Home – The People, Place, and Space Reader, 2014)

Essentially, our existence is significantly influenced by our experiences of the places where we live in during our life in various levels. Of course, our home is one of the places that significantly impact our existence. Based on Hayward’s clarification, the concept of home suggests the connotation of behavior, customization, continuity, privacy, personal identity, social network, and above all, family. On his part, Smith argues that the concept of home is also a multi-faceted concept that concurrently connotes to people the feeling of physical environment, a place in which they can depend on and use to satisfy their personal needs, and as a social domain. Accordingly, there are five primary attributes that can be used to differentiate the concept of home and the more neutral concept of house. First, a home is a crucial presentation point of the social life and its residents’ relationships. Secondly, a home represents its inhabitant’s primary territory. Thus, as a private territory for the inhabitant, the latter is entitled to an unequivocal and exclusive control over their homes.

Third, homes offer their owners a psycho-emotional sense and feeling of continuity. The sense of continuity is related to the sensation of belonging, stability and safety – making it to be the most important attribute of home amongst children and the young people. Fourth, peculiarity is one of the most essential attributes about homes. Cognizant of this fact, Altman posits that home helps people define their Self as it is one of the most critical promoters of social interactions’ mastery within the precise physical spaces. Again, according to Sermon, a home guarantees people a space to rest and recharge their psycho-physical energies. Finally, a home is a place where people can express themselves without too much worrying.

According to Csikszentmihalyi and Rothberg-Halton, homes are part and parcel of the identity of its owner. This is because people try to express themselves via the environment’s and related object’s personalization in their homes; and thus, displaying a form of self-presentation and self-representation. In retrospect, all the five main qualities – even though they are largely based on assumptions - make homes a friendly and comfortable place, and ensure that its inhabitants experience and feel satisfaction and comfort. However, given these assumptions, there are several interesting questions that a person would want to ask and explore about what they consider suitable attributes of home. One of these essential questions revolves around the reasons why we prefer our homes to others’.

Specifically, have been various researches within the environmental psychology on the relationship between human behavior and existence and the human environment, including the related physical setting and surrounding from as early as the 1970s. Many researchers in the fields of environmental psychology and architecture and design have been exploring some of the impacts of specific environmental factors e.g. landscapes, natural environments, and cities and neighborhoods on socio-psycho-emotional constructs like sense of safety and stress, amongst others. Unfortunately, even though these previous researchers also attempted to consider housing places, they are often limited more general dwelling places and specific residential zones, i.e., their scope or subjects do not exactly cover the concept of homes. It is only until recently when researchers from the field of psychology engaged were engaged in a strong partnership with those from the field of architecture and design to explore the relationship.

Fortunately, the result of this strong partnership is a deeper analysis of how individuals experiences (at both the emotional and cognitive levels), their presence and interaction with the physical environment (e.g. waiting rooms, hospital rooms, shops, etc.), and the environment concept can be made to exceed their boundaries using online backgrounds and virtual places. However, according to Colombo, Laddaga and Antonietti (2015), an organized and detailed research exploring the emotional and cognitive effects of the representation and presentation of the meaning of a ‘‘home’’, rather than a ‘‘house’’, from the perspective of both the design- and psychology-related approaches, is yet to be conducted.

2.ARCHITECTURAL PSYCHOLOGY

In essence, architecture encompasses a type of human expression that portrays the individual designers’ or collective designers’ psyche. Carl Jung, the father of psychoanalysis (analytical psychology), defines a building architecture as the human psyche’s structural diagram that both conceives and creates. In the 2016 publication Architectural Psychology posits that, indeed, the fields of art and architecture provide a vehicle and platform through which human beings can use to convey their deepest unconscious thoughts.

Just a few decades ago, most architects and their allied construction companies saw it necessary to consult psychologists in their designing process to ensure the optimal design that respects human’s psychological conceptions of the build structures and environments. Unfortunately, most of the designers and construction companies later lost interest in or became tired with having to apply psychology in engineering globally. Thus, it has become extremely rare finding psychologists working together with architects and designers in the design and engineering process. Furthermore, architects and designers also seldom engage in the end-user psyche. Even though the architects and designers often do consider several human and humanistic elements during the design process of the build environment, these building designs rarely directly engage psychological knowledge and conceptions.

The implication is that people do not always live or reside within these particular environments – be it at home, shopping centers, public spaces, etc. - happily, voluntarily and/ or comfortably. Unfortunately, it is often an extremely difficult and complex process to determine the whether an environment is or would be preferable, soothing and/ or pleasant to the [prospective] users. Consequently, psychology and psychologists can significantly help designers and constructors to accomplish this knowledge-gap.

Culture, architecture, art and psychology are directly related to each other. In essence, when artistic elements like size, space, color, light and patterns are appropriately used, they can significantly help to enlighten the atmosphere within a space. For instance, users and inhabitants of a house usually report finding that rooms whose walls are tiled or colored in white [tiles] usually make them feel light, and make the spaces brighter and more pleasurable to be inside them. Based on this background information, it would be necessary to define what architectural psychology is or entails.

As a discipline or field of study, architectural psychology is the branch of ecological or environmental psychology that studies how humans interact with their environment, and the relationship between the two, including in terms of living requirement, living satisfaction, orientation behavior and spatial perception. The term architecture describes a sense of space and support to all human activities’ forms if and when used appropriately. It also provides delight, service and firmness. Additionally, the architectural psychology field is a very important multidisciplinary field that bridges the traditional fields of domestic planning, architecture, engineering and psychology, amongst others to help people design better living spaces and buildings and comfortable build environments to ensure a better and more enjoyable occupation. By exploring and understanding more about how people conceive of and experience the built environment forms, one can be able to take up a more occupant-centered perspective towards their designing and engineering processes, and ultimately, lead to more innovative architectural designs.

According to a 2011 research article by Mastandrea and colleagues published by the American psychiatrists’ association journal APA SpyNet, the environment, which is a product of human beings’ activity and interaction, has a significant reciprocal impact on human being’s life, living and activity. In the article ‘‘Architectural Lessons from Environmental Psychology: The Case of Biophilic Architecture’’, Joyce (2007) reviewed findings research survey drawn from the environmental psychology field to determine the relationship between the environment and human beings, and the impact of the former on human’s functioning and psycho-emotional wellbeing. The result suggests that human being have an aesthetic attraction to the natural contents and to specific landscape configurations. Additionally, the environmental features were also determined as having profound impact on human functioning and can reduce stress and other adverse psycho-emotional health conditions.

However, contact opportunities with the reviewed environmental components are significantly minimized in the contemporary urban life and living. Thus, the research by Joyce posits that the evolution can have subtle but nontrivial adverse impact on human beings’ psycho-physiological well-being. The researcher recommends the need to integrate the critical components of both the built environment’s natural contents and structural landscape features as an effective approach to counter this challenge. The researcher proceeds to discuss several practical solutions for the problem, including the use of fractal geometry of nature to the literal imitation of natural contents and objects like plants in an architectural context. If successfully, the result of such innovative amalgamations would be very interesting and fulfilling from an architectural, interior design, environmental, and aesthetic viewpoint.

2.2.1 Just Looking at Buildings Can Give People Headaches

From just looking at the above image, it is evident that the human brain finds it more difficult and sophisticated processing buildings’ images compared to its processing of natural scenes and landscapes. Additionally, in his article ‘Just Looking at Buildings Can Give People Headaches—Here’s How to Minimize the Problem’ and published by ArchDaily, Rory Scott argues that the extra workload entailed in looking at processing of images of buildings can result in physical pain, headaches, discomfort and migraines. The cause of the headaches and accompanying problems are often thought to be the direct result of the effect of the monotonous stripes patterns that are found in images of buildings and building plans.

According to Wilkins, the causes can be the stripes on interior finishes like escalator stair treads, carpets and doormats. It is therefore very unfortunate that such types of stripe patterns are increasingly becoming prevalent in modern architectural designs. Additionally, repetitive stripe patterns are also increasingly becoming more perverse in the very buildings’ architectural structures as their designs continuously become larger and more structural efficiency- and cost-driven. Furthermore, Scott (2018) asserts that the instinct of the architect and the interior designer can also sometimes worsen the problem, especially due to their attempt to artistically express the structure.

2.2.2 Hospital and Healthcare Architecture

Figure 1New designs of hospitals emerge with the concept of healing architecture.

Accordingly, as a remedy to the problems related to current (traditional) hospital designs, Vollmer designed and popularized the “healing architecture”. The architectural design works by prioritizing the patient’s healing, privacy, security, retreat and other related needs and views the clinic construction’s usefulness as being insubordinate to the latter. However, the architectural conception of Tanja Vollmer’s healing architecture is still new to most architects. Thanks to her scientific research, Tanja Vollmer managed to design and popularize useful hospital architecture from the patients’ perspective. Many hospitals and healthcare units, especially in Germany, are fast adopting the healing architecture in their buildings and built spaces.

Figure 3. Wooden floors and broad hallways avoid the feeling for patients of being locked in.

Figure 2.Entrance hall of the psychiatric clinic.

For instance, the Berlin Charité implemented the healing architecture in its intensive care unit (ICU) successfully. Within the facility, architects have recreated two rooms to suit the patients’ needs. Designed and recreated to match the healing architecture recommendations, the rooms feature lots of lighting, wooden materials and warm colors, and to keep patients less anxious, all the medical devices and equipment have been safely hidden from the patients’ sight. The noises produced by the medical machines are rechanneled into the surveillance rooms during nighttime, thus ensuring a quiet and undisturbed sleep for the patients.

In yet another study, Tanja Vollmer designed and popularized four practical recommendations to help accelerate the cancer patients’ healing process. First, she recommends the need to mimic or imitate nature in designing and building buildings and built environments in hospitals. She argues that such a design has a significant healing impact on patients as they enable the sick to regain their strength and control over their ailments, and also minimize stress, anxiety and depression related to such sicknesses. Secondly, Vollmer recommends for hospitals to separate the speaking and examination rooms to enable patients to create intimacy. Third, she suggests that meeting corners be designed to allow the possibility of a three-way conversion between patients, doctors (or healthcare providers) and their relative on the same level.

Additionally, she asserts that such a design should neither have blinding light conditions nor protective desk walls. The University Hospital Tübingen, a psychiatric clinic, also recently applied the healing architecture theory for its new building. First, architects used wood for the flooring of all the available floor spaces. Secondly, they designed all the build spaces in such a manner that they allow the penetration of daylight into the rooms, and that they are also wide and spacious in size. Consequently, this spatial allocation of the spaces has significantly helped the hospital solve the “locked-in feeling” that patients experience sometimes. To date, the healing architecture has been successful in meeting all the hospitals expectations of its design and construction objectives. Additionally, a research survey aimed at comparing the healing process rate between the old and new building demonstrates a substantive decline in the coercive measures against such conditions as body fixation and the administration of compulsory medication to patients in crisis situation by about 80%.

2.2.3 Rush University Medical Center 

Figure 5 Cylindrical light wells with trees in the middle bring a lot of sunlight and nature into the entrance hall.

Another hospital that has used the healing architecture approach is the Chicago-based Rush University Medical Center. Perkins Will, an architecture company, designed the facility. First, the firm designed the façade in such a manner that cylindrical light wells allow plenty of sunlight to penetrate the building. Secondly, the designers also include green indoor planting zones and a rooftop garden as recreational oases or spaces. To achieve the most optimal people-driven design and best adapt the building to user needs, the architects incorporated recommendations based on research findings on how patients and clinicians use the building to the building and its built spaces.

2.2.4 Workplace Architecture: Zaha Hadid’s design of Galaxy SOHO Beijing

Figure 6 Daylight study of Zaha Hadid’s design of Galaxy SOHO Beijing.

The workplace analysis field has been subjected to vast number of researches recently. Neil Usher is a workplace expert and consultant who spent most of his professional years designing better means to improve the workplace. In one of his longest endeavors, he spent several years exploring the factors that can be used to increase wellbeing, productivity and effectiveness in the workplace. He finally identified 12 factors. First, he recommends every workplace to have access to as much natural or daylight as practicable while also offering the users the choice for shutting the light away when such a requirement arises. According to Chellappa et al, bright office lighting significantly enhances adult workers’ performance in the workplace. In one of their extensive researches in the area, scientists from the Lighting Research Center have determined that architectural designs that allow daylight’s penetration or access into the building and built spaces can significantly enhance the comfort and productivity level of their occupants and cause the visual and mental stimulation that is required to regulation the natural biorhythm amongst human beings.

Secondly, Neil Usher asserts that offices and general workplaces need to offer enough space, i.e. the office-space per person ration should be a minimum of 6 square meters/per user. Thus, it is only sensible that good working environments account for and fulfill each user’s socio-physiological needs, and therefore, offer a well-positioned and welcoming space for refreshment.

4.2.5 Housing Architecture

Figure 7 Pruitt-Igor was torn down only 18 years after its construction.

In an extensive study to explore the impact of accommodation spaces’ quality on human beings, Danny Friedman determined that temporary, overcrowded “poor quality, overcrowded, and temporary accommodation have an impact on health, well-being, and the likelihood of criminality and educational attainment”. In yet another research on the same area, Joan Meyers-Levy, a highly reputable scientist, determined that there is a very high correlation between ceiling heights within buildings and built spaces and the occupants’ thinking styles. On the one hand, the researcher determined that high-ceiling rooms with airy spaces, the occupants tend to have a feeling of more freedom, and thus, their thinking style gravitates more towards the abstract type.

On the other hand, she determined that in low-ceiling rooms with stuffed spaces, the occupants tend to have a feeling of less freedom, and thus, tend to be better at tasks that demand great focus or attentiveness to the problem’s or object’s details. In other words, the latter environments support more analytical thinking. The implication of the study is that individuals and organizations needs to use more expansive spaces with expansive rooms when they want to support or facilitate creative thinking and solutions amongst users.

The finding from another study by Dr. Dak Kopec also corroborates Joan Meyers-Levy’s research findings and related recommendations. Dr. Kopec, the Boston Architectural College’s director of design of human health, determined in his study that there is a strong linkage between “micro-apartments” and problems like drug abuse, domestic violence and psychological problems. According to the research, these problems are particularly prevalent amongst those aged between 30 years and 40 years primarily because the individuals in this age group often face several stress factors or crisis, such as those related to adverse familial problems and demanding job conditions. Therefore, in the research, the researcher determined that living arrangements with minimal spaces can apparently lead to and/ or enhance alcohol use, e.g., as was shown amongst college students. Additionally, the findings from this study also strongly suggest that children growing and living in “micro-apartments” have or are likely to develop concentration trouble.

There have also been various examples of failed or failing architectural designs. The St. Louis-based Pruitt-Igoe public housing is amongst these failed projects. When it was built in 1954, various architectural experts praised and relied on the model of the Pruitt-Igoe public building due to what they argued that it wasted zero space for semi-private areas. Unfortunately, due to its very attribute that it had been praised for, the building would soon attract a lot of cases of vandalism and substantial crime, leading its whole demolition 18 years later following its construction.

Apparently, as researchers determined, the complex allowed no interaction amongst residents or users at all. In a research carried by Leon Festinger years later after the complex’s demolition, and referenced in Soler et al (2018), houses that are designed to allow spaces for semi-private areas, and thus, encourage casual encounters and interactions amongst neighbors or inhabitants in a building or build space. These casual encounters promote positive interaction amongst inhabitants, and therefore, can significantly reduce crime while enhancing pro-social behavior amongst users.

The realization that the roles, service expectations and methodologies of both architecture and interior design are increasingly and continually undergoing tremendous evolution within an already shifting socio-economic and political culture is a critical need in both these study and practice areas. Consequently, it is safer to state that a professional stature develops within an increasingly dynamic state of examination and critical re-examination associated with the contemporary social value system, economic system and professional culture. The highly specialized and targeted professionalism status is further reinforced by an intellectual rigor and enduring theoretical and process evaluations.

Another critical fundamental requirement of ongoing assessment in facilitating interrelated participants in a setting that are conducive to learning, clarifying and sharing contemporary issues impacting all the design-related professionals and professions dedicated to the spaces existing within and around the building and build’ environment’s shell and the specific architectural condition. Traditionally, the architectural and interior design disciplines perceive themselves as being both singular and distinctive.

The primary reason for this view is that, on the one hand, the fields perceive themselves as offering specialized service roles while on the other hand, they have both been boundary-tied by professional legislations. The ambiguous distinctiveness in the relationship between architectural and interior design disciplines has further been reinforced by the existence of a protective “turf mentality” that the professional and licensure organizations in the respective fields have often aggressively advanced and guarded. Hildebrandt (2005) further attempt to highlight and alleviate the problem related to how it is hard to define the boundary between the two services. He states that although the public already have clear a boundary-line between the two services, i.e. that interior design is mostly about the inside of buildings and built spaces whereas architecture is concerned with the outside of buildings and built spaces, the complexity of an in-between ‘‘interior architecture’’ significantly obscures this oft-simplistic view.

Rather, he argues that shat should be clear, especially to relatively small number of journalists,, academics and professionals, is the existence of new sets of circumstances and conditions under which the contemporary society operates, and which requires a shift in thinking; that is, there is a need to take new approaches for which creative solutions for new problems may be created.

In a his 2006 social research report published by the Scottish Executive Social Research and titled ‘A Literature Review Of The Social, Economic And Environmental Impact Of Architecture And Design’, Morris Hargreaves aimed to gather sufficient national and international evidence of the socio-economic and environmental effect of architecture and design, both negative and positive, to inform new design with a view to improving life quality. The literature review was commissioned by the Scottish Executive in light of the Policy on Architecture for Scotland’s development and to offer better access to information regarding the architecture and design’s impact in many of the life’s spheres. The research data was drawn from a total of 158 organizations who supplied 195 documents from all over the United Kingdom, mainland Europe (especially Scandinavia), and as far as New Zealand and Canada.

While collecting data, the researchers’ main intention was to gather scientific evidence, including on the impact and of the building and design factors giving rise to those impacts. The researcher solely focused the review on the buildings’ and built spaces’ end-users, and the review process was conducted between 1995 and 2005. Additionally, to enable the amalgamation of qualitative and case study evidence’ narrative review with quantitative evidence, the researchers adopted the ‘best-evidence synthesis’ approach developed by Slavin (1986). The researcher states that although there are much case-study evidences, limited robust quantitative research has been conducted using the end-users.

There are several evidences demonstrating architectural design’s contribution on end-users’ stress and satisfaction levels that have emerged from the review. These examples are especially in UK hospitals, notably, Poole hospital and Mill View mental health unit in Brighton. At Poole hospital, there is evidence suggesting that at least 72% of the patients housed within the new unit have the highest rating that they could for overall appearance, compared with only 37% of the patients housed within the old units. The evidence ay Pool hospital has further been corroborated with those sourced at the new Mill View hospital mental health unit wherein the staff judged patients as significantly less aggressive concerning their propensity to physical violence and verbal abuse. Additionally, regarding the duration that patients needed to spend in the ICU, the findings suggests that it was reduced from 13.1 days to 3.9 days, translating to about 70% reduction.

Essentially, the architectural design’s ability to contribute towards the staffs’ and patients’ health and well-being is well-documented in the US, especially in the research conducted in the area by Ulrich (1984). To accomplish his research goals, Ulrich (1984) managed to successfully link the benefits of having windows in hospital buildings and built areas within view with relatively greater work satisfaction levels amongst nurses and similarly shorter postoperative hospital stays amongst patients who undergo surgical operations. Furthermore, he also managed to demonstrate that viewing nature could result in substantial restoration and positive changes within minimal time duration of at most five minutes in brain electrical activity, muscle tension, heart activity and blood pressure. Similarly, 2003 CABE research in the UK substantially corroborates the study by Ulrich (1984). The findings from the CABE study suggest how patients’ health and well-being can be substantially impacted by landscaped [hospital] buildings and built spaces.

5.1.2 Residential properties

‘‘The Value of Urban Design’’ is a literature review study that was commission by CABE and DETR to determine whether occupants perceived architectural designs of residential properties as having impacts of their new areas’ identity. The findings from all the reviewed case studies suggested that the occupants felt that the developments contributed to some extent towards a new identity for their areas. For instance, while the Barbirolli Square in Manchester, UK, provided new cultural facilities; the Exchange Quay in Salford, UK, offered its landmark via color and height to the new areas identity.

Unfortunately, the reviewed case studies also show that the residents do not always positively view these impacts. For instance, one occupant characterized the Exchange Quay’s regeneration impact was ‘soulless out of town estate’; residents blamed Waterfront in Dudley, UK, for ruining Brierley Hill town; and, while other occupants yet saw the Standard Court in Nottingham, UK, as not valuing its site’s historical associations. Additionally, there are yet other cases that associate a place’s regeneration with the local resident communities’ displacement and increased residential prices.

One point of concurrence, however, is that at the core of people’s perception of a good residential place includes access to good facilities, low crime rates, and high safety and security levels. For instance, places with more walkers and cyclists and slower car speeds are often viewed as being safer for children’s outdoor play and school-walking. Similarly, residents often view residential areas with houses overlooking each other or streets as safer. Furthermore, official crime statistics and researches findings suggest that such residential areas are safer and have comparatively minimal burglary rates.

5.1.3 Public space

The retail parks and hypermarkets’ emergence and concurrent high street economy decline have resulted in the progressive but dramatic decline in the number of people walking to public spaces and social amenities. For instance, research statistics suggests that the distance walked per year per individual has drastically reduced from 410 km/year in 1975/76 to 298 km/year in 1998/2000. Thus, the dwindling local economies can be deemed to be the indirect cost on the health of people. Yet in a another research commissioned by Detroit, Schulz (2002) shows how poorer areas have comparatively more liquor stores but lesser access to commercial and recreational facilities and fewer supermarkets.

Unfortunately, these widespread physical conditions in within these poorer neighborhoods often work against healthy behaviors or habits like eating fresh, nutritious and dietary-balanced foods and engaging in regular exercises. Additionally, in the paper titled ‘‘Green Spaces, Better Places’’ (cited in McIntyre, 2006), The Urban Green Space Taskforce reported that a significantly greater portion of investments in parks has been worthwhile, primarily because it adds value to renewal and regeneration, while also tremendously contributing to cost savings in other areas like environmental management, education and health.

The American Psychology Association (APA) defines psychology as the scientific study of the human mind and behavior. However, the definition cannot be taken as definitive as it is too simplistic to the extent that it substantially ignores the psychology field as a multidimensional discipline, including several study subfields like social behavior, clinical study, health, sports, human development and cognitive studies, just to name but a few. Additionally, the field has undergone dramatic transformation and evolution over the years.

In the early 20TH Century, the psychological branch developed and popularized by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was the most dominant branch. As described in the 2019 publication titled ‘‘What is Psychology’’ by Simply Psychology, Sigmund Freud popularized the notion that people could get healed from their diseases by making their unconscious motivations and thoughts conscious, a practice that would enable them gain insight. Since the time of Sigmund Freud, the psychological field has been subjected to deeper scrutiny, and thus, tremendous evolution and expansion.

Generally, the field of design psychological is a relatively new cross-subject in the field of design and psychology. According to Sun, Wand & Sun (2013), design psychology forms the design concept’s basis and skills, i.e. it is an auxiliary subject area that facilitated the creation of the design concept; and thus, stipulating the presence of close relationship between the two. Thanks to design psychology, the contemporary user-centered architectural designs have significantly pushed designers into reconsidering their approach towards their work by going deeper into the target audience’s understanding. In his book titled “The Design of Everyday Things”, Donald A Norman describes a design as an act of communication.

Therefore, the designer needs to have a deeper understanding of the target audiences’ needs and insights. In order to achieve such a critical need, designers ought to consider practicing the psychological principles related to human motivations, aspirations and behavior. Additionally, for a more effective and positive outcome, designers might also consider applying psychology in the creative process as the science would offer them the close understanding of the target audience. Accordingly, in the 2017 article titled ‘‘Psychology in Design. Principles Helping to Understand Users’’ commissioned and published by UX Planet, Tubik Studio writes that psychological knowledge is necessary during the design process as it helps architectural designers to create designs that can make users perform the actions expected of them, including contacting teams or making purchases.

4. INTERIOR SPACE AND PSYCHOLOGY

4.1 The Effect of Indoor Light on People's Mood

The topic on light’s effect on the human beings’ cognitive functions is a well-researched and documented area. For instances, practical researches have often determined that brightly-illuminated spaces can substantially enhance the level of cognitive performance in healthy adults, school children and patients who are experiencing having dementia which is at its early stages. Additionally, other studies suggest that effective environmental lighting conditions have a substantial impact on humans being’s psycho-behavioral processes, including their cognition, mood and circadian rhythms. Similarly, building designs that allow the penetration of a lot of sunlight into the building and built spaces have also been determined to be able to reduce energy demands, and as being supportive of human health and activities and cognitive performance.

Furthermore, current research findings also suggests that clean, easy-to-orientate-in architecture supports its’ occupants’ well-being, has good illumination, provides a large and open view, and provides nice ornamentation. Finally, the lighting fixtures’ styles significantly contribute to amenity (A10). Direct lighting, and ceiling color and shapes are low cost and economical elements that designers can use to improve the amenity’s perception. Furthermore, the direct lighting style and lighting fixtures’ layout can also be used for the same purpose.

4.2 How does indoor air affect people?

4.3 The effect of home colors on people’s mood

Color forms a vital component of our daily lives and its presence is perverse in our perception of everything. Several research findings, including those by Hemphill (1996); Lang (1993); & Mahnke (1996), suggests that colors have can significantly impact human being’s feelings and emotions. For example, according to Ballast (2002) & Wexner (1982), the blue color is oft associated with the feeling of comfort and security, yellow with cheerfulness, purple with dignity and stateliness, orange with distressing and upsetting feeling, and red with excitement. Furthermore, research findings by Linton (1999) & Saito (1996) indicates that some colors may be associated with various emotions, and some emotions with various colors. For instance, whereas the green color has a relaxing and retiring effect, it also has both negative and positive impressions like guilt, tiredness, naturalness, quietness, and refreshment (Davey, 1998, Mahnke, 1996, Saito, 1996). Similarly, the red color, which is often used to symbolize dynamism and dominance, has a stimulating and exciting effect. However, it also associated with both negative and positive impressions like intensiveness, rage, bloodiness, aggressiveness, warmth, passion strength and activeness.

In the same note, the color-emotions relations has often been closely linked to color preferences, i.e. whether an individual perceives a particular color as eliciting negative or positive feelings. According to researches by Adams & Osgood (1973) and Eysenck (1941), there are various colors that have been determined to be highly preferred by people regardless of their culture, racial, or age. For instance, Hungarian (1968) determined red and blue to be the most preferred colors amongst Americans, although they were less preferred in other cultures. Other studies have also determined unique color preference tendencies both between two or more countries, and with respect to geographical regions, gender and age within the a particular country (Saito, 1996; Kaya, Epps & Hall, 2004).

4.4 How to harness psychology to improve resident's wellbeing

Spatial design adequacy (SDA) is the term used to describe the spatial design qualities with the ability to satisfactorily satisfy the actual space’s occupants. On the other hand, comfort or amenity describes subjective satisfaction, and is often dependent on the occupant’s own experiences, and socio-cultural and personal backgrounds. Again, convenience or efficiency relates to the occupants’ subjective satisfaction when they are not stressed as a result of the agreeableness between the spatial conditions and specific behaviors and activities. In their research article titled ‘‘The Effect of Interior Design Elements and Lighting Layouts on Prospective Occupants’ Perceptions of Amenity and Efficiency in Living Rooms’’, Lee, Alzoubi and Kim, (2017) examined the effect of interior design elements on the prospective occupant’s amenity and efficiency perception in a residential space. The researchers surveyed thirty-one (31) prospective occupants using virtual environments consisting of various amalgamation of interior design components.

The researchers discussed the prospective occupant’s views in terms of their affordability and satisfaction and then statistically interpreting the findings before having a detailed discussing on the spatial factors affecting overall satisfaction. After analysing the results, the researchers determined the interior design elements’ perceived affordace to have been significantly influenced by concrete and priming behaviors in a space. The colors, surfaces, and materials were contributed weakly to the space’s perception. Therefore, the prospective occupants’ evaluative perception processing elaborations were not effectively activated in the SDA’s assessment in relation to the colors, surfaces, and materals in a space. To summaroze, one of the lessons from the study is that the vacant areas’ location, sofa arrangement, and the television’s location in a space play crucial role towards amenity’s positive perceptions.

Comment by Microsoft Office User: A conclusion is required. (where you summarise your argument and findings, and perhaps pose questions for further investigation )

Bibliography Comment by Microsoft Office User: Try to use a broad range of high-quality, reliable sources. Be careful when using the internet for research: chances are that information from the web is trivial, wrong or out of date. Be discriminating about your web research. Major university department websites and staff websites (ending in .ac.uk or .edu) as well as sites by major organisations can be great resources (museums, learned societies, galleries etc - often with .org). Other sites, especially if they do not contain author information, are often not only useless but misleading. So personally, I think we should delete these references and add more from books.

(PDF) Architectural Psychology (2016). Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309432628_Architectural_Psychology (Accessed: 20 November 2020).