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Boring Architecture Is Starving Your Brain

Thomas Heatherwick believes architecture has a “nutritional value” to society—and that the public desperately deserve a better offering.

Heatherwick cites, for instance, the research of Colin Ellard, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Waterloo who studies the neurological and psychological impact of the built environment. Less is not more.” This is backed by the research of psychologists Rachel and Stephen Kaplan, who in the 1980s developed Attention Restoration Theory, which posited that people’s concentration improves when spending time in natural environments. “To build a tower in the city of London, which by global standards isn’t that big, takes the equivalent of 92,000 tons of carbon emissions.” As a result of this, estimates show that the construction industry now emits five times more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than aviation.

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