Healthier buildings, healthier brains, healthier economies

The Global Head of the Humanise Campaign considers how insight from neuroscience offers a chance not only to improve our urban environments, but to strengthen our economies.

Away from the noisy debates and geopolitics at Davos last month, the McKinsey Health Institute and the World Economic Forum launched a new report: The Human Advantage: Stronger Brains in the Age of AI. At its launch, Harris Eyre, Executive Director of the newly formed Global Brain Economy Initiative, urged leaders to invest in our brains. Eyre argued that by boosting ‘brain capital’ – encompassing both brain health and brain skills – and driving the ‘brain economy’ we can pave the way for healthier lives, and also power innovation, boost resilience and generate long term economic growth. In simple terms: healthy brains lead to wealthy nations.

What does this mean in practice and what role can buildings play? We know something is going wrong. In the UK 3 in 4 people say that the way buildings look impacts their mental health. In South Korea it’s even starker, with 90% of people saying buildings affect how they feel.

What are building exteriors doing to our brains?

Over the past two years, we’ve been working with some of the world’s leading neuroscientists to understand how the outsides of buildings shape our brains, bodies and behaviours. Last year we published Why the outsides of buildings matter to human health: a global evidence review.

Studies show that long, blank walls or harsh, repetitive façades can trigger stress responses such as elevated heart rate and visual fatigue. In Seoul, Dr Cleo Valentine found that the visual stress caused by contemporary facades was over 30% higher than experienced around traditional ‘Hanok’ buildings. Over time, repeated exposure to monotonous environments can even contribute to chronic stress.

How can buildings support our brain health?

Our brains are wired to respond to certain patterns: they need rhythm, texture, and variation. Buildings with visual complexity and human-scale features help us feel calmer and ease mental fatigue. Even subtle traces of nature on building façades, such as leaf-like patterns, curved forms, green walls or organic textures, can reduce stress and improve mood.

Winston Churchill was not wrong when he said: “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us”. The outsides of buildings have both psychological and physiological impacts on humans.

As cities all over the world look to drive economic growth through development and regeneration, we cannot ignore the role of the built environment in supporting and boosting our brain health and brain skills.

The Building Brains Coalition, of which Humanise is a partner, is a growing global network working to influence those with the power to take a new approach to development. At Davos it also published a new report: Building Brains: exploring the intersection of architecture and neuroscience to position the built environment as a strategy for brain health. It sets out how, through designing our urban environments more intentionally, we can boost the brain economy.

We have the science, and architects and designers have the creative know-how, to design with human need in mind. It’s now time for city leaders and developers to stem the tide of bland, monotonous and stressful environments and instead build visually rich and engaging cities in which we can all thrive – individually, socially and economically. Our brains need it, and so do our economies.