Real Versus Virtual Views: An Existential Threat?

Three years ago, I wrote a blog about the threat of “circadian” LED lighting and LCD screens streaming video of the outside world replacing windows in buildings. It seemed a bit extreme at the time. Still, now the threat seems more real, according to Lisa Heschong in her presentation at the Fenestration and Glazing Industry Alliance (FGIA) 2021 summer conference.

I always think of Heschong as the mother of research into the human wellness impacts of daylight and views. Heschong and her team at the Heschong Mahone Group completed the often-cited, groundbreaking studies, which identified the positive impact of daylight and views on children’s learning in schools and on workers’ productivity in office buildings. Some years ago, I had the privilege of engaging with and learning from her on daylighting and views proposals for ASHRAE 189.1 and advocating for better daylighting.

Although her studies originally targeted daylighting, she has since asserted that a view to the outside was “the big winner,” consistently correlated with increasing math and reading scores in elementary schools, improving working memory, and reducing fatigue and health complaints from office workers, and increasing worker speed in a call center study.

Although a correlation between the health benefits and view was found decades ago, first documented in 1984 by Roger Ulrich, it has taken some time for the breadth of reasons to be fully understood. Until recently, the conversation has been focused on the role of circadian stimulus and biophilic benefits of window views. Noting that “eyes and photoreceptors are more complicated than we thought,” Heschong introduced other factors, such as eye health, mind wandering, cognitive mapping, orientation and memory, and reviewed the current state of scientific understanding of these benefits. These are briefly summarized from her presentation below. For a deeper dive into this subject, Heschong’s new book, Visual Delight in Architecture: Daylight, Vision and View is highly recommended.

Circadian System

We now know that the eye is responsible for both vision and circadian signaling (our time clock). There are non-visual receptors in the eye that manage the circadian systems of our body’s functions, which according to Heschong, create “a separate neural and hormonal pathway.” As a result, light (or lack thereof) falling on this receptor system affects alertness, sleep quality, mood, learning, memory and metabolic health. These non-visual receptors in the retina are especially sensitive to stimulus from blue light (around 480 nm) which, not coincidently, is also the color of the blue sky.

Melatonin production is especially important for human health, as Heschong said, “The rhythm of melatonin is the master metronome for all circadian physiology in our body.” Its production, along with a number of other critical hormones and neurotransmitters, is triggered by the onset of biological darkness, and its presence impacts sleep quality, memory formation, learning and insulin resistance. On the other hand, other biochemicals, such as serotonin and dopamine, which control appetite, impulse control, motivation, mood, working memory and muscle coordination, are manufactured only in the presence of light.

Daylight provides the right kind of light at the right time of day to appropriately trigger and control our circadian systems, prompting the statement by lighting and health expert Deborah Burnett: “Daylight is [like] a drug, and nature is the dispensing physician.” Too much light at the wrong time, or insufficient light at the right time of day, can cause significant issues with hormone production, circadian rhythms throughout our bodies, and consequent negative health effects.

Biophilia Benefits

Our interactions with nature, especially vegetation, have been shown to reduce stress and irritability. According to “Human Spaces: The Global Impact of Biophilic Design in the Workplace,” views of greenery and water through windows have been linked to lower levels of stress for employees compared to those without a window. Major epidemiological studies, such as by the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, have shown significant reductions in some types of disease and even mortality among people who have more exposure to “greenery.” The precise physiological mechanism remains to be determined, but it is clear that more access to “nature,” however defined, seems to have consistently positive impacts on public health.

Eye Health

Myopia has become dramatically more prevalent in recent years. Heschong cited findings that in some Asian countries, 95% of children now develop myopia and that within one generation some Inuit villages in Alaska and Canada went from a 2% prevalence to 25%. Given current trends, ophthalmologists have predicted that a full 50% of the global population will be myopic by 2050.

Light at night has been found to disrupt eye growth in chicks. Heschong suggested that this may be the case in human children, too. Eye growth and development has been found to be circadian, driven by dopamine levels in the eyeball. Ophthalmologists have noted the seasonal progression of myopia in which it worsens during winter, especially in northern latitudes when daylight is weakest. To reduce the risk for myopia, ophthalmologists in Australia and Singapore are now recommending that children spend at least two hours per day outdoors. Although the exact mechanism is not yet understood, views from a window to a brightly daylit environment may also have a protective effect.

Heschong also discussed the importance of “eye tracking” or “saccades” in eye health. Human eyes move around quickly between fixation points rather than staying continuously fixed on one. She called this “visual sampling” because it allows our eyes to take in many parts of a three-dimensional scene and provide more resolution. Since our eyes move so fast, our brain compensates to prevent us from seeing blurred images by a process called “saccadic masking.” This is our way of image stabilization as our eyes scan a scene. She asserted that such eye movement is key to our visual understanding and for pumping blood, and thus much needed energy and nutrition, to the retina. Therefore, a quality view is one that attracts our attention and has movement in it – which is typically provided by a window to the outside world. Indeed, movement is one of three criteria required by the USGBC’s “Quality Views” credit.

Mind Wandering

The default mode network (DMN) of the brain was originally thought to be the brain’s resting state mode when it is not focused on a particular intentional task. However, scientists then realized that the energy use of the brain during DMN is at least as high as during the performance of a given task. The DMN is understood to be activated during introspection, autobiographical memory retrieval and imagining the future. As a result, according to Heschong, DMN is believed to be central to self-awareness, to planning our personal future and to understanding our past.

It is now known that the brain moves between cognitive tasks and DMN frequently. This is dubbed “mind wandering,” but more often is described as “daydreaming” or “autopilot.” The phenomenon often happens when driving to work because, with experience, driving the same route can require less attention to the task, allowing the DMN to be active. A study in 2010 showed that the average American spends 47% of their waking hours mind wandering! Thus, it is perfectly normal. It is most frequently done while at work or studying. Heschong contends that daydreaming is one of the most important things people do while looking out a window at a pleasant view.

Heschong noted that people are typically unconscious of glancing out of the window but will do so every few minutes (assuming that they have a window!). She also mentioned studies have found that more mind-wandering results in larger working memory, better long-term memory consolidation, more planning for future actions and more creative problem solving.

Having windows in classrooms so children can look out the window while mind-wandering is likely to be positive for learning and creativity. In her book‘s chapter, which provides a concise history of daylight in schools, she also cites a recent U.K study by Peter Barrett in which he found “window views to nature” to be the most significant factor in classroom design for progress in writing – supporting the connectivity of views to creativity. The “Clever Classrooms” website is based on Barrett’s work and provides a rubric for classroom design.

 Cognitive Mapping, Orientation and Memory

Cognitive mapping allows humans to be oriented to, and navigate within, their environment and to remember “how to get home.” This mental process has been located in the hippocampus, which is also connected to our circadian time clock. The hippocampus is also a seat of long-term memory. Heschong noted that London taxi drivers have an enlarged hippocampus correlated with their comprehensive memorization and orientation to the city’s complex road system that they must prove they can navigate with no aid from a map. As additional evidence, she referenced the disruption of the hippocampus associated with Alzheimer’s disease, which frequently causes symptoms of both temporal and spatial disorientation. A study of dementia patients has already shown reduced depression when patients are exposed to natural daylight.

Heschong asserts that window views help support both better cognitive maps and temporal cues, which importantly aid orientation and our sense of reality. Views allow us to anticipate and detect subtle trends in time, weather and season. She contends that memorable views help establish a mental structure in time and place which can improve memory formation and retrieval.

She concluded with a declaration that “great architecture celebrates the view, creating a social focus and reinforcing cultural context.”

Virtual Daylight and Views

However, as I discussed back in 2018, the lighting industry has developed tunable LED technology that allows lighting systems to output light of different intensity and color depending on the time of day to mimic the changes in daylight through the day. This is often called circadian lighting, dynamic lighting or human-centric lighting and is being marketed aggressively as an effective replacement for daylight.

As predicted, there is also a small, but growing electronics industry promoting the benefits of views from simulated or virtual windows and skylights to architects. A group at MIT’s Media Lab has also developed the Mediated Atmosphere project to create a customized simulated visual, olfactory, sound and lighting environment.

While many industries are looking to capitalize upon the value added by daylight and view, there is also growing research that simulated substitutes are not as potent as the real thing. For example, Peter Khan at the University of Washington has completed studies comparing a variety of simulated versus “real nature” examples. He has consistently found that the measurable biological benefits of the real version greatly exceed those of the simulated version.

Heschong suggested that, while daylight outdoors will always be best, having access to views through a window can provide vastly more stimulus (perhaps by 100 times) to our circadian system than delivered by any artificial lighting system. Not only are window views brighter, full of blue-enriched light, but they are also much more interesting, drawing our attention and maintaining our gaze throughout the day.

 We Need the Real Thing

Heschong posed the question: “We all want to work in a healthy building, but do we want simulated health or the real thing?” In the façade community, we have an opportunity to advocate for putting the real thing in buildings – that is – real daylight and real, quality views, to the outside. These benefits are clearly worth billions of dollars to the real estate industry.

Unfortunately, for the second code cycle in a row, proposals that would require windows or skylights to provide real daylight in classrooms in schools and daycare centers in the International Building Code (IBC) have been disapproved. While it could have been argued that the first proposal in 2018 was flawed, two alternate proposals (G165 and G166), which improved upon the previous (to make it less restrictive), were submitted for this current IBC revision by the Glazing Industry Code Committee and were still disapproved unanimously.

With all the evidence clearly demonstrating the positive impact of “window views to nature” and real daylight on learning outcomes, what will it take for our building codes to require at least a minimum amount of real daylight and views for children in our schools?

We evolved over millions of years as outdoor animals, but we have turned ourselves into an indoor species in the last century – spending more than 90% of our lives indoors. But our bodies’ functions have not evolved as quickly and still rely on exposure to daylight and views of the outside world to function properly.

Heschong has clearly summarized the current understanding of the breadth and depth of the fundamental biological impacts of the light we receive (or not) through our eyes. Continuing to construct buildings in which we live, work, learn and play without sufficient daylight and without access to quality views poses an existential threat to human health. We cannot pay lip service to this topic, and virtual reality technology cannot help us put a Band-Aid on it. We need the real thing.