IFLA World Congress Singapore 2018

Next week, from 18th to the 21st of July, The International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) is returning to Singapore for the 2nd time to host the prestigious IFLA World Congress. The IFLA World Congress prides itself as the key contributor in landscape architectures, developing attractive, livable, equitable, and sustainable environments of the future. Many of its project revolve Read More

Healthy landscapes | UNISCAPE International Conference

“Assessing Relevant Knowledge Related to the Types and Characteristics of Urban Green & Blue Spaces Having a Significant Impact on Human Mental health and Well-being” to be presented at Healthy landscapes | UNISCAPE International Conference in Bologna (6-8 June) by Eklipse: Knowledge and Learning Mechanism on BiodiversityWhile participating in the Eklipse project we are looking Read More

14th International Conference on Urban Health / Coimbra, PT, 26-29 Sep 2017

NeuroLandscape wholeheartedly embraces a multi-disciplinary approach, so it is quite challenging to establish one discipline which we most represent, one type of a scientific journal to publish in, or one area of conferences to participate in. Believe me when it comes to choosing keywords for our studies or key areas of expertise, it is even Read More

NeuroLandscape wholeheartedly embraces a multi-disciplinary approach, so it is quite challenging to establish one discipline which we most represent, one type of a scientific journal to publish in, or one area of conferences to participate in. Believe me when it comes to choosing keywords for our studies or key areas of expertise, it is even more challenging!

 

Fortunately things are changing and new approaches emerge around the world that look in the same direction as us and welcome multiple methods. One such initiative is this conference. Participation in the conference has made us realize how important the topics of urban health are right now—not so much to academic community, but rather to urban governing bodies and public health entities.

Agnieszka Olszewska-Guizzo, our delegate to the conference, participated in the one day brainstorming and workshop on “How to implement and scale up community best solutions for improving urban health “

It definitely was a chance to network with experts from around the world on what currently is being done, and can be done in the future, in order to improve and scale up community initiative for urban health.

Despite the great concern for the mental health problems that todays’ cities are challenged with, most scientific methods applied to this issue are almost entirely limited to self-reported surveys and questionnaires. Although there is nothing inherently wrong with these methods, using only this approach can be somewhat limiting, because social and cultural conventions influence how likely someone is to self-report symptoms of mental illness to an interviewer. Moreover, studies often report that depression among the poorest in society is not as severe simply because respondents tend to associate their problems more with their poverty when there are many other factors that may be at play, such as their physical environment [link].

At NeuroLandscape we provide an alternative to the self-reported approach, which is continuously improved upon. Instead of asking people about their mental health, we want to "ask" their brains, giving us a chance to capture the most subtle nuances of their perception that they may not even be aware of...

Our delegate gave a speech on Window View and the Brain Can Floor Level and Amount of Green within the View Have any Effect on Our Well-Being? to present the findings from a recent EEG experiment undertaken within the Biophilic Town Project at NUS Singapore. The presentation was met with great interest, which shows that the traditional methods of self mental-health assessment can already be challenged.

To sum up, it was a great conference, NeuroLandscape has found its people and the box where it fits (or rather a corridor connecting multiple boxes together)! We are very excited and looking forward to more events like this one!

International Conference on Control and Automation, Athens, Greece

The first public presentation of the prototype of the Contemplative Landscapes Automated Scoring System (CLASS) was presented by our research team on the international IEEE conference in Athens, Greece between 21 and 24 of June.Watch a short report from this event and listen to the lecture given by our leading artificial intelligence and machine learning Read More

Beyond Architecture: New Intersections and Connections Conference, Honolulu, Hawaii, 2014

The research on “Urban Planning, Neuroscience and Contemplation for improving well-being in our cities” was presented on the conference, and published in the Architectural Research Centers Consortium Journal. Multidisciplinary conferences, joining the design and architecture with multiple disciplines, including art and rigorous science aren’t very frequent. This special event was held at the beautifully located University Read More