Jonathan Morrison
Social spaces, lots of light, saunas — how architecture makes us happy
It seems to work for the Finns anyway. Now British neuroscientists are studying how our buildings can improve our wellbeing
Winters can last seven months, with temperatures dropping to minus 50C in places, and daylight warming a few hours at most. Beer is nearly £8 a half-litre. The happy-clappy hygge and cosy woollen jumpers of Denmark find their equivalent in sisu — best translated as “grit” — and rolling in the snow “like a bear”, as a guide memorably puts it.
Despite all this, Finland was named the happiest country on the planet by the United Nations this year. Forget tropical sunsets, spontaneous dancing, huge oil wealth or undulating vines: high taxation and spending, social cohesion, a heavy caffeine consumption and pristine lakes and forests are just as important, if not more so.
Less obvious, perhaps, is the role that the careful crafting of the built environment has played in creating a contented country. Yet it is undoubtedly an important one, and experts think that the Finns have a lot to teach us about how to design buildings to maximise happiness. Given the latitude and climate, Finns spend a lot of time indoors. One consequence of this is that they construct impressive civic buildings to give themselves places to meet, socialise, learn and experience, which are regarded as the best ways to make it through the cold, dark evenings.
Amos Rex in Helsinki opens at the end of August (JKMM ARCHITECTS)
At the end of August the cavernous halls of Amos Rex, a new 2,200 sq m art gallery — half Teletubbies’ lair, half octopus’s garden — created by the architect JKMM, will be revealed in Helsinki. In December it will be joined by the Oodi library, designed by ALA Architects. It’s fair to say that libraries are a little different in Finland, providing everything from local newspapers to pasta machines and 3D printing, and the three-storey, wood-clad Oodi will hold the national film archive, a cinema, studios and laser cutters. At the top, a “snowdrift-like” space, with oculi inspired by Alvar Aalto, the country’s most famous architect, provides a calming expanse for reading as well as an incredible spreading balcony orientated towards the setting sun (about 3pm in December). It will act, Niklas Mahlberg of ALA says, “as a sort of living room for the whole city”.
And I haven’t even talked about the saunas, of which there are estimated to be 3.2 million in a land of 5 million inhabitants. As well as the private ones, there are ample public opportunities for a sweat-fest. Loyly, with its views across the Helsinki archipelago, is the hottest (quite literally) spot for a drink in the capital and has just been joined by a beautifully crafted mini-masterpiece on the idyllic island of Lonna. “We don’t really talk about feelings in architecture enough — more function or historical context,” says Kazunori Yamaguchi of OOPEAA, the sauna’s architect, “but sauna brings a sense of community.”
It may seem obvious that abundant communal spaces and natural beauty are factors that lift the mood, even if broiling yourself like a lobster is more of an acquired taste. And it’s true that the idea that good architecture can promote happiness is not new. Yet why we seem hardwired to experience our surroundings in certain irreducible ways is only just starting to be explored at a remarkable faculty in Fitzrovia, London.
The Sainsbury Wellcome Centre, London (GRANT SMITH)
The Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour (SWC), designed by Ian Ritchie, is the world’s foremost institute for research into the mental processes underpinning human behaviour and one of the first to incorporate the lessons of neuroscience into its very fabric. The most obvious example of this is a translucent façade that draws daylight inside and is credited with reducing stress. Less obviously, blue light in the 480-481 nanometre range — proved to stimulate the photosensitive retinal ganglion cells responsible for setting the circadian rhythm — is reflected off the soffits. So much for needing that coffee buzz.
One key area of investigation for the SWC is the area of the brain called the hippocampus, which originated as a means of interpreting our surroundings and facilitating navigation, but developed into a mechanism for converting short-term memories into long-term ones. One of the theories being tested is that the building itself can help to support brain activity and that subtle variations in its spaces lead to better cognitive processes.
In 2006 the Danish urbanist Jan Gehl observed that people automatically started to walk faster in front of blank façades and were more likely to disengage, and even feel stress, in homogeneous, boring streetscapes. It appears that we are biologically disposed to favour locations defined by complexity and variety, such as we might see in nature or even more classical, ornate buildings. At the SWC, therefore, no two offices share exactly the same dimensions and great thought has been given to creating disparate areas, from customisable lecture theatres and double-height labs to a balcony with wild grasses growing along it.
Google’s new headquarters in King’s Cross (HEATHERWICK STUDIO)
It is an inclination shared by Silicon Valley businesses, where novelty is seen as essential for attracting, motivating and retaining key staff. When complete, Google’s new £1 billion London headquarters in King’s Cross will feature a rooftop garden split across three storeys and planted with strawberries, gooseberries and sage, while the sporting facilities will include gyms, a swimming pool and indoor pitches.
In the US, too, companies have increasingly turned to nature as a means of boosting serotonin levels. The new £3.7 billion Apple headquarters, designed by Foster & Partners, is set in 175 acres of California parkland with glass walls offering unrestricted views of its 9,000 trees. Google’s expanded campus will contain an owl sanctuary and use translucent canopies to blur indoors and out — something Aalto’s work clearly anticipated with its use of courtyards, amphitheatres and swards, huge windows and thickets of silver birch.
For Ritchie, though, the promise of neuroscience is that it will transcend what intuition already tells architects and usher in a new era in which we can create ever more attractive buildings by tapping directly into the brain’s pleasure centres. “Understanding physics and engineering has not inhibited our creativity. Far from it — understanding has given creativity wings,” he says. “However, do we really know what enables an architect to produce a beautiful building, one which makes the human spirit soar, or makes someone feel comfortable and nurtured? I want to know.”
Loyly sauna has views across the Helsinki archipelago (PEKKA KERANEN)
For the researchers inside the SWC doing the day-to-day investigative work it’s fair to say that laying down an immutable set of golden rules that would enable us to create beautiful, functional and uplifting buildings seems a long way off. There is no E=mc2 on the horizon, although there is a consensus about what makes people unhappy.
Badly designed buildings, with poor light, few windows, disorientating floor plans, decaying components, dull façades, an absence of nature and a lack of functionality and empathy, have a measurable impact on health and mental wellbeing. As Sarah Williams Goldhagen, an American critic, argues: “There’s no such thing as a ‘neutral’ environment. Your built environment is either helping you or it’s hurting you.”
Cities as a whole can also create problems. It has been claimed that 25 per cent of people in London has a diagnosable mental health condition and 42 per cent of residents in inner London experience high levels of anxiety. Density adds to the three main environmental stresses — noise, lack of light and air pollution — so there may also be a price to pay for constant stimulation.
The Oodi library, Helsinki (ALA ARCHITECTS)
“Having different places to go gives context to memory, but we don’t really know exactly why space and memory are so closely connected,” says Adam Kampff, the senior research fellow at SWC. “Nonetheless, buildings play a fundamental role in who we are, if only because moving between spaces helps us organise our thoughts.”
Yet he agrees that certain responses to aesthetics seem hardwired into the human brain, much like an innate ability to create and use language. He points out that it is possible to create any number of extreme architectural forms, but that in practice we actually restrict ourselves to quite a small range.
“We do seem disposed to like certain principles and shapes,” he says. “The brain spends most of its time trying to avoid dying, so anything that gives us a sense of safety — long vistas, being near water, being higher up but not exposed — plays to our old evolutionary drives, but can architecture create happiness? Happiness is a complex phenomenon, and depends on chemistry and genetics too, so we just don’t know.”
Has he considered that the answer might simply be to build more saunas? “Anything that brings people together is likely to prove positive,” Kampff says, “but I’ve never been a fan of saunas.”
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