David Navarrete, director of Research Initiatives a Sky Factory, a leading designer of research-verified virtual skylights, discusses the cognitive mechanisms by which the company’s Luminous SkyCeilings – reportedly the only products of their kind to earn a Jury Award from an international panel of architects – reduce acute stress and patient anxiety.
This article is based on published research presented at the Royal College of Physicians during the European Healthcare Design Conference 2018 in London, and an abstract slated for exhibit at the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture (ANFA) at the Salk Institute in California, in September 2018. These studies represent the culmination of years of interdisciplinary collaboration between Sky Factory’s design team and healthcare researchers.
The last few years have seen a growing interest among architects, healthcare facility planners, and their colleagues in the biological sciences, and most notably neurobiology, to address one of the most intractable problems in healthcare design – the prevalence of enclosed interiors. A cursory review of the research literature quickly reveals that isolated clinical spaces with no meaningful connection to natural environments have a negative impact on patient wellness and staff productivity. Despite this knowledge, healthcare designers have not, until recently, explored how nature imagery could be deliberately designed to offer a more restorative benefit beyond what is documented with distraction technologies such as decorative nature imagery and televised content.
Cognitive mechanisms
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