Neuroarchitecture examples
Searches for neuroarchitecture examples usually turn up photos of buildings described as calming. Few of those buildings were ever measured. These are twelve studies that did measure something, from a 1984 hospital to trials published this year, with what each found and what it could not show.
Each links to its full record in the NEURODESIGN research corpus. The two grades on each are separate on purpose: how strong the study is, and how close it is to a real building.
01 · Roger S. Ulrich 1984
A view of trees and recovery from surgery
What it found. Patients with a tree view had shorter postoperative stays, fewer negative nurse notes and used fewer strong analgesics than matched patients facing a brick wall.
What it could not show. Small historical sample; non-random room assignment; one hospital and procedure; mechanisms not directly measured.
Why it is here. The study that started evidence-based healthcare design. Small, but it changed what hospitals ask for.
Full record: View through a window may influence recovery from surgery
02 · Allen et al. 2016
Ventilation and decision-making in offices
What it found. Cognitive scores were higher under lower-VOC and higher-ventilation conditions than under conventional office conditions.
What it could not show. Short exposure periods; simulated office; combined environmental changes complicate attribution to one factor.
Why it is here. The clearest case of a building system changing how well people think on a test.
03 · Haapakangas et al. 2020
Why overheard speech is the worst office noise
What it found. Performance declines became more likely as irrelevant speech became more intelligible; verbal short-term memory was especially sensitive.
What it could not show. Threshold behavior varies by task and study design; STI is only one descriptor of acoustic distraction.
Why it is here. Moves the design question from how loud a room is to how intelligible the speech in it is.
04 · Jahncke et al. 2011
Open-plan noise, memory and fatigue
What it found. Higher office noise impaired word memory and increased tiredness; restorative content after exposure helped recover perceived energy.
What it could not show. Small laboratory sample; sound levels and task set represent only some office contexts.
Why it is here. A controlled look at the cost of the open office, with a test of recovery afterward.
Full record: Open-plan office noise: Cognitive performance and restoration
05 · Kim & de Dear 2013
The privacy and communication trade-off
What it found. Noise and loss of privacy were major sources of dissatisfaction, and perceived communication benefits did not offset them in more open layouts.
What it could not show. Self-report outcomes; cross-sectional design; workplace selection effects.
Why it is here. Tests the main argument for open-plan offices against what occupants actually report.
Full record: Workspace satisfaction: The privacy-communication trade-off in open-plan offices
06 · Meyers-Levy & Zhu 2007
Ceiling height and the way people think
What it found. Higher ceilings were associated with freedom-related concepts and more relational or abstract processing; lower ceilings with more confined concepts and item-specific processing.
What it could not show. Priming framework and task contexts may not generalize to every interior; later replication and boundary conditions should be tracked.
Why it is here. The best-known neuroarchitecture finding on room proportions, and one whose limits are still being worked out.
07 · Vartanian et al. 2013
Curved interiors in the brain scanner
What it found. Curvilinear interiors were more often rated beautiful and recruited anterior cingulate activity during beauty judgments; contour did not significantly alter approach-avoidance decisions.
What it could not show. Image-based rather than embodied architecture; sample size typical of early fMRI; beauty and approach are distinct outcomes.
Why it is here. Shows a real preference for curves, and also that preference did not change whether people wanted to go in.
08 · Bellmund et al. 2020
Room geometry and spatial memory
What it found. Spatial memory and distance judgments were systematically distorted in deformed geometry, consistent with geometry-dependent cognitive maps.
What it could not show. Virtual setting; specific task; not a direct test of daily building navigation.
Why it is here. Evidence that the shape of a space bends the mental map people build of it.
Full record: Deforming the metric of cognitive maps distorts memory
09 · Bratman et al. 2015
A nature walk and rumination
What it found. A nature walk reduced self-reported rumination and subgenual prefrontal activation relative to an urban walk.
What it could not show. Short-term exposure; route differences extend beyond vegetation; small sample for neuroimaging.
Why it is here. Links time in nature to a measurable change in a brain region tied to repetitive negative thinking.
Full record: Nature experience reduces rumination and subgenual prefrontal cortex activation
10 · Boubekri et al. 2014
Windows, daylight and office workers’ sleep
What it found. Workers with more window/daylight exposure reported better sleep and wellbeing and had longer sleep duration in actigraphy analyses.
What it could not show. Small non-randomized sample; groups may differ in more than daylight; daylight dose not isolated.
Why it is here. Connects a design decision made at the facade to what happens in bed that night.
11 · Qing-Qing Xie et al. 2026
Curtain color and sleep before surgery
What it found. Surgical patients were randomized to wards with light curtains (beige or light blue) or dark curtains (dark green or dark brown) for their first night before surgery. The light-curtain group slept longer and more efficiently on actigraphy and rated sleep quality and morning-after state higher (all p < .05), and curtain color stayed significant after adjustment. Baseline sleep quality did not differ between groups.
What it could not show. One night, one hospital, and the abstract gives no effect sizes or group means. Curtain color may also change how much light reaches the bed, so color and light level are not separated.
Why it is here. A randomized trial of an everyday finish, the kind of test the field needs more of.
12 · Kramer & Schiavon 2026
Office temperature and test scores
What it found. Seventy-five adults did office-type cognitive tests at four air temperatures from 21 to 27 °C. Performance did not differ significantly across temperatures on the main test (p = 0.11) or on any PEBL domain, though equivalence tests could not rule out a small effect. Thermal comfort and physiology did shift: preference sat at 23 to 25 °C, 64% wanted cooler air at 27 °C, and RMSSD fell from 45 to 34 ms.
What it could not show. One session per temperature with young, healthy people doing structured tasks; a larger effect in top performers came from a post hoc subgroup of about 18 people and is exploratory.
Why it is here. A careful null result: discomfort rose with heat while performance did not significantly change.
Full record: Indoor temperature and office work performance in a temperate climate
Examples by building type
For the evidence organized around a building rather than a study, see the guides below. For every study in the library, browse the corpus indexes.
More neuroarchitecture guides
- Neuroarchitecture: what the research shows
The overview: definition, methods and the evidence by topic.
- Neuroarchitecture in offices
Air, temperature, speech noise and the open-plan question.
- Neuroarchitecture in hospitals
Single rooms, views, night noise and patient sleep.
- Neuroarchitecture in schools
Classroom acoustics, air and what children hear.
- Neuroarchitecture for sleep: bedrooms and hotel rooms
Temperature, light, noise and air in the room where people sleep.
- Neuroarchitecture vs biophilic design
How the two fields differ, and what the nature evidence supports.
Sources cited on this page
- Allen et al. (2016). Associations of Cognitive Function Scores with Carbon Dioxide, Ventilation, and Volatile Organic Compound Exposures in Office Workers. Environmental Health Perspectives · Moderate-high · Direct built environment
- Jahncke et al. (2011). Open-plan office noise: Cognitive performance and restoration. Journal of Environmental Psychology · Moderate-high · Direct built environment
- Haapakangas et al. (2020). The relation between intelligibility of irrelevant speech and cognitive performance: a revised model. Indoor Air · High · Direct built environment
- Bratman et al. (2015). Nature experience reduces rumination and subgenual prefrontal cortex activation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · Moderate-high · Adjacent human mechanism
- Roger S. Ulrich (1984). View through a window may influence recovery from surgery. Science · Moderate · Direct built environment
- Boubekri et al. (2014). Impact of Windows and Daylight Exposure on Overall Health and Sleep Quality of Office Workers. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine · Moderate · Direct built environment
- Vartanian et al. (2013). Impact of contour on aesthetic judgments and approach-avoidance decisions in architecture. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · Moderate-high · Direct built environment
- Joan Meyers-Levy & Rui Zhu (2007). The Influence of Ceiling Height: The Effect of Priming on the Type of Processing That People Use. Journal of Consumer Research · Moderate-high · Direct built environment
- Bellmund et al. (2020). Deforming the metric of cognitive maps distorts memory. Nature Human Behaviour · Moderate-high · Direct built environment
- Kim & de Dear (2013). Workspace satisfaction: The privacy-communication trade-off in open-plan offices. Journal of Environmental Psychology · Moderate-high · Direct built environment
- Qing-Qing Xie, Xiao-Jing Lin, Yuan-Liang Zheng, Yang-Yang Lu (2026). Visual Environmental Interventions and Preoperative Sleep: The Role of Curtain Color in Surgical Patients. HERD: Health Environments Research & Design Journal · Moderate · Direct built environment
- Tobias Kramer, Stefano Schiavon (2026). Indoor temperature and office work performance in a temperate climate. Buildings & Cities, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 1162-1180 · Moderate · Direct built environment
Written by Kesi Shankar, founder of NEURODESIGN. Corpus last updated 2026-11-03. To suggest a study or flag an error, use the contact page.