Enhancing Student Well-Being with Connections to Nature
By Matt LaRue
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has called the increase in youth mental health needs the defining health crisis of our time. Because educators are with children for more than a third of their waking hours, they can have an enormous positive impact on children’s mental health and well-being. But what is often overlooked is the significant impact well-designed school buildings and their surroundings can also have on student well-being.
A recent study by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health pointed out many ways schools can impact students’ physical and emotional health. At HMFH Architects, a leader in public school design, we are constantly evolving and improving the buildings we are designing to help students thrive. While this takes many forms, one major area of focus for our firm is creating school buildings that connect students with the natural environment.
Providing access to nature in an urban environment
Nature is a powerful force in supporting health and well-being. Direct access to nature can lower blood pressure, aid in recovery from stress and mental fatigue, and help improve focus. Ensuring access to outdoor gardens, play areas, quiet zones, and learning spaces with active plant life is thus critical for students. But in urban areas, even providing minimal access to nature can be a challenge.
This was certainly true when HMFH was engaged to design a new middle high school for the City of Boston. For one, the Josiah Quincy Upper School’s (JQUS) urban location in Boston’s Chinatown neighborhood has the lowest green space per capita in the city. The school’s limited one-acre site in close proximity to two highways posed additional challenges.
To find a solution that introduced green space, we looked up. Our design uses the high-rise school’s rooftop to provide gardens for mindful contemplation, outdoor classrooms, walking paths, and seating areas—spaces that are not typically available to schools in dense urban environments but, when they are, have been proven highly beneficial. In fact, according to Katherine England, the City of Boston’s Director of Green Infrastructure, “teachers in Boston public schools that have green infrastructure and vegetated landscapes have noted students’ improved behavior and focus after returning from playtime in green spaces versus playtime on paved outdoor surfaces.”
JQUS’s landscaped roof will not only positively impact student well-being for those in the school, but it will also allow the whole neighborhood to experience health and climate benefits. The green roof will help mitigate the urban heat-island effect, stormwater runoff, and air pollution while increasing biodiversity.
Bringing outdoor environments in
Bringing nature indoors is as important as access to the outdoors. But while interior planters, gardens, aquariums, or terrariums are terrific, they can be expensive and require constant care. If these features aren’t viable for a school, there are other strategies available.
For example, simply having plentiful views of the outdoors can satisfy our human drive for connecting with our natural environmental conditions. Incorporating textures and patterns that evoke nature in fabrics, carpets, and other surface materials can have a similar effect. Referred to as biophilia, these “substitutes” for nature are understood by the brain to be nature-like, triggering corresponding neural responses. Even the use of natural materials like stone and wood can have a positive impact on children’s health and well-being when incorporated into a building’s design. The visual sensation and the sense of touch that natural materials offer enhance student well-being.
Maximizing natural light
Natural light is another feature that plays a critical role in supporting students’ well-being.
According to the UCL Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering, “Natural light positively contributes to a higher academic performance in reading as well as in science. It also supports attention, the stability of the circadian cycle and overall health, mental health and comfort, which in turn, leads to better academic performance.”
One way to integrate natural light into school designs is to orient classrooms to the south and north and include controllable daylight. At HMFH, we conduct lighting studies throughout the early stages of design to determine window size and positioning in classrooms. Then, we study various shading and reflecting devices to find the optimal solutions to maximize even, natural light deep into the classroom while minimizing glare. For example, skylights with controllable shading devices can bring natural light deep into other spaces within the building that don’t have direct outdoor access, while floor openings can be used to bring light down to the lower floors. This results in classrooms that minimize the need for artificial light during the day, thus helping distribute natural light while providing additional energy savings for the school.
Another strategy is to integrate tunable lighting, a dynamic LED technology that offers adjustable color temperatures and intensities that mimic the spectrum of varying exterior light conditions. It’s another way to bring outdoor environments in, but its role extends beyond just emulating sunlight. Tunable lighting can also play a role in improving academic performance, behavior management, and even health.
For example, teachers can use tunable lighting to customize classroom ambiance according to specific activities and learning needs, turning on cooler tones to promote focus and productivity and switching to warmer tones to incite relaxation and creativity. Meanwhile, new research suggests exposure to specific light wavelengths can positively affect some challenging behaviors associated with ADHD and ASD. Finally, for students struggling with unhealthy sleep cycles, tunable lighting can support the synchronization of circadian rhythms to better foster improved concentration and mood stability. To date, HMFH has incorporated tunable lighting in design programs for four different high schools, leveraging the technology in specialized lab spaces, special education and sensory spaces, and classrooms as a strategic complement to natural lighting to optimize learning environments, manage classroom behaviors, and promote overall student health and well-being.
Nature’s powerful role in student well-being
Fortunately, young students’ mental health and emotional well-being are beginning to receive more attention. As educators continue to adopt new strategies to better support their students, we can also look to the important role building design plays in promoting the enhanced well-being of the “whole student.” Specifically, schools can take steps to incorporate nature into students’ everyday lives by creating new green spaces, integrating natural textures, and enhancing access to natural light. Together, these design strategies increase students’ exposure to nature throughout the school day, making a profound impact on their health and well-being at a time when they’ve never needed it more.
Matt LaRue is an HMFH Associate Principal and Stockholder.