Research from Harvard University reveals a startling truth: humans now spend more time indoors than whales spend underwater. While we’re acutely aware of how pollutants harm marine life, we rarely apply the same level of scrutiny to our built environments—despite spending the vast majority of our lives within them.
What if health became the baseline for evaluating every building, every public space? What if, rather than asking how architecture makes us feel, we asked how it could help us feel better?
Beyond Neutral Space
There is no such thing as a neutral space. The environments we inhabit fundamentally shape our psychological, emotional, and even biological states. Yet contemporary design often overlooks this. Modern medicine—and by extension, architecture—has long been dominated by a pathogenic mindset: focused on diagnosing disease rather than cultivating health.
Medical science recognizes over 8,000 diseases. Why, then, haven’t we catalogued 8,000 contributors to health and well-being? The answer may lie in what we choose to look for.
Introducing Salutogenic Design
A new architectural approach—salutogenesis—offers a promising alternative. Coined in 1979 by Israeli-American sociologist Aaron Antonovsky, the term combines salus (Latin for health) and genesis (origin). It shifts the focus from treating illness to fostering the conditions that create health.
Salutogenic architecture is grounded in three key principles:
Comprehensibility: Is a space cognitively clear and legible? Can we intuitively understand how to navigate and use it?
Manageability: Do we feel a sense of agency in the space? Can we adapt our environment to suit our needs and circumstances?
Meaningfulness: Does the space feel purposeful and emotionally resonant? Does it connect us to something greater than ourselves?
These concepts are not esoteric. They manifest in design details we encounter daily. Is the entrance to a building clear? Is the wayfinding intuitive? Does the interior layout foster a sense of connection or disorientation?
Buildings as Therapy
Evidence increasingly shows that thoughtful architectural interventions can trigger physiological responses—reducing cortisol (the stress hormone), while boosting serotonin and endorphins (associated with well-being). In other words, buildings can act as non-invasive, therapeutic tools.
This repositions architecture as a key agent in health—no longer passive, but active. A salutogenic building does more than avoid harm; it enhances creativity, empathy, memory, and mental clarity.
And yet, the literature on these benefits remains sparse in architectural discourse. While social services and medical journals explore environments that reduce harm, few design-focused platforms ask the reverse: How can we design spaces that actively generate wellness?
A Call to Action
It’s time to reimagine placemaking as a health-generating system. We must assess our spaces not simply by how they look or function, but by how they make us feel—and how they can help us flourish.
The built environment influences every layer of human experience: biological, psychological, social, and even spiritual. If we begin designing with salutogenic intent, architecture can become a catalyst for positive change—helping individuals not just to live, but to thrive.
This paradigm shift challenges us to view architecture not by what it is, but by what it does. The next frontier of design isn’t aesthetic—it’s neurological. And it begins with the belief that buildings, like medicine, can heal.
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