RESTORATIVE EFFECT OF GREEN DESIGN OFFICE

Abstract

In modern world, one of major causes of stress is reported at office. There have been many studies on the green effects in natural environment that improve human psychological and physiological states under stress situation. On the other hand, there is not enough space in the office for providing enough visual experiences of natural environment. Furthermore, there have been many discussions on the restorative effects of plants in the office environment based on subjective assessments but few research dealt with the physiological effect and they have not necessarily been successful in detecting clear effects of small interior plants. In this study, the authors ameliorate color and pattern of wall, floor, etc., which occupy major part of vision, of the conventional office with the plant's visual texture and conducted an experiment in which we aim at clarifying physiological restorative effects of our “green office scape” in virtual environment. The experiment consists of two Phases and 26 students participated in each phase in the same order. Each phase has two sessions of n-back tests and 30 seconds break between the sessions. Phase 1 started with the conventional office scape and it was changed to the “green office scape” at the beginning of break time, while in Phase 2, there was no change from the conventional office scape. During those phases, SCL values were measured and analyzed with the test scores as performance level. The whole experiment was conducted in virtual environment. As a result, at the break between the sessions, the average of standardized SCL values significantly increased (p < 0.05, n=22). However, the gap of these values is significantly higher when the scape changed from office to green than in no change condition (p < 0.05, n=22). In further analysis, the participants were classified into two groups who were aware of the change of the scape in Phase 1, i.e. “aware group (n=10)” and who were not, i.e. “unaware group (n=12)”. The results of the “aware group” showed that the average of standardized SCL values significantly increased when the design has changed into Green Design Office (p < 0.05) and the performance score kept a certain level, while in no change condition, the increase of SCL values was not significant and the performance score decreased significantly (p<0.01). From those results, the authors conclude that the Green Design Office may recover the worker's arousal level, and may bring the concentration. It indicates that continuous work in the same office design for a long time without the green elements may cause the difficulty in getting the restorative effect. In addition, the restorative effect by scape change into green ones may be effective when the worker is aware of the change. These results suggest that it is important to make the office workers aware of the green visual elements when changing office scape. Finally, those results imply that there is possibility of using virtual environment for the restoration of the worker's concentration.