Reaching the beauty within [Engineering Design]

If you think of yourself as a 'city mouse', no doubt you relish the fast pace of life, the hum of the streets, and unpredictable interactions with strangers that can leave 'country mice' bemused or horrified. This buzz is a large part of the attraction, and the reason why cities tend to be hotbeds of innovation and creativity. But beware: city-living may not be all good for your brain. Recent studies suggest the very stimulation that helps foster ingenuity can result in a kind of cognitive overload, when the effort required to phase out unwanted distractions reduces our capacity for things such as memory formation, attention and self-control. Being surrounded by nature, on the other hand, appears to be highly beneficial. Researchers have shown, for example, that hospital patients recover more quickly when they can see trees from their windows; that children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder show fewer symptoms when surrounded by animals or trees; and that the degree of domestic violence is reduced in apartments with views of greenery. Findings such as these are encouraging urban architects and planners to design places that reflect the restorative effects of nature. More than that, they have spawned a whole new academic discipline in which neuroscientists and architects are collaborating on ways to influence people's behaviour, mood and health through design. The idea is to improve quality of life by building places that reflect the way our brains work. The approach has already led to revolutionary new designs in neo-natal units for premature babies and care-homes for Alzheimer's patients, and is causing architects to rethink the way they design schools, offices, homes, prisons, museums and urban outdoor spaces. John Zeisel is a visiting professor at the University of Salford who has used insights from neuroscience to design care homes for Alzheimer's patients and is planning to do the same for schools and offices. He calls the influence of neuroscience "potentially revolutionary" for architecture. "It's a major shift from thinking about the environment as merely the context for behaviour, to environments having a direct influence on people's behaviour, perception and attitudes via the brain".