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New European Bauhaus
News article10 March 2021

Better public spaces for better quality of life

We are interested in understanding the impact of our surroundings on our health and how we can make changes for the better.

Visual from the thesis on public spaces
Visual from the thesis on public spaces
Ana Gallego

What's the impact of our surroundings on our health? Is it enough if public spaces are designed respecting regulations and urban planning parameters?
 
Ana Gallego has reflected on some of these questions and shared her thoughts through our website. She believes that there's a paradigm change and interest in public space design is growing for good reasons.
 
As big cities get more crowded, there is increasingly less free space, making empty and non-functional spaces inconceivable. She suggests we rethink their design to improve citizens' quality of life. But, is this possible?
 
Ana's thesis's objective was to find the relation between public space design and our mental and physical health. She also looked at how, from an architectural perspective, new science fields, such as neuroarchitecture and salutogenesis, can be employed to identify those elements that can benefit public spaces in cities.
 
In the context of her studies, she did qualitative and quantitative research, studied related publications, and worked on a case study involving the San Lorenzo Square in Seville, for which she ran surveys and proposed improvements.
 
Can public spaces become generators of well-being? How can we make our living spaces more beautiful, sustainable and inclusive?

Go to Co-design in our main menu and share your views​ ideas, examples, challenges!

? Visual from the thesis / © Source: Ana Gallego

Details

Publication date
10 March 2021