Citizens in 2050 will face a scala of mental health problems. Future unemployment caused by automation of jobs will evoke the lack of feeling a purpose or feeling useful for society. This will especially be the case for the lower-educated and less wealthy part of the population. Living in a city that will get denser and denser, the population needs to be presented with an environment that will stimulate them to come up with new strategies to
adapt themselves to an exponentially developing society.
My graduation project has tried to adress these issues by researching the possible positive effects of the environment on mental health. In my opinion, architects and urban planners need to take responsibility in designing
restorative and healing environments. This is the case for houses and offices but not any less for public spaces and the overall urban environment. Especially for an era in which people will have more free time to spend. In stead of spending the largest part of their days in an office, they will spend more time in the
public realm.
By setting up a basic set of rules based on literature, neuro-scientific and typological research on scale, material, colours and light, architects and urbanist could implement brain restorative environments in the people’s daily life and try to help reduce serious stress-related problems.