What are DwellRight’s
SpaceBehavior Design Principles?
SpaceBehavior is the relationship between your personal environment and how it effects you on a daily basis. Whether you know it or not, the spaces you use have the power to influence, modify, and affect your experiences. Every day the environments you spend your time in are having subtle and impactful effects on your emotions, social interaction, performance, productivity, and sense of well being. This is happening all the time wether you are conscious of it or not.
How and why we become the spaces we inHABIT !
1. We submit to any space’s (room’s) physical, social, psychological, aesthetic influences.
2. This ‘submission,’ over time, impacts behavior as we ‘adapt’ to the ‘demands’ of the space.
3. The adaptation represents a change in our life experience, that may be positive or negative.
4. Spaces we inhabit affect desired functions, behaviors, productivity and sense of well being.
5. Most of us are unaware of our profound interconnection to ‘designed’ living and working spaces.
6. At this moment our intimate, social, personal or business spaces may be effecting our experience.
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Our places of work and living represent a collection of spaces created for our needs, and designed for the varied activities of our lives: living, learning, working, and healing. We call these spaces our ‘PERSONAL ENVIRONMENTS’. The way we use these spaces has an impact on our individual and social behavior. Every space we experience influences our emotions in some way.
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Winston Churchill once said that “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.” We change our own setting by modifying it to our personal tastes and needs. The setting then begins to change us by forcing us to adapt to our own modifications. A personal environment is like a “mold” into which we “form” ourselves through use. Whether or not you are aware of it, you ADAPT to the physical and psychological and social limitations a space imposes upon you and your experience.
Furniture location, for instance, CONTROLS how we move through a space by creating pathways that we call a “traffic pattern”. The arrangement of chairs influences communication frequency, social interaction, and feelings of our intimate and social relationships with others.
The “mood” of a space is directly related to the quality and amount, direction and intensity of natural and artificial light. The mood of the space often affects our mood in the same way... Try to remember your feelings the last time the sun didn’t shine for 5 days. Our environments affect us the same way that lack of sunlight affects us. The difference is that the sun will eventually shine again. Our personal environments may negatively influence us for as long as we are exposed to them.
The height of a room’s ceiling affects how people think and process information. Low ceilings tend to support focusing on the specific details that may inspire a more detailed, statistical outlook. On the other hand, higher ceilings make people feel physically less constrained and able to think more freely, which may lead them to make more abstract connections and creative solutions.
Rooms with views of nature tend to support more mental focus than rooms that overlook entirely man- made structures. Even hanging wall art of nature can be a great virtual window and work just as well.
The acoustical quality of a space will influence how others sound to us, and how we sound to them. The quality of a person’s voice, for instance, changes directly with the acoustics of the space in which the person speaks. The surface textures influence sound levels that affect our feelings of privacy or intimacy. Rooms with an “echo” always feel empty, even with people in them.
We are in intimate relationships with our personal environments.
If you would like to learn more about the SpaceBehavior design approach, check out this 381 pg eBook, “The Space Effect”. This valuable book reveals some of the best secrets that all residential designers should know and utilize. You can also explore my Hidden Dimensions Blog for additional resources.
DwellRight’s Mission
It is DwellRight’s mission to use this profound relationship between space and behavior to your benefit rather than your detriment. Through our unique methods of Custom Residential Designs, Consultations, and Public Speaking it is my goal to assist you in consciously creating personal spaces and effective use of implied “invisible spaces” in every room to radically improve your quality of life while also serving the purpose of every day functionality.
Who Is SpaceBehavior For?
This, is not for everyone. If, however, you consider yourself with enthusiastic concern for healthy life affirming personal and global development and actualization, adequate to co-create positive social change, DwellRight could be worth further exploration. Optimally using your living and working environments for your personal fulfillment (creatively, emotionally, spiritually), sets the stage for win/win/win - helping self, to help others, helping others to co-create a more life-enhancing world for all earthlings, including us human earthlings.
How SpaceBehavior Consulting & Design can benefit you!
Whether you want to re-arrange an existing space, renovate, or build a brand new home, DwellRight offers consultations and residential design well beyond the scope of traditional architectural or interior design services, and former ‘trendy’ feng shui or extreme makeovers. Listed below are some of the benefits that these unique design techniques can have on you and your space.
In Your Home
Improve relationships with family and friends, because the space is no longer getting in your way
Turn your home into a place that feels like a sanctuary: an oasis where you can rest and recover from the stresses you encounter elsewhere
Establish new and better patterns of moving through the home and organizing positive behavior that tap into the strengths of your dwelling
In a Care Setting
Reduce patient stress and let patients feel empowered as they control more of their own environment—while enhancing quality of care
Establish room architecture in both patient rooms and public spaces that feels better, is more user-friendly, and furthers better medical outcomes
Create a setting that encourages patients—even terminally ill hospice patients—to relax and enjoy a home-like environment
Develop more effective and more comfortable flow patterns for doctors, nurses, technicians, and other staff
Reassure visitors that their loved one is in great hands and is in the best possible setting with a caring staff and a pleasant environment
In Your Workspace
Build a better, smoother team where all members reach their potential
Inspire creative breakthroughs in any department
Maximize productivity, morale—and sales
Get people excited to come to work and eager to discover improvements
Make people feel validated and appreciated so their productivity will soar
Create a solopreneur workspace that motivates you to do your best, day after day
In a Learning Environment
Support every type of student: introverts and extroverts…auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learners…students with strengths in all nine different intelligences (linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial, body-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic, and spiritual-existential)
Activate nested learning zones that allow students to be working (in groups or individually) on different tasks in different parts of the room without interference from other zones
Create “virtual windows” that provide nature experience when nature isn’t directly available
"The enclosed space within.... is the reality of the building."
- Frank Lloyd Wright -