One of many Chelsea Flower Show Gardens that deserves special attention is The Lemon Tree Garden, which directly referred to the issue of mental health. Inspired by the resilience, originality and determination of refugees living in Domiz camp in Northern Iraq was designed with their involvement and highlights the unexpected beauty and power hidden in the Read More
Author: Agnieszka Olszewska-Guizzo
President and Founder of NeuroLandscape. Ph.D. in Landscape Architecture and Urban Ecology, in her research she explores the relationship between the different features of the natural and built environment’s influence on human health and well-being. She has successfully incorporated neuroscience tools to investigate the changes in brainwave oscillation in people exposed to different types of scenery. She has introduced and operationalized the term contemplative landscape and proposed a quantitative assessment scale - a Contemplative Landscapes Model (CLM) - to identify most beneficial landscapes for mental health in terms of passive exposure. She is an author of "Neuroscience for Designing Green Spaces: Contemplative Landscapes", Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Urban Design and Mental Health. She is continuing her research on therapeutic landscapes under two ongoing Horizon Europe projects: GreenME and GreenInCities.
Neuro-urbanism & Neuro-landscape
A new term has officially been introduced in the scientific world – NEUROURBANISM. It happened together with the publication in Lancet in Psychiatry in March 2017 [link here]. City life has a lot to do with the psychiatric conditions , and this is the path we have been following in NeuroLandscape as well. Our cities Read More
Healthy Landscape Workshop, NTU, Taipei, Taiwan
It was a delightful and very interesting stay in Taipei, Taiwan. We went to visit “Healthy Landscapes x Healthy People Lab” ran by Prof Chun-Yen Chan, after he invited us during the IFLA conference in Singapore (networking works wonders!). Me and Nicolas were happy to join the 2 hour sharing session and the workshop organized Read More
Window View and the Brain – study results
Most people in Asian biggest metropolitan areas live above the ground in multi-storey buildings. Here in Singapore residential blocks can reach up to 50+ floors! Developers try to fit as many housing units on small plots of lands without the consideration of what will be the view from the window. Well, maybe it is about Read More
My Favorite Garden of Chelsea Flower Show 2018 (PART_2)
At the Chelsea Flower Show 2018 my number one garden was designed to raise awareness of the NSPCC’s work – UK’s leading children’s charity, preventing abuse and helping those affected to recover. The Morgan Stanley Garden’s design is a metaphor for the emotional transformation of the child who experiences the positive influence of the NSPCC’s work. At the same Read More
Gardens for Mental Health – Lessons from Chelsea Flower Show 2018 (PART_1)
Design Well, Live Healthy Being around trees, shrubs and other plants improves people’s mental health and give us more positive outlook onto our lives. Spending time outside every day, decreases the risk of being depressed or stressed, and thus burden on our mental health is greatly reduced. The power of plants for our physical and mental wellbeing is Read More
An exclusive interview with Professor Chang, Chun-Yen, NTU, UIUC
Happy to share the newest interview from one of the world’s leading experts in the area of evidence-based landscape design, Prof. Chang, Chun-Yen from National Taiwan University. Professor Chang’s background is in landscape architecture, but his research interests have led him far beyond this discipline into examining the relationships between landscapes and human health in Read More
See what Contemplative Landscapes do to your brain!
Highly Contemplative Landscapes alter the brainwaves pattern of the people exposed to them! More about the mechanisms of this phenomenon and how we discovered it can be found in this peer-reviewed paper published recently by Frontiers in Psychiatry, Public Mental Health section. Full text already available for free here! https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2018.00317/full
Interview with Gayle Souter-Brown
Our first update of IFLA 2018 is an exclusive interview with Gayle Souter-Brown. Gayle is Principal of Greenstone Design UK & doctoral candidate at Auckland University of Technology (AUT), landscape architect, writer and researcher. This interview will share her experiences in the social, economic, and environmental benefits of developing green space for health and well Read More
NeuroLandscape @ IFLA World Congress
Yesterday marks the end of the 2 day IFLA World Congress 2018. Here at NeuroLandscape, we can’t wait to update everyone with all the exciting events that happened over the 2 days. There will be more detailed spotlights in the weeks to come, but here is a quick glimpse of NeuroLandscape @IFLA. The IFLA Congress Read More