Luxury now "means a sense of presence" say wellbeing experts at panel

Promotion: as wellbeing is associated with feeling present in the moment rather than "switching off", people are looking for a different experience of luxury, said speakers at a panel during Clerkenwell Design Week.

The panel titled Embedding Wellness into Homes, the Workplace, Hospitality and Beyond was hosted by Dezeen in partnership with Villeroy & Boch and Ideal Standard.

Moderated by Dezeen editorial director Max Fraser, the panel brought together three leaders in the field of wellbeing in interiors: neuroaesthetics researcher and Kinda Studios founder Robyn Landau, workplace wellness specialist and Noura Well founder Sunny Velikova, and interior designer and Conran and Partners principal Simon Kincaid.

Landau, whose work at Kinda Studios focuses on using neuroscience to demonstrate how art and design impact wellbeing, spoke about how disconnection was an enemy of wellbeing.

"I think that a lot of us are still disconnected," said Landau. "We're still disconnected from how we feel, because when the world gets challenging, our inbuilt mechanism is to kind of switch off."

"We do it unconsciously, but we reach for our phone, a glass of wine, the fridge, whatever it is, there's endless devices to choose from," continued Landau.

Her work, she said, encouraged people "back into the body" and helped them to understand their responses to certain environments. This in turn enabled them to take control of the "sensory ingredients" that allow them to feel well.

She said that there was a growing demand for these kinds of tailored experiences within the workplace and hospitality arenas as people's literacy about health and wellbeing increased.

"People want to go on holiday differently," said Landau. "You don't necessarily want to go on holiday and do the same things you did before."

"Luxury for people now ultimately means a sense of presence, leaving feeling better than when you first began. And so the experiences that people are looking for are different."

Landau singled out Thomas Heatherwick's Humanise campaign as "doing really great work" in raising public understanding about the impact of design on wellbeing through neuroscientific studies.

She sited a study measuring the human body's responses to facades with different levels of complexity in Toronto and London that had been supported by Heatherwick Studio.

"What they found ultimately was that complex buildings that fascinated people and captured their attention had interesting intersections and curvature," said Landau. "[Those buildings] made people's arousal in their bodies spike higher, and those are the ones that were associated with greater liking."

A healthy level of arousal from our surroundings is associated with a positive psychological impact.

"The interesting thing that his team are doing is that they're trying to really influence the public understanding of these things," said Landau. "And I think if you create the ground swell from the bottom, you then increase the demand from the public to create spaces like these."

The panel also featured Sunny Velikova, who was previously an interior designer at Perkins & Will until her increasing focus on wellness in the workplace led her to found her own design consultancy.

She argued that architects are in a unique position to "really change the culture of work" through their projects.

"I think as an industry, we need to look after ourselves first to be able to provide that for our clients," Velikova said. "We need to understand what wellbeing means."

"We need to live it – not just for ourselves personally but also as a company, as a team, experience what that means on an organisational level," she continued. "Then we can support our clients with their own wellbeing and their team's wellbeing."

Simon Kincaid discussed how hotel design was being impacted by the focus on wellbeing. While natural materials and biophilic design were important, he said that growing awareness had brought attention to previously forgotten details like paint and finishes.

"[Something that wasn't understood a few years ago was] that it was bad for your wellbeing to be in a particular environment with no air exchange, with poor quality paints surrounded by petrochemicals," said Kincaid.

"The more natural and the more pure, and the way it can age kind of gracefully, is better."

Partnership content

This article was written by Dezeen for Villeroy & Boch and Ideal Standard as part of a partnership. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.

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