By Jamie Friddle

During his work to cure polio in the early 1950s, Jonas Salk was smothered by a case of researcher’s block so debilitating that he retreated to one of Assisi’s abbeys in Italy to recuperate. As he later recounted in a 1992 speech to the American Institute of Architects, the abbey’s serene lines, contemplative corners and sweeping spaces some how stimulated his imagination and seeded the breakthrough that would become the Salk Vaccine.

Architects, interior designers, philosophers and psychologists have speculated on the power of place and its effect on the human spirit for centuries. But it’s only within the last several years that the disciplines have joined forces, most notably in the 2003 inauguration of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture by the San Diego branch of the American Institute of Architects.

The data they’ve collected corroborate most, if not all, of our intuitions. Here’s what we know: natural light and natural air stimulate productivity and creativity in children and at work; low light and noise barriers help premature babies develop aura land optical nerves safely; low ceilings promote fine attention, while high ceilings promote expansive thinking; and nature — indoors or out —calms us down and scrubs the air.

Now that designers are meeting “environmental psychologists” over blueprints, the world may soon understand the mystery of Salk’s experience. And with any luck, if this trend continues, all homes, work and play spaces will be as inspirational as abbeys. Here are a few bright ideas to look out for and cheer on.

(En)Lightening Workspaces
“I think one of the delicious things about my life is walking into my office,”says Michael Lehrer of Lehrer Architects LA. To Lehrer, whose firm just won the 2007 Institute Honor Award for Interior Architecture from the American Institute of Architects, architecture is like music. It’s “about anticipation, procession, and memory,” he says. “You approach a place, you move through it and you have a variety of experiences in it.”

Lehrer wanted employees to feel good about where they worked. Desk spaces are oversized and laid out to emphasize individual and communal workspace simultaneously. Two giant bay doors cut into one wall allow light and air to pass through from the garden during the day. “We’re grounded because we have daylight,” he says. “We know what’s going on outside.”

Architect Deborah Richmond of Touraine Richmond Architects in Venice, Calif., agrees. “In workspace environments, it is a ‘best practice’ among architects to provide a democratic distribution of natural light and air, which are proven to increase productivity and reduce sick days among employees.” To accomplish this in her firm’s recent remodel of the offices of Los Angeles’s Natural History Museum, polycarbonate and drywall were interpolated with empty space to create privacy while also allowing air and light to filter through to the interior. They call it “the barcode wall.”

Street Trees — Seeding the Concrete Jungle
“The street tree world is a small world,” confesses Caitlin Cahill, a Ph.D in environmental psychology who teaches community studies at the University of Utah. But ever since graduating from City University of New York’s renowned environmental psychology program, Cahill has been diligently working to turn on as many people as possible to the importance of urban greenery.

“Research has shown that connections with nature have a relaxing effect on people and reduce violence,” says Cahill. Unfortunately for many city-dwellers, trees are the sole contact with nature they have in a day.

Cahill’s studies have shown that street trees grow better in beds together, not in single “tree pits,” which make them more vulnerable to neglect and vandalism. “Trees are not just a place you pass by or your dog pees on,” she asserts. Water and prune that tree. Kiss it. Make it yours.