Architectural Interventions to Mitigate Occupational Stress Among Office Workers

Stress is one issue that affects the health and well-being of every building occupant. The negative effects of stress are more pronounced in workplaces, where stress can act as a major agent of disease and an impediment to employee productivity and satisfaction. The underlying causes of occupational stress are varied and include job insecurity, extended hours, excessive workload, altercations within the organization, tight deadlines, changes in responsibilities, and lack of autonomy, among others. One of the factors that can contribute to overall occupational stress is the working environment itself—a factor that can be mitigated by design. While occupational stress may arise from a multiplicity of causes, designers have numerous interventions they can employ to decrease it. The literature on occupational health, well-being, satisfaction, and productivity is broad and multifaceted; however, this paper is limited to exploring stress factors that correlate with the built environment and focuses on employees who are experiencing a high rate of stress in office buildings as the target group. To address these issues, supporting literature was explored to identify environmental interventions that could reduce stress or enhance the stress-coping abilities of workers in offices by improving the environmental quality of the built environment. This article explores the following questions: How does space cause people to experience mental stress? In what ways can the built environment itself be a generator of stress? What are the main environmental factors in offices that can mitigate the stress levels of employees or help them to recover more easily from work-related stress? To answer these questions, it is necessary to understand the causes and mechanisms of chronic stress, including work-related stressors, and to identify the factors in the built environment that can be associated with occupational stress. The present paper is based on concurrent analyses of supporting literature in the rather different fields of architecture, public health, psychology, management, and environmental studies. The outcome is an identified set of practical strategies that provide solutions for healthier and more productive workplaces. By concentrating on measures that can reduce employee stress levels, these strategies can be used as a source for evidence-based workplace designs

Remote: Geographies

Remote interpretation is now digitally distorted. Something considered distant can be equally close, pervasive, a-spatial. With this topic, we intend to open the debate on the tensions caused by the multiple interpretations that the word “remote” in relation with (the complex binomial) “public art”. Is it a remote feeling that will remain? What path did the remote word take to us, today? Is the remote as a medium here to stay? Will the far, off-center (eccentric), have a component of unexpected surprise? What scale is remote, sustainable, green, universal, atomic? With this call for articles, essays, reviews of book or exhibitions, we will seek to draw an overview of the present and the past, crossing views (among many others) from the history of art, sculpture, artistic practices, design, architecture and urbanism.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Architecture, health and beyond

Our fast pace lifestyle makes us more expose to stress during our life span, and social stress may be the most important factor for the increased risk of mental disorders in urban areas (Adil, 2011). Due to the importance of this issue, the main question of this research is; what are the main environmental factors in offices that can help the employees experience lower stress lever or help them to reduce the stress after facing it? In other words, occupational stress is the agent and built environment is vector and risk factor of causing a disease for employees. Stress affects the efficiency of the work and the health of the employees directly. Moreover, the adverse effects of stress are not only limited to mental health but also those cause diabetes, high pressure, overweight and many other health problems. In this presentation, I am going to discuss how built environment affects a workplace and what kind of intervention in design reduce the stress level in working places on employees. To limit this research, we limited the target population to high stressed employees, since they face chronical stress more than other target population. The result of this research is a better understanding of what are the characteristic responsible working places and milieu that can affect the stress of employee during the day. According to the research, set of an effective intervention that might cause lower stress level in working places will be categorized

Occupational stress and design

In this research, I am going to discuss how built environment affects a workplace and what kind of intervention in design reduce the stress level in working places on employees. To limit this research, we limited the target population to high stressed occupations, since they face chronical stress more than other target population. The result of this research is a better understanding of what are the characteristics of responsible working places and milieu that can affect the stress of employee during the day. According to the research, set of an effective intervention that might cause lower stress level in working places will be categorized. The outcome of this study would be two different things; first, an evidence-based design and second an academic paper that could be submitted to the journal. Thus, to meet those realms, I am looking for establishing reliable patterns. Due to those separate outcome, my target group would be varied. I should to present the outcome of my research to the Architecture faculty and explain the relation of my design with the research, which would be in the form of a poster and graphical. In another hand, eventually, I want to publish my research in a peer review based academic journal, which is not required by school and I need to work on that after graduation