It explores how factors, such as lighting, comfort, control over our environments and access to nature, exercise and social interaction, can impact how we feel. If you’d like to find out more about Happy by Design, or would like to hear from some of our happy clients, our testimonials are a good place to start! These systems are sensitively balanced, and even small changes in the amount of daylight we receive can have substantial impacts on our mood, productivity and overall wellbeing. Whenever we look at development sites, we always look at them in terms of access to local amenities and facilities.

When designing buildings, it is therefore extremely important to consider how you can improve both the quantity and quality of daylight, internally and within landscaping. However, from this experience, Ben realised that mental health issues are universal and that anyone can find themselves struggling. Happy by Design’ has already been endorsed by some of architecture’s key figures including Grand Designs’ Kevin McCloud who says that “anyone building a house should read this first. From sparking joy in individual homes and workplaces to encouraging healthier lifestyles through landscaping and urban design, this book demonstrates how wellbeing concepts can be integrated across a range of scales and typologies.The result is ‘Happy by Design’, which I hope will widen the debate around mental wellbeing in the built environment and help us all understand that we have control over our immediate surroundings and can make changes that will better our sense of wellbeing. I wanted to bring my knowledge of mental health and mindfulness to the fore in the design process, helping clients create buildings that would make their users happier and promote wellbeing.

This may sound simplistic but designing for people should be the fundamental approach of all architects – as proven by many of the greats from the twentieth century, such as Alvar Aalto and Louis Kahn. Basing a design advice to achieve well-being or happiness only on a single study sometimes isn't exactly objective in my opinion.

This is not only worse from an energy perspective but will also result in unhappier building occupants.