https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8542-6761
People develop stress responses to their surroundings on a regular basis. Nevertheless, with a few exceptions, there appears to be a large gap between the therapeutic world and the world of built environment design with regard to people’s neurological requirements; particularly when it comes to inclusive design knowledge that designers can readily access. With a few exceptions, the books are either created considering a specific neurological ailment or a philosophical standpoint. Few books examine the position that project commissioners, architects, and designers can learn from a wide group of people who have had heightened neurological experiences, to commission and build places that are more mind-friendly.
Steve Maslin, in his book Designing Mind-Friendly Environments, provides rich professional and personal insights into how design and the environment in which we live and work affect our health and wellness. Maslin’s book firmly places the person at the heart of design, teaching architects and designers about human senses and the very personal act of perceptual experience.
Steve Maslin is a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and served as a RIBA Chartered Architect in the UK since 1992. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Schumacher Institute for Sustainable Systems and a member of the British Standards Institute Committee. Furthermore, he served on a Design Council with former employment within architectural practice and organizations providing social services, housing, and social provision. He investigated the impact of the built environment and design on people with a variety of neurological conditions, such as autism, dementia, dyslexia, and dyspraxia. Maslin presents an excellent and comprehensive case for universal, inclusive design that not only recognizes, but enjoys human diversity. He combines his passion and understanding of complicated themes ranging from sensory integration to proxemics, to provide us with this remarkable roadmap for adapting and constructing environments that will encourage productivity, comfort, creativity, and effective engagement for everybody.
This book demonstrates how changes in lighting, acoustics, temperature, surfaces, furniture, and space can improve people’s lives in a variety of settings such as workplaces, retail, sport and leisure, domestic, educational institutions, cultural and civic spaces, outdoor spaces, and places of worship. It is a vital reading for professionals in architecture and design, education, organizational psychology, business management, and occupational therapy because of its universal approach, and the fact that an experienced architect and inclusive design consultant authored it.
Chapters are brief and divided into the following five sections to make reading and understanding the contents easier for readers:
Section A: Connecting Different ‘Worlds’ comprises six chapters and attempts ‘silo busting’ and joined-up system thinking to enable readers to approach mind-friendly environments in a more systemic way. Maslin reveals how the neurological experiences of people with accentuated neurological experiences (like autism, dementia, brain/nerve trauma/damage, dyslexia, dyscalculia, dyspraxia, migraines, epilepsy, phobias, etc.) can teach architects and designers to observe the stressful aspects of our environment – for the benefit of us all. These chapters apply appropriate inclusive design interventions (that engage with people’s neurological needs) to the idea of social prescribing. In addition, this section conveys the methods to transfer and implement knowledge between the different worlds of prescribing and commissioning. The first section of this book summed up in the last chapter by the need to see design as done with people through stakeholder engagement and co-production, rather than for people.
In Section B, The Human Experience, we discover the common human experience in which we all (to varying degrees) find aspects of environments around us either neurologically beneficial or problematic. This section includes six chapters demonstrating how architects and designers can have a significant impact on the way people function within environments. In addition, it describes the social, sensory, and neurological processes that occur within environments. Consequently, if designers consider diverse needs and more accentuated atypical neurological experiences, they are more likely to propose a performance envelope for their design that works for more people. Designing with an ‘envelope of need’ in mind addresses not only neurological needs but also mobility, vision, hearing, and metabolic needs, whilst seeking to address the design implications of organization, legibility, clarity, psychology, and ergonomics.
The most voluminous section of the book, Section C, Contextual Experience, shows how different environmental factors combine to impact our neurological processes and thus our experience, through 12 chapters. In the first chapters of this section (chapters 13 and 14) some context-based phobias and phenomena, such as agoraphobia (the fear of open spaces) or acrophobia (the fear of heights) and a plethora of other contextual phenomena are examined in terms of the social, spatial, and physical context of different environmental scenarios. In chapter 15, Maslin connects the sensory world with social context and the added challenges and opportunities this presents. He describes a variety of sensory ingredients, including auditory, visual, respiratory, aromatic, gustatory, tactile, thermal, and chronometric. This section might be the most interesting part of the book because of the practical points and specific factors in the field of acoustics, lighting, surfaces, scents, temperature, biophilia, navigation, and communication. The book acts as a condensed guidance handbook that steers architects and designers through detailed points worth avoiding as well as including in design.
Whilst there are specialist environments that can be designed with particular attention being given to specific neurological conditions, the underlying principle of Designing Mind-Friendly Environments in Section C is to convey that it is possible to design mind-friendly environments, whatever the building and purpose is, so that far more people can use different environments more effectively, whether they have a particular condition or not. By referring to people’s specific experiences, this section aims to highlight certain issues. Therefore, while the learning for this section comes from the experiences of people on the autistic spectrum, people living with dementia, and people with accentuated neurological experiences, it is relevant to everyone. Thus, it is based on the universal design premise that we should design inclusively and for everyone.
Section D, titled Different Environments, addresses 15 distinct environments and discusses how the human mind operates in a wide range of spatial contexts. Therefore, the reader will find defined design criteria and opportunities for mind-friendly landscapes, urban realms, transport environments, education spaces, health and care centres, offices, places of worship, leisure resorts, food experiences, hospitality environments, industrial and military premises, and judicial and custodial settings. It would be an inaccurate assumption that this section is only about designing for people with particularly accentuated needs or only about specialist/supportive environments. It is as much about the design of environments and design that is universally beneficial, with as much relevance to public environments and civic, retail, and work spaces as it has to schools, hospitals and even more specialist environments. Consequently, the section examines and observes diverse environments. Thus, Section D focuses on enabling choice within environments, where joy and calm exist – enabling the ingredients that contribute to a mind-friendly environment to create the most elegant of architecture, urban realms, and landscapes.
In the last section of the book, Maslin examines neurological needs that contribute to serious issues for any organization managing an environment. Hence, the audience will find useful and practical information on the role of safeguarding and wellbeing when designing and managing facilities. Additionally, Maslin offers design consideration for fire and emergencies. He highlights how poor safeguarding facilities may be harmful to people, how to avoid poor design, and points of consideration that are mind-friendly.
Designing Mind-Friendly Environments seeks to integrate the thinking of therapeutic, medical, educational, and social services disciplines (which engage with people with additional needs) within the design and commissioning of built environments. Moreover, it provides materials and methods for people who have distinct neurological experiences and their support networks to attract decision-makers’ attention to the difficulties they experience while emphasizing how these issues can affect others; because, while everyone’s neurological experiences are distinct, many of the underlying difficulties and design implications are sufficiently comparable to begin discussions. Therefore, this should assist decision-makers to understand the broader benefits of mind-friendly environments, and how these challenges may affect them too.
Although the book contains 44 chapters that introduce all aspects of mind-friendly architecture and design, it is not a large book; rather, it is light and portable, like a handbook, that can be carried in the bag of any architect and environmental designer, to be used quickly and conveniently. Discovering points in the book is easy because the chapters are carefully separated. Designing Mind-Friendly Environments is essential reading for a multitude of professionals, not only in architecture and design but additionally, in education, organizational psychology, business management and the health fields, including occupational therapy.
This book serves as a guide for project commissioners, architects, and designers to create ‘mind-friendly’ environments for everyone while working with inclusive design consultants. Maslin’s goal, as readers may have guessed from the title, is to improve the commission and practice of design to benefit everybody, including persons with neurological requirements. He has attempted to identify and address key target audiences, enabling them to aid one another. Thus, those who will most profit from the application of this knowledge are the people who are most vulnerable. Consequently, some people may find it difficult to function in specific circumstances and may learn how to adapt to their surroundings, discover more conducive environments, and/or direct decision-makers to solve problems. Next, the important audience are those who are knowledgeable about the issues – for example, people in the therapeutic, medical, educational, and social services communities – but lack the confidence and knowledge to influence commissioning and design processes. Lastly, another intended audience are those who will have the most impact on the environment, such as people who are commissioning a project, receiving a project brief, or managing an environment, and who may be unaware of the importance of the mind in design. Thus, commissioners, project managers, architects, landscape architects, designers, contractors, facilities managers, and others in the supply chain are among these individuals. Furthermore, human resources, customer service, equalities officers, and facilities managers should use Designing Mind-Friendly Environments to obtain insight into the diverse user experience of those who benefit from the environments for which they are responsible.
While the mission of many practitioners, researchers, and communities is to find solutions from a spatial planning, urban design, and physical city governance perspective, this book reveals that in-depth focus should be on public health and the health of planetary systems, more than the city-span itself; instead, the healthy city can be planned and designed at the micro scale of architectural or landscape architectural levels. Thus, finding the healthy city depends on the designing of mind-friendly environments.
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Notes on contributors
Mohammad Reza Khalilnezhad
Mohammad Reza Khalilnezhad holds a Ph.D. degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of Kaiserslautern (TUKL), Germany. He has been a faculty member at the University of Birjand (UoB), Birjand, Iran, for over 10 years. Most of his research in the field of urban agriculture for Iran emphasizes the role of Persian gardens. He has translated and published three books from English to Persian, and published more than 40 papers in the scientific journals and conferences of landscape discipline.
Majid Amani-Beni
Majid Amani-Beni holds a PhD degree in Natural Resource Science from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS), China. He is a faculty member at the School of Architecture and Design, Southwest Jiaotong University (SWJTU), Chengdu, China.