Towards Responsive Interiors: Practicing Neuroscience-Informed Design Approaches in Interior Design Education

Abstract

Growing insights from neuroscience—here, understood as an umbrella term for a number of empirical disciplines that study the relation brain, nervous system, genes, and behaviour—and its inquiries into how human behaviour and well-being is affected by interiors can enrich and inform the design of interiors and its properties innovatively. Interior design education can play a key role in linking the insights stemming from research and turn the question of human, experiential responsiveness into an elementary perspective of the design process. In this paper, we explain a pedagogical method developed for one of our graduate studios that addresses this issue and create a framework for a neuroscience-informed focus. Additionally, we illustrate the outcomes of student work created in this studio through two projects, each having a unique focus relating to interiors and the question of human behaviour and well-being, i.e., visual complexity and affordances. With the establishment of this master studio, we aim to provide students with an awareness and insights into how the many fields of study within neuroscience can facilitate, support, confirm, or adjust design knowledge.