CULTIVATING SPACE   
Lauren Sexton      
How can the design of the classroom support
learning and improve the well-being of students?

I am a recent graduate of the Yale School of Architecture and have been investigating this question through the lense of neuroscience and design. My study has led to the production of a teacher's manual that offers information, research and strategies for creating enriched learning environments that support the well-being of students. I believe that educators should have easy access to this type of research in a digestible and engaging format and hope the manual I create empowers and inspires teachers to make the most of the resources they have, but also advocate for the importance of the classroom environment on student well-being and success. This spring, I am continuing the research and hope to develop the manual to a level that it can be published. I plan to update this site with weekly posts related to the current research discoveries and questions I am working on. If you are interested in getting in touch, viewing more of my work, or supporting the research by completing a teachers survey, please refer to the links below!


 
link to teacher survey

06 Form Follows Feeling
03.20.25

What impact does the indoor environment have on psychology - the mind, emotions, and behaviors - and how is this relevant to the design of classroom spaces?

In the previous post, Can Architecture Improve Health?, I discussed how the built environment can affect our physiology and its potential to improve our health. This of course is crucial to understand for the design of the built environment, especially education spaces. In this post, I planned to focus on the environment’s impact on psychology which relates mostly to the mind, emotions, and human behaviors. After doing the research for this post, I realized how difficult it would be to separate the effects on physiology versus psychology because they are so much more connected than I originally imagined. 
While the built environment may impact our physiology (body) and psychology (mind) in different ways, I have found mind and body also greatly affect each other, making the line between the two very blurry. This was revealed in Descartes Error02 by Antonio Damasio, where he sets out to disprove philosopher René Descartes’ theory that the mind and body are completely separate. The specific “error” Damasio is referring to is linked to a quote by Descartes from 1647 where he states:

“…the soul by which I am what I am, is entirely distinct from body, and is even more easy to know than is the latter; and even if body were not, the soul would not cease to be what it is.” 02

Throughout the book, Damasio uses case studies and research to disprove Descartes theory, insisting that a person’s mind and body rely heavily on one another to function as a logical human being. He also explains that emotion and reason are closely connected through case studies of patients who lost the ability for one, which in turn completely affected the other. These ideas introduced by Damasio have important implications on how we consider the built environment’s impact on health and overall well-being.
Illustration of mind-body dualism by Descartes 07


As I mentioned in the last post, the spaces we inhabit can directly affect our physiology by lowering heart rate when exposed to biophilic design, releasing melatonin with warm light, or increasing stress when experiencing acoustic discomfort. These physiological changes which are out of our control can generate a psychological response, like happiness, excitement, a sense of urgency, or a lack of motivation. While the physiological change often prompts a psychological one, it is also possible for the mind to impact the body, creating an endless cycle that the built environment plays a critical role in. On this topic, Damasio includes a relevant quote by the philosopher and psychologist William James:

“Every object that excites an instinct excites an emotion as well.”


 In their book, Your Brain on Art 04, Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross discuss this topic through the lens of the emerging field of NeuroArts. Please check out their work, it has been a major inspiration for my research. Through an extensive set of case studies, research, personal experience, and interviews with experts in a variety of fields, Magsamen and Ross explain the concept and importance of NeuroArts: the physiological and psychological affect art or aesthetic experiences can have on human beings. Both authors argue that aesthetics experiences, whether it be art, music, cooking, or architecture, can have a measurable impact on health and well-being. A lot of this has to do with brain plasticity, which I have mentioned in past posts, which is the brains ability to strengthen connections and rewire itself when exposed to salient experiences. In a separate piece by Susan Magsamen, she says:

“Research now makes clear that experiencing or creating art sparks a dynamic interplay among brain cells that spearheads billions of changes affecting our thoughts, emotions, and actions. This knowledge elevates the arts to a superpower in its potential for healing and empowerment. Indeed, if we were to design a tool from scratch to improve learning, health, and overall well-being, it would look like the arts.” 05 In one of the first examples of such an experiment, Susan Magsamen, Ivy Ross, and architect Suchi Reddy created an exhibition with Google to test their theories. A Space for Being was a public exhibition that opened in 2019 at the Milan Design Week. The exhibition sought to prove the impact of design on health and well-being by monitoring visitors physiological responses as they walk through a series of uniquely designed spaces. When discussing the project, Suchi Reddy explains her approach to design:

“I really believe that form follows feeling, and feeling is really what
space and architecture are about. Space actually affects people.”


 The three spaces varied in lighting, colors, textures, and sounds to create distinct atmospheres. Physiological responses were recorded through wristbands and presented to visitors at the end of the experience. To their surprise, the visitors’ conscious perception of their feelings within a space did not always align with their body’s response. In some spaces where visitors thought they were most at ease, their wristband results revealed the opposite. When reflecting on this discrepancy, visitors often identified a cognitive bias or social/cultural conditioning that made them feel differently than their initial emotional reaction to the physiological response to the space. I know… it can be a lot to wrap your head around, but this ultimately proves how complicated the mind-body relationship is and how much of an impact the environment can have on this system.
 


25 years later, Damasio’s claim that emotion is inextricably linked to the body and that feeling often comes as a conscious response to the two is scientifically supported by the exhibition. It also proves that the built environment affects humans in a number of ways, ultimately impacting cognitive functioning and health. Most of the time, these effects happen without you noticing, and can impact your mood, productivity, and overall well-being. Consider a typical classroom space. Hopefully it is now clear how important lighting, access to nature, a variety of stimuli, acoustics, and many other factors are to student and teacher happiness and success. In the next month, I will be translating these important classroom elements into a teacher’s manual. This will be available on this website and will offer more research, case studies, and effective strategies to implement into the classroom. 
image and reference links

  1. Chatterjee, Anjan, and Oshin Vartanian. "neuroaesthetics." Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2014
  2. Damasio, Antonio. “Emotions and Feelings”, Descartes Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, New York: Penguin Books, 1994
  3. Gallagher, Winifred. “How Places Affect People.” Architectural Record, February 1999
  4. Magsamen, Susan, and Ivy Ross. Your Brain On Art: How the Arts Transform Us. First edition. New York: Random House, 2023 
  5. Magsamen, Susan. “Your Brain on Art: the Case for Neuroaesthetics.” Cerebrum 2019
  6. https://reddymade.design/projects/a-space-for-being/
  7. https://images.app.goo.gl/UEJT83RhAQE7HTuv8
  8. https://blog.google/technology/design/a-space-for-being-salone-del-mobile-milan/
YSOA SP25 Independent Study