In 2022 Kährs entered a five-year research collaboration in the interdisciplinary field of Neurodesign, where Isabelle Sjövall is among the first in the world to obtain a doctorate. What happens in the brain in different room environments and how does different materials, such as for example flooring, affect us humans?  How can the floor material of a room  promote healing, learning and creativity? These are some of the questions that Kährs hopes to find answers to through this groundbreaking research.

Neurodesign investigates how the brain reacts and responds to built environments and how people are affected psychologically and physiologically by design.

In her research, Isabelle explores educational environments, healing environments, living environments, office environments, and urban environments. Among other things, she examines the role of the floor in different environments in combination with other design components such as lightning, furniture, colours, shapes and materials.

The studies use different floors from Kährs. In its wide range of floors, Kährs has products for the different types of environments in which Isabelle is researching.

Kährs aim to apply the research results in both innovation and product development of flooring, which will thus be able to contribute even more accurately to environments that promote health, performance and well-being.

An important advance in research is The NeuroDesign Index (NDIX), which is developed together by leading researchers in neuroscience, architecture and design as an innovative method to evaluate, improve how environments affect the health and well-being of individuals. This index has the potential to be a powerful tool to quantify the quality of spaces and places to promote public health and wellbeing in urban environments globally.

"The floor is an important part of our indoor surroundings and as a partner to those who build our community environments, we see that there is a lack of fact-based tools to deal with the softer aspects of choosing the right floor for a specific purpose," says Anna Roth, CMO at Kährs.

"The NeuroDesign Index feels promising as a complementary tool in decision-making, both in our own future product development and in advising our customers," Anna Roth continues.

"I am incredibly happy to have Kährs as a partner in this world-unique research project. Our shared knowledge creates exciting opportunities to jointly contribute to new insights and innovations that promote all aspects of sustainability: human, ecological and financial," says Isabelle Sjövall.

Photos of Isabelle Sjövall: Jenny Hammar

A chat with Isabelle

Tell us about your research?

My research is based at the Faculty of Brain Sciences, Institute for Behavioural Neuroscience, University College London (UCL), a world-leading research university. The research focus is how design affects cognition, creativity and wellbeing, and which components and combinations that can affect people in a positive direction. I will investigate many different parts of the built environment from a multisensory perspective such as materials, tactility, colors, shapes, light and biophilic design. The aim is to contribute to new research-based knowledge that can be applied in future environments to promote health, performance, and wellbeing.

What is so exciting about your research?

- The brain is the most complex structure in the known universe and absolutely crucial for how we think, feel, and perform in our lives. And although the world around us has developed at a rapid pace, the brain has not changed significantly for many tens of thousands of years! It is still designed for a life in the savannah, the original environment for which our brains once evolved. From that perspective, I think finding explanations based on our biology is incredibly exciting. It also allows us to learn what kind of design to surround ourselves with to improve our quality of life and make smarter and more conscious choices.
 

You will be conducting your research at the PEARL lab, tell us a little more about that?

- PEARL, which stands for Person-Environment-Activity Research Laboratory, is a new state-of-the-art world-unique research laboratory in London and part of research powerhouse UCL. The laboratory has a floor span of about 4,000 m2 and specialises in measuring how people react to and interact with their surrounding environment.

-Getting the unique chance to use PEARL in my research is a key strength because it is incredibly rare to have the opportunity to carry out empirical experiments in a controlled laboratory environment large enough to build up different types of environments and scenarios in the laboratory. This type of state-of-the-art laboratory together with high-tech brain imaging technology that we also have access to within UCL, creates fantastic opportunities to explore how the brain reacts and responds to different types of exposure, stimuli, and design factors.
 

About Isabelle

Isabelle is a neurodesigner, author and cognitive scientist with more than 15 years of practical experience of advanced projects in architecture, design, and the property industry.

-I balance my time between scientific research and industry because I strongly believe in collaboration between different fields in order to achieve positive development with a higher purpose.

-My educational background is multidisciplinary, and I have studied economics at the Stockholm School of Economics, architecture and design in Florence, Italy, and neuroscience, psychology and mental health at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, at Kings College London. Now I will be the first person in the world to receive doctorate in the new interdisciplinary field of neurodesign, which investigates how the brain reacts and responds to built environments, and how people are affected psychologically and physiologically by conscious design choices.