As human beings we strive for the goal of ‘Happiness’ or ‘well-being’. Happy people seem to achieve more in their lives, tend to be more social, altruistic, and active, and they seem to like themselves and others more. Happiness also seems to promote people’s capacity for constructive and creative thinking.
The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spoke on the importance of paying attention to people’s well-being and happiness. On the first ever International Day of Happiness, celebrated worldwide on March 20, 2013, in his note to the General Assembly, he indicated that ‘The creation of an enabling environment for improving people’s well-being is a development goal in itself’.
“People around the world aspire to lead happy and fulfilling lives free from fear and want, and in harmony with nature.” -UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
The UN General Assembly promotes happiness as a universal goal and aspiration in the lives of people around the globe. The initiative to declare a day of happiness came from the Kingdom of Bhutan where the philosophy that guides the government is the Gross National Happiness Index, calling it a “fundamental human goal”. This index is used to measure the collective happiness and well-being of a population, giving equal importance to non-economic aspects of well-being, where Gross National Happiness is more important that Gross National Product, a concept that hopefully spreads internationally.
Research on happiness has pointed to the importance of different factors:
1. Health or physical well-being (Achat et al., 2000 ; Lyubomirsky et al., 2005b)
2. Personal development (Bauer et al., 2015 ; Straume & Vitterso, 2015)
3. Having work (Graham et al., 2004 ; Lucas et al., 2004)
4. Having friends/social contacts (Diener & Seligman, 2002 ; Burger & Caldwell, 2000)
5. Time for oneself/time for hobbies or things that I like (Mishra, 1992 ; Nimrod, 2008)
6. Family, children, partner (Diener et al., 2000 ; Hansen, 2010)
7. Music (Laukka, 2007 ; Fujiwara et al., 2014)
8. Religion (Berg, 2010 ; Myers, 2013)
9. Holiday, excursions (Gilbert & Abdullah, 2004 ; Nawijn & Veenhoven, 2011)
10. Money (Diener & Biswas-Diener, 2002 ; Berg, 2010)
11. Nature, garden, wood, mountains, sea (Van Herzele & de Vries, 2012 ; MacKerron & Mourato, 2013)
12 Weather (Fischer & Van de Vliert, 2011 ; Connolly, 2013)
13. Home Architecture/Interior (Petermans, Nuyts, 2016)
This overview does not pretend to be exhaustive, but aims to list important mediating factors and intentional activities that can contribute to happiness.
These factors were listed after a thorough review of literature, which was performed via an extensive search through the World Database of Happiness (http://worlddatabaseofhappiness.eur.nl/). In essence, the factors which were selected are all significant in their contribution to happiness, but they do not contribute to the same extent to happiness. Further research analyses demonstrated that ‘family/children/partner’ was the factor that was most important to the above sample (23%), followed by ‘health/physical well-being’ (21%) and friends/social contacts (11%). Interior architecture seems to contribute to the same extent to our sample’s happiness as religion or nature.
Interior Design and “Being Well”
To “be well’ relates to factors that are relevant to your happiness. Looking at life circumstances from an architectural perspective, typical questions in this respect are: ‘Am I physically healthy?’, ‘Do I have a shelter?’, ‘Can I be happy in this environment?’, ‘Does the environment enable me to work on my personal happiness?’
Looking specifically at the potential contribution that architecture and interior design can have on happiness, it seems highly valuable to consider these as ‘spaces’ where people can deliberately set up intentional activities that contribute to their happiness (Authors, 2014). This point is a critical distinction between life circumstances and intentional activities.
Are you happy in your space?
The major factor of being happy in an environment has to do with the type of people who reside in a particular architectural or interior environment, and what they are able to do with/in that environment. In other words how the environment enables them to do something meaningful or something that adds meaning and pleasure to their life.
Architecture or interior design relate to factors of happiness by designing a context wherein activities can take place which have a chance of contributing to a person’s happiness. Designing such contexts is challenging, because it requires a designer to truly empathize with the future users of the space.
Figuring out factors of happiness of users of an interior space is the starting-point to understand how architecture and interior spaces work, are perceived or can be designed in order to allow people to undertake meaningful activities that contribute to their happiness. If designers could have better insights in the ways that people are involved in and feel in environments, and how they can potentially contribute to their happiness, they could be enabled to design more ‘appealing’ atmospheres and environments which in turn could enable people to set up meaningful activities that contribute to their happiness.
There is a huge challenge in further exploring how architects and interior architects can design spaces in such a way so that they can function as a generous, inspiring and fruitful context wherein people can set up meaningful activities that contribute to their happiness. These activities relate to behaviour, a factor that is within people’s ability to control. By focusing on activities, people have the ability to deliberately increase their happiness through what they do in their lives and how they think (Lyubomirsky, 2007).
Taking into account that people have different interests, talents, values, needs and wants, some activities might work for some but not for others. People should fully engage with their chosen intentional activities in order to receive the happiness benefit.
Ideally, an intentional activity results in boosting positive emotions, positive behaviour, positive thoughts and satisfaction of needs of the person engaging in the activity. (Nelson et al., 2015)
Possibilities for More
There are numerous opportunities for future research on how architecture and interior design can have a valuable contribution to happiness. Future research needs to specialize in how architects and interior designers can contribute to the design of environments that enable people to undertake activities that contribute to their happiness.
“Well-being elements should carry at least as much weight as technical, rational and economic considerations in the process.” (Mary-Ann Knudstrup, a Danish professor in architecture, 2011)
Different researchers in architecture and interior design are starting to reflect about the question how the design and building environment can contribute to happiness. One way is to produce more ‘enabling environments’ where people can explore and enjoy meaningful activities that help them be happier.
Written by Sara Abate Rezvanifar
References:
Authors, 2014
Lyubomirsky, S., Sheldon, K. & Schkade, D. (2005a). Pursuing happiness: The architecture of sustainable change. Review of General Psychology, 9(2), 111-131.
Lyubomirsky, S., King, L. & Diener, E. (2005b). The benefits of frequent positive affect: does happiness lead to success? Psychological Bulletin, 131(6), 803-855.
Lyubomirsky, S. (2007). The how of happiness: a new approach to getting the life you want. New York: Penguin Books.
Lyubomirsky, S. & Layous, K. (2013). How do simple activities increase well-being? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22, 57-62.
Smith, D., Metcalfe, P. & Lommerse, M. (2012). Interior architecture as an agent for well-being. Journal of the HEIA, 19(3), 2-9.
The General Assembly (2013, p. 3)