Elements of Enriched Environments - Tye Farrow

Well, good morning, and it's nice to spend some time with all of you. What I want to do is spend some time on talking about the things that I'm wrestling with and we're wrestling with in the firm, and... before COVID, but now I think probably even more importantly with the conditions that we're finding ourselves in COVID is... The question is, what causes health? I think we, in the age of COVID, we think of our frontline workers, and we're excited about them about keeping us safe, and we're banging our pots and celebrating. But I think the realisation that I've come to that really, they can't do it on their own. It's really not their job on their own, and I see that.

I'm based in Toronto, based in Canada, but the stat from The New York Times is worrisome that says that there in the United States, that a significant amount of the people in that country have chronic conditions that put them at serious peril from COVID. If I look at that and the stats compared to Australia, they're quite similar. You look at these stats from the number of people that have either one, two, or three chronic diseases, which COVID loves.

Then, if we translate this into where we are in our healthcare spending, I think this is very similar to Australia. You look at three quarters of what we spend in the budget the government spends is around chronic diseases, but also things that are linked to our lifestyle. That has really led me to the quest that what we should be focused on is clearly to eradicate the virus, but equally, how could we eradicate hospitals as we presently know them, as they presently exist?

What I mean, that they're not just dealing with the episodic events that come in like COVID, but the 75% that relate to lifestyle or arguably, how we are designing zoning and creating our communities around us. That's really the basis that hospitals, I believe, are for repairs or the episodic things that come along. But the thing that I'm wrestling with is what causes health or true health, and I'll define that in a minute.

We talk a lot about, as architects in the design community, about high-performance buildings, which is usually about mechanical systems and about the envelopes, but I wonder about how do we create high-performance buildings around our abilities to thrive and grow, and do we have the ability as architects, designers, clients, and owners to tune space or adjust space? It's tied to, for me, this German word stimmung, which is really about the atmosphere, the subtleties, the mood about space that we have a physical and emotional reaction to.

That reaction is very important because it has a relationship to our ability to learn, to absorb things, and it also, as clearly we know, has a relationship to you, and me, and our social interaction, and our ability to engage in ideas, and thoughts, and thinking. That really ties back to this idea is how can we activate health, cause health as opposed to stop disease or bad things from happening? That ties to the title of the thought and the research that I'm involved with around this concept of enriched environments.

So what I'd like to do is lay out this theory of enriched environments, elements of enriched environments. I'd like to then frame it really around the relationship of design and design's impact on ecological, social, physical, and what I've deemed mind health. I'd like to define what I believe health is as opposed to a pathogenic view, talk a little bit about an analogy of architecture as food that sustains and nourishes us, and then I'd like to give you a few examples of these enriched environment elements based on our work.

So there are some amazing research that's out there. This back from the 1950s that a guy on the West Coast in ULCA looked at rats that were in enriched environments and ones that were in stimulating environments performed better in the way they solved the tests that were given to them as opposed to rats that were in caged environments. If you look at that, also, another study in the 1960s from University of California Berkeley, it said that rats that were in stimulating environments, not overstimulated environments, that their synapses that connects the neurons within the brains... I've got this from the studies that I've been going through. It increased the synapses by 25%. Really, quite a remarkable statistic.

This then moved into some other information, really interesting for me, around cognitive reserves, which is really about the idea of your brain as a muscle and strengthening that. They looked at people that had no signs of dementia that were very active. But when they did an autopsy after they died, found that they had advanced Alzheimer's, and they tied this back to the ability of the brain to create reserves, and they linked that specifically to the environments of which they inhabited, they spent their time. The research also is fascinating for me because it also looks at the opposite that if you're in environments that deprive the stimulation, not overstimulation, but just the nurturing of your brain, that it impairs cognitive development. Really, quite a remarkable research.

This one up, this is from United States, went to the Supreme Court, and they looked at these people that were in solitary confinement. One specifically for just shy of 30 years for all, but one hour a day in a windowless prison. No interaction with anybody. What they found is it damaged the hippocampus, which is at the very bottom of the brain, and it's responsible for spatial orientation, emotion memory. Effectively, by doing that, what it did is it began to... If you look at your brain as if it's like a plant, it withered and faded away. Quite remarkable.

The similar evidence is the same for newborn babies. If they're deprived, if they're away from their mother's care, same thing happens. So what that leads me to try and put together is what does that mean in relationship to the environments that we inhabit, where we live. Great evidence from the Polytechnic of Milan, which I have some involvement with the guys there. If you're in a very small apartments during COVID, no balconies, the levels of depression are quite significant. What about our learning environments that are windowless or where work if you take the same evidence and you translate it into our built environment?

So the question is, what happens? What if health, true health was a basis of judging every environment of which we inhabit? What if we were as architects, clients, professionals, and public bodies dedicate it to creating environments that enhanced, and caused, and stimulated health? What happens if by doing this, the public equally would not tolerate, which I've termed "dis-ease" in the sense of discomfort, depression, and in fact, boredom, and the numbing of our minds?

What is very clear to me is there is no such thing as neutral space. What we create either causes health or in fact, it limits our ability to thrive. That is economically, socially, culturally, and certainly, environmentally. So the question is, why is that relevant to us within the field that we work? What's the relationship of it to, in fact, the way we create our communities, and build our cities and our towns, and more so as we move forward?

Well, what we do know is that the way we design things has a significant impact on environmental health as really the first leg of a four-leg stool or a table that supports optimised health. The second one is clearly societal health, and we know the way we build things has a significant impact on the health of our communities. Arguably, I would say that the whole... the Black Lives Matter movement that's come out, a lot of the issues about the communities, the separation and the segregation, has been created by bylaws and design that the architectural community has created.

Clearly, our physical health has a significant impact on the way we design where we live. I mean, the whole idea of food deserts. I would argue that, in fact, they're food swamps, that there is so much terrible food that's available to certain people that is terrible for their outcomes. The design community clearly, as you know, has had a significant bubbling to the surface, and there's no shortage of challenges, or systems, or standards, or guidelines that begin to address some of these issues. I would argue that it has become or close to it becoming a standard of care. For example, I don't go to my clients and ask them, "Do you want the off-gassing carpet or not?"

So we began to evolve in that direction, but I believe that that to some degree is really beginning to focus on the hardware of who we are, and it isn't focusing as much on the operating systems back to the neuroscience side of things that I'll get to in a minute. That has a relationship to the interceptive, our perception of the inside of our body, the proprioceptive, which is around the things around it, and the exteroceptive, which is really we have an extraordinary ability to sense all of the environment, the physical environment around us and certainly that of which we create.

That has a relationship really to this idea of mind health, and I'm saying that as mind health as a muscle as opposed to really as often named mental health. There's this emerging body of research, and partnerships between neuroscientists and architecture at the University of Venice I think is arguably the leading place of research. There's another one, the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture in Southern California, which is another extraordinary body. They have a conference coming up in September, which I'll be presenting in. But what that's looking at is that we have cognitive reactions to our space, but we also have these precognitive reactions that arrive before we realise, and they have a physiological as well as a psychological reaction into our body. A physical response, a reaction that has an emotional and a chemical reaction.

I want to really frame that in, really, the research and the evolutions of us as well as the mammals before us. Our ancient brains were really focused on these things of really around survival, seeking fear, rage, loss, getting food, worried about somebody eating us, rage, and attacking somebody, or lust about reproducing. That evolved from when there were single cell organisms that were just really around survival, the evolution into reptiles, which was really back to that seeking rage, fear, lust side of things. As we moved into mammals, we had the emotional reactions around play and grief again to evolve then further as we moved into the level of being a monkey.

This was interesting because it was really about the idea of nurturing, that evolution into nurturing and caring for children about the social bonds and beginning to build communities, and then into the neanderthal time, which power and influencing our surroundings and our emotional responses to that, and more so to our more recent family members that moved into really that sophisticated development of language, and thinking, and acting, and figurative arts, and painting as we know certainly in Australia, which I've visited the cave painting, religious concerning our built environment as significant.

But that, again, to overlay really another more significant range of emotions, and those things had a relationship to our perception of wellness and wellbeing in this larger sphere of what's known as background positive bodily feelings. Lightness, freshness, relaxation, and these other elements beyond just the four basic elements. But if you look at that full range, and this is one theory around the constructivist theory of emotion, that up and down, there's arousal, arousal, and very calm, and very activated from one side really to the happiness to the unpleasant and the disgust really to the serene and content. So the question is, can we begin to tune those elements?

We know there's a whole range of things, physiological and psychological, that shaped our emotions and clearly our relationships, experiences, cultural, societal symbols, biological reactions. But clearly, all the evidence, and the science, and the neurological overlay pushes towards the environmental influence on our sense of wellbeing and what health is at the end of the day. So that, then I'm going to move into what my definition is and perception of health is, and so I'm going to... Hold on to your seats. I'm going to cover about 5,000 years of the perception of what health is, and try and put it into a larger context or at least my context.

So where we are in the last hundred years I believe is in a zone that's more pathogenic that's focused on diseases and what causes disease as opposed to salutogenic. If you don't know the word, I'll get into it a little bit. You should look it up, but really, it relates to a holistic idea, saluto health and genic or genesis on what causes health. We have in the last hundred years been in the zone that's focused on preventing bad things from happening. Proactive maybe opening us up and looking inside predictive, now beginning to say you may have the odds of something bad happening to you. I'm interested in what actually activates something good that happens in your health as opposed to stopping something bad. It's a different sort of focus. The environment has a significant impact on that, and that's the way it was 5,000 somewhat years ago around Ancient Chinese medicine. It was this idea of creating harmony really in our lives.

The Ancient Greek Aristotle, a really amazing idea around eudaimonia. If you don't know it, it's worth getting your head into, but these ideas of flourishing that's tied both to ethics, philosophy. The grandfather of, one would argue, medicine, Hippocrates, wasn't just about disease, but it was really about the idea of diet lifestyle and our environmental health. Continued on into the Romans where the whole idea of bringing in fresh water, Equinox, the fantastic public baths, and sewer systems. But then, moved into this period, and if you look at the list of items that are on the slide, these things are all coming back to our daily lives, and our practise, and our ability to engage this thing. Naturopathic medicine, the idea of homoeopathic medicine, hydrotherapy, herbalism are all back.

That then took us into a time in mid 1800s. In fact, very similar to where we are right now. The pandemics. Three of them, cholera that went through London. Like a lot of the parts of the world. This guy, John Snow, began to understand what spread disease, and that was really the foundations of understanding germ therapy in the third quarter of the 1800s. But what that began to do was develop the basis of evidence-based Western medicine, and that began to tie into something that I would argue is a watershed in the last 5,000 years of our perception of health and wellbeing, which there was this Carnegie Report. The Flexner Report came out in 1910 that effectively said to all leading medical centres that if it wasn't evidence-based Western medicine, all of the Chinese medicine, everything before it, that was all effectively witchcraft. We pitched out all of the thousands of years of our understanding of wellbeing to a very, very narrow perception of what health is, which has dictated us for the last hundred years.

That paralleled also with the rise of chronic disease, the tsunami of chronic disease that came into Western society, and it was significant because it had a relationship that we weren't moving anymore. We are driving more, more tobacco. The quality of our food had changed. The whole things that we designed like the suburbs, and if you look at it in medicine terms, it would be called a common source epidemic, not particularly different than what we're facing right now. But in the late '60s, '70s, suddenly, this wellness movement came back. Remember some of you Jane Fonda, spandex, and the whole rise of exercise movements, the videos that everybody watch? Not particularly different than the videos that we're seeing now or the live streaming. That came back into our consciousness.

Then, Antonovsky, if you don't know him, again, this is the guy that coined the idea of salutogenesis that's being translated into salutogenesis as it relates to architecture by Alan Dilani, a friend of mine from Stockholm. But really, the idea of the sense of purpose, meaningfulness, manageability is the key determinant to positive health outcomes. Wellness has then gone mainstream in really the last 20 years or so both in the workplace as well as all leading academic medical schools have shifted back to integrative medicine, which is really the foundation of the last 5,000 years.

We'll look at statistics of who's getting into the wellness economy. Look at all the technology providers. This sector is growing exponentially, 3.6% compared to the annual growth rate. It is a future where we are going, and back to this idea is, "How do we accelerate health at the end of the day?" and back to the idea of, "What's the relationship to what we build and create as societies to really the activation of this right-hand side to the diagram of taking some of these unpleasant sides, and how can we use space as a tonic to enhance health and accelerate optimal health?" The question is, "What's the role of what we do as architects, policy planners on changing and shaping our public environment?"

So to illustrate that, what I want to do is use the idea of food, architecture is like food, as a metaphor to really... to further fill this out as an idea. So the idea that our environments, they nurture us, and they enhance and enrich not only our minds, but our bodies and however you want to define spiritual health at the end of the day, or they do the exact opposite. I think the word "starve" is appropriate for the discussion, and a lot of the spaces that we occupy like empty calories. They leave us empty in a very short, short period.

What I mean by that is if we were together, I would say to you and ask you, "What do you see on the screen?" Everybody says, "Well, Tai, of course, it's a hamburger. I mean, what do you think? It's a burger." I say, "Well, in fact, it's not a hamburger." Really, what it is, it misrepresents a lot of the places where we live, where we work, where we heal, and where we learn. It's transactional. Meaning, it's functional. So this burger is amazing. It's functional in the sense that you don't need a knife or a fork. You don't need a plate to put on it. You can just hold it with your hands. It gives you protein. It's got a little crunch. It's got a little colour with the mustard as you can see. But what it does is it doesn't give you any more than it's asked. Arguably, what it will do is leave you empty within an hour. In fact, I think with the variety of the sodium and other things, it will leave you worse off at the end of the day.

I think that's very similar to a lot of the places we build. We say they need to be functional, but that's it, and they don't offer any more. That's different as we know from a lot of the super foods that we're aware of like the blueberry. They're packed with all kinds of mineral and vitamins that are extraordinary to our bodies, our minds, and everything else. In architecture, the basis of our research, there are super vitamins that are out there that we can intentionally add to the places we inhabit. That's back to these elements, this idea of  stimmung by creating these atmosphere.

In fact, I think you can think of them almost as if spices that we begin to add that may be like earthier, nuttier, or sour every... bitter that we all interpret in different ways, but they are very intentional. They create a specific mood that they tune the space around these constructive human behaviours, and they have a relationship to moving towards on the positive side of the equation, which then begin to enhance our relationships, memory, and other things. So those elements, at least the way the... The elements of enriched environments. These are the ones that I'm defining through the research, and I'll walk you through that right now.

So they're around the idea of variety, vitality, sense of occurrence, optimism, nature. It's a primal one, this idea of solid stillness, intimacy. I think it's probably no more important now. Authenticity, generosity. Think of generosity of spaces that we are in or the opposite like the transitional space, but let me walk through them with some of the examples of the work, and you can see what you think.

So the idea of variety and vitality. I think it's very important, so this gets back to those primal issues that have seeking and curiosity being able to enhance that idea, that sense of discovery of the spaces that we begin to occupy this. You can see the bridge that you... the curve. You can't see them. You want to see what's on the other side. This is similar to a hospital about 100,000 square metres that we built. You can see the primary spaces. They face south. They begin. They face the sun. They curve around to the end. It's not a straight actual line, but that idea of discovery sense... overlooking the stairs, exactly the same that your perspective begins to move. As you go up the stair, you begin to discover different sights and views as you move up.

On a much smaller scale, this is a COVID assembly in-patient hospital that we've been involved in with COVID. You can see the clear story up above the main staff working areas, the patient recovery areas. It's a very, very dense floor plate, but the characteristic is this clear story in the middle with the rooms on the side, staff areas on the other side. It's very dense in plan, the clear story area up above, tying back to wood. It's built of these CLT, in fact, the world's first cross-laminated timber blocks. They've been developed out of Canada. You can use them. Obtain them anywhere in the world.

For me, it's a very exciting development because it uses no glue. It's tied together with these metal strips, mechanically fastened in a press with pressure. You can make over a thousand of this in a span of an hour using the sticky metal tying it together like a metal Velcro, and it creates these things with absolute precision with the same quality of a CLT, the same strength and performance as a concrete block, and the same ability to stock up and simplicity as a Lego block. No mortar, and it's a game-changer because we know the labour is the primary cost in building. There's no labour that surround us. This thing requires no skill. This whole week, the company is assembling them on five different properties.

What's important about the rapid assembly in a very simple building, very dense that we've seen in a lot of these dark cavernous spaces on the COVID buildings is the important thing with this, with a clear story back to the variety and vitality is while we are lying in the bed, conscious or not, you can begin to look out of the window. That's important both for staff and for the patients because it begins to connect you with the change of seasons, and time, and day as opposed to being in an environment of which you have lost sense and any hope for a normal sense of our life. So that, variety and vitality, has an important element of enriched environments for a large environment or a small one.

This idea of sense of occurrence, this in the example of a learning environment, venues where you feel engaged and stimulated. This is a school that we've just opened. We've bent it into a curve. This is the main lobby that you walk in. The glulam beams, now laminated deck, tree-like structures. So a whole idea of light, change of season, and this really passing of time. This over the span of really about three hours, but that sense really at the end of the day that we're alive and the sense that we're alive that's translated by the environments of which are around us. This other idea about optimism, it's maybe something that we don't talk a lot about in the present condition of which we find ourselves, but I think it is fundamental of the architecture that we accrete that translates this idea of abundance in life.

This is a cancer centre in Jerusalem, in the heart of Jerusalem. One of the most prominent sites that's under construction. It's the largest wood construction within the region in the Middle East. It's a symbol of a butterfly. A cancer centre that's very fragile, but it's symmetrical in its shape. It's shaped in a way that can capture light and the changes of season that begin to fall upon it. It comes from this analogy of this fable, this ancient Jewish fable, which is about the wise man and the cynic. The cynic is a young man. The wise man... This whole fable is I think about a rabbi, but the cynic wanted to trick the wise man who is in the main square of the community every day, helping people.

He said, "Wow, I'm the young guy. I'm so wise. I'm going to trick this cynic. So I've got an idea. I'm going to run out into the field. I'm going to grab a butterfly in my hands. I'm going to walk back into the town square. I'm going to ask a question to the wise man, and I'm going to trick him. He's going to give the wrong answer, and everybody is going to laugh, and I'm going to be seen as really the smart guy." So he went out. He grabbed a butterfly in the field. He came back, and he said, "Okay, wise man. In my hands, I've got a butterfly, and tell me if that butterfly is alive or dead."

He thought to himself, "Well, I'm the clever guy, and if the wise man says it's dead, I'm going to open my hands, and I'm going to let the butterfly fly away in the sky, and everybody will laugh at the wise man. If the wise man says it's dead, I will crush the butterfly in my hand, and I'll drop it on the ground. Equally, I'll be the clever guy." So he asked the wise man, and the wise man sat back. He sat for a minute, and then he said to the cynic, he said, "The answer to your question is it's all in your hands. You have the ability to decide if something is alive or it's dead, and you can choose."

For the cancer centre, it was the same thing because as you go into your battle for cancer, you have the ability to choose your mindset on how you're going to see every day. Equally, the people that are going to work there have the ability to choose their perspective, and the building needs to radiate that on the outside. It needs to radiate that optimism that this is a journey that everybody is on, and it's one that we can begin to move through. The architecture has the ability to communicate that.

The elements are also tied to nature. Our primal one, as I mentioned, we are tied both in the idea of biophilia or chronophilia around chronoculture is very important. That's not just seeing nature, the natural shapes, natural light, natural material, biophilia, and really these ideas of these fractal patterns that radiate with us. Clearly, that's important in a bunch of the products and the buildings that I've shown you, this cancer centre that looks like a treeline garden both in the structure, the glulam that's all structural that we had to go all the way to the Minister of Health in the province of Ontario to convince him that it was the same cost. In fact, less than it was still to use wood and would also radiate positive things to the people that used it.

This idea now, which I think is more important than ever about the solidness, stillness, this idea of an unplugged architecture that we can begin to connect to. What is within us has been really no more important than has I think been brought to the forefront. This is an education building, a school in Ottawa, the capital of Canada, but it's in the northern area that has these very deep and long winters, but this idea of stillness as a basis. The existing building, the new edition, which also tries to radiate some of these idea of optimism as you begin to arrive. Glulam, now laminated timber roof, connecting these two buildings as a gateway, but this idea even when it's filled, this idea of quietness as a basic of architecture I think is something we need to spend more time and focus in.

Authenticity, a very important one. Rootedness. Right now, it's a key piece in COVID. This is an amazing lady. It's a wellness resort outside of Toronto. In the north, there are tree houses that you go and again, to connect with nature, food therapy, and others. You can see the shape of it is tied to this idea of the maple pea. Many of us are familiar with Sumatra, the idea of the public areas out front. The bedrooms and the bathroom in behind, and the tree house that you inhabit. Really, this glowing and beginning to be something that poke its head out into nature.

Really, the last element that I think I'll touch on, which really we're spending a lot of time in in our firm, not only like I see this, the impact of what we build and creating a sense of purpose, but this idea of generosity that what we create gives more than it takes. It's generous in the idea of our communities where we heal, where we learn. It's aspirational. It communicates that that we are part of something bigger as individuals, as part of a society.

This project is something for a very large bridge in the city of Toronto that spans a beautiful ravine. Gorgeous watercourse between two parts of the city. One that's really the high street, the fancy shops where all the business is, and the other, a very vibrant... a great community where you go for eating, and life, and street life. The question is, could we use the single-use piece of infrastructure created a hundred years ago with these huge concrete, massive concrete piers that then have these lightweight steel frames? Could we use these to support communities?

Places where we live, libraries, community centre, micro retail, and the idea is that creating mix-use infrastructure isn't a new idea. We designed our communities as being mix-use. Our streets. That's a fundamental basis of what we do, but is it a new idea? Clearly, we know it's not. If we look at Venice, we look at Florence, there's about five of these things around the world. When this bridge was created, it was amazing because of the spectacular views that it gave to the ravine, the city, and the watercourse beyond. But today, it's a wasteland. It's traffic-dominated the length of five football field.

The worse part about it is in the early 2000s, it was the place before or the place where there was 500 suicides, people jumping off the bridge. Before this, what was called a luminous fail was at it. This barrier, this suicide barrier was added to much fanfare. The problem with it, it was a great answer, beautiful design answer to the wrong question. A pathogenic response as opposed to a salutogenic response of creating a vibrant community that would bring people together that we could begin to create relationships among us.

This barrier was created. Interesting thing, the sad thing, the desperate thing was that the suicide numbers didn't reduce in the city of Toronto. They just moved somewhere else, and so that was the idea that we could take this thing and create a community above it that would have hotels, social incubators, micro stalls within it that were layered on top of these massive concrete piers down below. So you can see the transit down below, the market retail, the restaurants, the libraries, the social incubators, the housing, and the linear park, and Hills and Dales above it.

The housing is using, again, this very interesting grip metal that begins to take the sticky metal, these hooks, almost like a Velcro with two hooks on both sides, the metal-ended layers with very, very thin pieces of veneer. As you layer it into a form, it creates almost a truss, and it holds that shape to anything that's massively strong. So we create these very strong tubes. Instead of a square box, we roll these things up. We then begin to add the storage, the space inside.

Instead of the boxes that we've been occupying for houses in COVID, it begins to create something with these shallow volts. They're very tight property at 40, 35, 40 square metres that have above kitchen, bathroom underneath. But it's something that then begins to relate to that, that sort of sense of home and embraced again in a very, very, very small space. A linear park on top. Again, trying to create those beautiful views and engagements both of the landscape, the long views, and engagement of the watercourse, and the ravines, and the city beyond.

The elements, the pieces of how can we begin to intentionally in this time of when we're put on to our back foot, we're feeling uncomfortable and unsettled, what is the role of what we do as architects, as owners, as clients, as municipal officials to recharge, to reinvigorate the places where we live that begins to create this societal, physiological, or psychological underpinned by science, neuroscience research, amazing research? But then, to create... Again, it's to create the conditions of... We can enhance our social bonds that have been so battered of late to enhance and stimulate our learning, our memory as a society for one reason, to create the conditions of which we can survive, thrive, and flourish, and move beyond the defensive stage of where we've been as a society to move forward in a very robust way of recreating and enhancing those fantastic bonds of society.

Those are some of the things that have been weighing heavily on my mind at the work that we're doing in the office and the discussions that we've been having with our clients and in fact, the people that lead our community. So I hope the stuff that we've been wrestling with and sharing that with you, I hope it gives you something to take away with and use it in a way that can move us all forward globally beyond where we have been in this fragile time.

"What strategies would you recommend to us help convince a client that values budget more than carbon footprint or the resulting health benefits when occupying a wood building to build over a steel frame or concrete building?”

Well, for me, what I found with all of the clients either if they're education, if they're leading with communities is all I've had a discussion about is how do we enhance the performance, create the conditions of which all of the people in your building can thrive? That's either the kids that are learning, the adults that are at university and learning, the people that are working in offices, and I think it's not just... It's going back to thinking about optimal health as a tabletop that has four legs.

Environmental health and ecological health is very important. Our physical health is very important. The health of our societies and our communities either within a university or within a business, that community is very important. Also, our mind health is important, and the space is a driver for that. When I talk about our clients, the CEOs, the head of schools, or others, they all know that intuitively. I say, "Where do you do your best thinking, and can you picture that in your mind's eye?" They say, "Oh, yeah. Definitely." I say, "Is that where you work?" They say, "Of course not. I work at a terrible cubicle or something that doesn't have any daylight." I said, "Well, what's that doing to your performance? The quality of the air and the stuff." People know that intuitively. Often, people will say, "Well, what's the evidence that supports that?"

Well, there's tonnes of evidence, the neuroscientists that's supporting it. But I say, "Does that mean something to you inside your gut, your gut reaction? Am I saying something crazy?" They say, "Well, of course not." So we need to get into those discussions that are very human, and everyone that I've had a discussion about it, I've said it's backed up with the neuroscience stuff that I supported, and I've had zero pushback. In fact, there are people that are coming to me and said, "Tai, I understand that. I need your help."

So those are the discussions I think that we need to... We need to start talking about the bigger environment of health. Architects and the community been doing very well on the ecological sites, sustained well. But if you look at the mind health of just that wood and the study that we all know well on how that makes me feel and the chemical in the mental, physiological, and psychological, it's all documented.

Absolutely. It is something that just seemed intuitively obvious that you don't necessarily need to read all the research in the world about.

Does exposed timber have an impact on the stimulating potential of spaces, or is it just the design? So I guess how do you use timber to enhance this?

I think the timber is an extraordinary one, for me, is just that those blocks, the cross-laminated blocks, the grip blocks, grip metal blocks that I showed you. There is a whole insulation that's happening for one client in a school, in a big gymnasium. They're dividing the gymnasium into four classrooms, and there's a mezzanine overlooking that, and the company was installing them, and they're exposed wood. Those teachers that came in and were looking down overtop of the wood. It's beautiful hardwood, summer and softwood, and I said, "What do you think?"

The one teacher said, "It looks amazing," and she said, "The thing that I'm disappointed was that those rooms are for senior kindergarten." She said, "I'm disappointed because I'm not teaching grade one this year. I wish I was surrounded by this wood." So what's the reaction to that as opposed to being a drywall or something else? There is something intuitive that's deep down inside of us that we respond to, and there's tonnes of studies that relate to it.

So that's an anecdotic sort of reaction from just this week that we resonate deeply for some reason because I think we can see the grain of the wood, we can see growth, and life, and time. Maybe that's the elements of biophilia, but it is undeniably powerful. There's the evidence, but it is back and back to that, that resonator, which is our gut that something happens there. So you can follow the science if you want and the evidence there, or you can follow your gut that's based back to, in fact, the neuroscience response.

There was some amazing case studies in schools in Australia with... or across the world. You got the baby boomer generation getting retirement age. So is there any precedence in aged care or senior living using these concepts?

Well, it's a sector that we're, in fact, very busy in. In fact, I know a lot of brilliant work that's been done in Australia. There's a group that we've been involved with that's been doing... at Australia that's been doing some amazing work in that zone in Australia. I think that primal response is the same in the school system as it is in the older age, and part of that is back to our sense of quality, our sense of time, the emotional response, the idea of being connected to something that has age and longevity as a basis of it.

It's an area that we're really busy. There's one that's on our website that's on the West Coast of Canada that, in fact, the whole basis of timber is what we use both in shape, and form, and material. In fact, I would add also that in mental health facilities, there are some great adolescent mental health facilities in Australia that I've had some involvement with that support the same idea as here and in fact, the materials.

Can you suggest some books that are a good point of start on this topic?

There is a variety of books. One, a New York Times author, which is called Welcome to My World or Welcome to Our World. Richardson is her name. Goldring. Richardson Goldring. It's a fantastic read of linking together the neuroscience and architecture. The other website to go to is the Academy of Design for Health. It's great resources. The Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture. It's another great resource. The other one that I would recommend is the University of Venice, UV, The Master of Neuroscience, Applied Architecture and Design. You should get your heads into that.

The whole science, the FMRIs, the whole idea of technology connecting up with beginning to quantify what we know intuitively is a... For me, it's a very exciting area. I'm presenting the first draught of my thesis next week on the master's degree. So I've got probably 50 books I'd love to circulate a bibliography. I'm up to my eyeballs. I think Amazon, the delivery guy of Amazon and I seem to be best friends by now. But anyways, I'd love to share that. Go to our website for healthpartners.ca. There's lots of information on the subject there.

There was research done by Forest and Wood Products Australia and conducted by Pollinate into the effect of having exposed wooden surfaces in office buildings. All they found was increased productivity, lower sick days and absenteeism.