Ben Channon. Image courtesy of the architect.

Architect Ben Channon was finishing up his architectural qualifications when he began to realize the toll it was taking on his mental health. Overcome by anxiety, and living in a small shared flat, he was gripped by questions of why some buildings make us happy, while others do not. "At the end of the day, our environment affects us, whatever type of building it is," Channon says. His curiosity led him down a path investigating the links between architecture and well-being. Channon's findings have culminated in the recent book, Happy by Design, where he asserts that the design of buildings can have large effects on the happiness of its inhabitants and offers advice on how to design spaces that better serve its users. 

In this interview, Channon—who was recently selected as one of RIBA Journal’s Rising Stars of 2018 for his championing of mental health through the Architects' Mental Wellbeing Forum—reveals what he's learned at this cross-sector.

What led to your interest in this topic?

I was studying for my professional architectural qualifications—what we call ‘Part Three’ in the UK—and working alongside that. I was probably working 80 plus hours a week in total and I, without realizing, ended up giving myself quite bad anxiety problems. It was a bit of a shock because it was never something that I thought would affect me; I saw mental health as this thing that happened to other people. That was about four or five years ago, before people were really aware of just how common mental health issues were. At the time, it did catch me by surprise and I had a few CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) sessions, but also became quite interested in mindfulness.

My company, Assael Architecture, really looked after me. They gave me a good support network and even paid for me to go on a mindfulness course, which was incredibly useful and gave me a holistic understanding of how mindfulness could be used to cope with these problems when they did arise. So, obviously it’s a personal thing to me and my main goal at first was to try to improve my own mental health, followed by helping my fellow colleagues, ensuring they were able to talk about it and would know what to do if they started to struggle. I started championing mental wellbeing here at Assael, began teaching mindfulness within the company, and then with my Chairman’s help went on to set up the Architects’ Mental Wellbeing Forum in 2017.

On the design side, how did you start to look at the way design and the built environment factors into that?

I became interested in how the places where I was spending my time were affecting my mental health

This happened quite organically. It was mostly a case of becoming interested in my own mental health and in my own surroundings. Having those two interests—obviously one of my big passions is architecture, and then mental health—I started to become intrigued as to how the two interacted and how they affected one another. I became interested in how the places where I was spending my time were affecting my mental health. At the time, I was living in a shared house, not really in great condition and not a lot of personal space. I started realizing that this stuff was really important. I started, for example, looking at the WELL Building Standard, which is obviously big in the States and is moving over to Europe now.

I turned to that to find information about how architecture affects the mind and there was a short section in there, which was a useful starting point. But, I wanted to take it a little further. I was a bit surprised actually that there wasn't lots of information readily available on how buildings affect our mental health. Initially my idea was to create a design guide for our company because it's something that they're really keen to champion—people-driven design. Most of what we do is residential, and housing is where people spend a lot of their time so we have a huge opportunity with designing new homes to affect how people feel. I also began to realize as I did the research that this is a very cross-sector issue because at the end of the day, our environment affects us, whatever type of building it is.

Can you talk a bit about your research for the project?

It was really a case of curating information more than anything else. I saw it not as my role to come up with lots of new theories about how buildings affect us, but to look high and low and find out what was already being explored. There’s a lot of research out there, you just have to search quite hard for it. The world of neuroscience and the world of medicine actually has a much better understanding of this issue. There’s lots of people doing studies into how light affects us, how nature affects us, how aesthetics affects us— but, it's not really research that architects are necessarily aware of. I wanted to bring all those into one place with the book. I also did a lot of other reading. There's a great book by Charles Montgomery called Happy City, which was very useful, and Alain de Botton’s the Architecture of Happiness is great too.

What was one of the most surprising things you learned?

I was very surprised about the way that color affects us. There's amazing studies out there that show all kinds of things to do with color and its influence on how we perceive the world. In Tokyo, they're using blue lighting around train stations and train tracks, and they believe there have been big reductions in suicide rates as a result of this. Other studies have shown people in cities have enlarged amygdala, which is one of the most primitive parts of the brain and is involved in your fight or flight response. If you have an enlarged amygdala, it means you’re more prone to that fight or flight response, which is closely linked to our survival instinct, but also to things like anxiety and stress. To discover that there's a physical difference in the shapes of our brains depending on, generally speaking, if you live in a city or if you live in the country, suddenly makes you understand why city dwellers might be a bit more stressed. We’re constantly primed for that fight or flight so no wonder we might be more prone to yell at someone when we get on the subway!

Where does most architecture kind of “miss it”?

I think the potential dangers now are the risk of creating buildings and homes that lack soul with a move towards kind of manmade technologies such as plasterboard and laminate flooring, rather than more traditional, tactile materials, that engage our senses. There's obviously a concern that cost is a big driver and I suppose it always has been—people costing out high ceilings or large windows, or whatever it may be. All of those things, if we're not careful, are going to result in buildings that might be very efficient, but it’s vital we also take into account how people are going to feel inside them. I suppose really that's what it comes down to—it’s about getting a balance between efficiency, happiness and quality.

What is your take on micro-units and tiny houses? Do you think there is a danger that they will make people unhappy?

I live in a relatively small apartment myself. Housing in London is very expensive and our housing crisis is a really big issue at the moment. Part of the problem is how difficult it is for millennials to get on the housing ladder. I managed to buy my first flat this year and it's not huge but, to me, I love it. The fact that it's small doesn't matter to me because it's my own place. Firstly, I have privacy and ownership that I never had before; Instantly that's going to make you feel much more positive about your home.

What we need to create successful homes is design that gives people a sense of ownership

That’s a big part of what makes homes special. What we need to create successful homes is design that gives people a sense of ownership, a sense of empowerment and a sense of pride – whether they actually own them or not. There's a number of ways I think we can do that as architects. In that regard, I think space is almost less important. But, I completely agree that we don't want to end up in this race to the bottom—which is a phrase I hear used a lot—and this slightly scary idea that everyone's going to end up living in micro-flats. In the book, I talk about the phrase lagom, which is a Swedish term meaning ‘not too big and not too small’. For someone like me living on my own, I don’t need a four-bedroom townhouse. There's a certain element that's about getting the right sort of space. Where I am really lucky with my flat is that it's got floor-to-ceiling windows, which can fully open out, and it's got high ceilings so it feels really light and airy. There's also a lot of things you can do to make a small home feel successful and happy – I’ve filled mine with plants and really personalized it with prints and furniture.

You mention in the book you wanted to make it accessible to non-architects—why is that?

I wanted it to be a tool for architects initially, to share the research coming out of neuroscience and psychology with them. In reality though, architects only design quite a small percentage of buildings. That means that if I only reach architects, then people living and working in many buildings are not going to necessarily see the benefits I was trying to put forward in this book. I wanted it to be something that was useful to many people - maybe you have just bought your own home, or maybe you're just renting but you want to do some DIY and make your own home a little bit ‘happier’. Or perhaps you're a small business owner who's thinking ‘how can I make my café feel like a happy space?’ or ‘how can I make my office a better working environment for my staff?’ I wanted the book to be accessible to people like that as well. While there is a lot of advice that maybe is more relevant for architects or for landscape architects—like how to design a successful façade so that you create visual interest or how to design a big public space or urban park—there's also advice in there about what colors you could use in your bathroom or what materials you might use for flooring in your home and things like that. I wanted it to speak to the people who are also making these decisions a lot of the time, be it clients or developers or whoever is waving the checkbook. A lot of the time, these decisions come down to them and not necessarily the architect. My belief is that if we can help demonstrate the added value of designing for happiness and wellbeing, then it will give us a lot more creative freedom and power as architects to make a positive change.

For more on this topic check out Ben's new book Happy by Design: A Guide to Architecture and Mental Wellbeing