Editorial

I have just received the second edition of the book Sustainability Science by Bert J. M. de Vries a professor at Utrecht University. It is a voluminous scholarly work with 20 chapters over 614 pages with over 34 pages of references. Not a light read but a must for students to encourage them to think more deeply about the myriad of issues, surrounding the word sustainability, which are too often described in shallow terms by the media and politicians who, together with practitioners, should also have a copy, which they can delve into as a reference work to source ideas and gain an objective insight into sustainable development. Reference has been made to transdisciplinary thinking in previous editorials and this approach underlies this work.

Here are a few headings for tasters:

• Chapter 5: Modernity – The Idea of Progress

• Chapter 7: Worldviews – Values, Beliefs, and Ethics

• Chapter 12: Pillars of Development: Health, Education and Mobility

• Chapter 13: Nature – The Life-Support System

• Chapter 20: Stories About the Future

These are sprinkled among other chapters on important topics, such as renewables, energy, water and the circular economy. Each topic is placed into its historical and cultural contexts. The author was a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) and hence has access to a rich source of peer-reviewed data, which is evident throughout the book. It is an enjoyable read and contains a valuable fund of knowledge.

Another experienced and gifted communicator is Despina Katsikakis who is the Global Head of Total Workplace at Cushman and Wakefield, also President of the British Council for Offices for 2023–2024, who gave a presentation on March 20th on Purpose of Place: People, Function and Value in the Masterclass Series for CIBSE. She made the point that cost with value, carbon, culture and community are interconnected. The value is in health and mental well-being and these factors lead to higher work motivation and productivity. Occupants of buildings want more than function as they now expect a more serendipitous experience in the workplace that inspires engagement and concentration of the mind.

Feelings and emotions wax and wane and happiness-unhappiness is part of this cycle that we all experience every day. The World Health Happiness Report for 2024 (Helliwell et al. 2024).

has just been published. It measures well-being using life evaluation, and positive and negative emotions (which are referred to as affect in the report). We seek enjoyment, laughter, smiles and opportunities to engage in a variety of interests rather than experiencing worry, sadness or anger but realistically life will be a mixture of all these things. There are six indicators that stand out in gauging happiness:

1. GDP per capita

2. Social support

3. Life expectancy at birth

4. Freedom to make life choices

5. Generosity

6. Perception of corruption

As usual, the Scandinavian countries feature in the top ten. The top G 7 economies in the world do not score as highly as one might expect. People seem happier in cooler climates than in hot ones. There are marked differences between the old and young but smaller differences between men and women. The happiness meaning here is termed eudaimonic happiness which is that gained by self-fulfilment and self-improvement. One could refer to the Maslow hierarchy of needs as a holistic way of mapping well-being and, if achieved, is likely to bring more lasting and meaningful happiness. Hedonistic happiness in contrast is a shallower form of happiness concerned with pleasure and enjoyment which can be very short-lived.

We now witness how rapidly the fields of neuroscience and environmental psychology are entering our knowledge base in architecture and engineering. The book Mind in Architecture edited by Sarah Robinson and Juhani Pallasmaa is one source demonstrating this. One chapter on Toward a Neuroscience of the Design Process is written by Michael Arbib a well-known neuroscientist in the US. He wrote a paper in this journal in 2012 (Volume 4 pages 147–168) entitled Brains, Machines and Buildings. These papers show how architects, and engineers too, I feel, and neuroscientists need to collaborate and develop an understanding of how the brain responds when we are thinking out problems either in creative or more practical ways. We are preparing a special issue on neuro-architecture for publication in 2025. Three recent papers which are of interest are

Designing for Wellbeing: The Integration of Neuroarchitecture into Design – A Systematic Review by H. A. Medhat et al., in Ain Shams Engineering Journal, 2023, vol. 14.

Relationships between Physical Environments and Creativity: A Systematic Review by J. H. Lee and S. Lee in Thinking Skills and Creativity Journal, 2023, vol. 48.

Neuroscience, Urban Regeneration and Urban Health by Camargo, Araceli et al., 2020 in Journal of Urban Regeneration and Renewal (Henry Stewart Publications), vol. 13(3), pages 280–289.

In this issue, we have three contrasting papers from Turkey, UK and Australia on a double skin façade using a nano skin; low carbon design strategies; and an extensive review on the health benefits of biophilic design in the workplace which is emerging as a key area in the development of Nature-based Solutions (NbS).

Please do send in your papers for peer review which may be in the form of research, detailed case studies, reviews or opinion pieces. Book reviews are also welcome.