Psychologically speaking, our physical environment is like an extension of our brains – it leads us to certain actions, prevents us from others, it makes us feel things, changes our behaviour and even moderates health. In fact, as far as health is concerned, it’s our first layer of defence. But when the environment fails us, we suffer – it makes tasks difficult or dull or intimidating. And it puts pressure on us mentally and physically – so much so that our motivation and health can become casualties of poorly designed workplaces, homes and urban environments. Little things that most architects know about help – views into nature are a well-cited example. They improve recovery times in hospitals by 10 or more percent, and interestingly a bit of greenery fundamentally improves outlook and behaviour. But it’s rarely possible to plant a forest outside our windows, so detailed design inside our buildings help also.

Psychological Design is geared to help our clients understand the nexus between health, behaviour and architecture. Good design choices have been found to reduce violence, absenteeism and improve social contact, creativity and even sales. For hundreds of years, architects have made assertions about how their wonderful ideas will modify behaviour and otherwise benefit property owners, but Psychological Design is big on the detail and rigorous architectural science. In this website, we’ve included thousands of pages of peer-reviewed original research. No other architects anywhere have dived deeper into the science or have published nearly as much. So please come in and take a look around. We bring this to the world for free, so you too can benefit from our research, deep insight and approaches to architecture. must go before the podcasts etc. It’s who we are, what we do.