Seven studies, one story: why we must build more joyful cities

This year, Humanise commissioned a remarkable breadth of research – listening to passers-by, surveying whole communities, analysing streets at scale, and measuring bodies in real time as they encountered buildings. Each piece of work examines the outsides of buildings through a different lens. Together, they form a growing evidence base proving that the outsides of buildings aren’t just a backdrop to life: they actively shape our emotions, our attention, our stress and our sense of belonging.

Here’s what we’ve learned.

1. Passers-by are the primary users of buildings – and they deserve joy

Our collaboration with Space Syntax revealed that 58-74% of people on UK high streets are passers-by, rather than occupants or visitors. On Oxford Street alone, 25.7 million more people pass buildings each year than actually go inside them. Yet most investment continues to go into interiors.

If most people experience buildings only from the outside, then the façade becomes a civic responsibility – a chance to create delight, safety, and pride at urban scale.

2. The UK’s new-town residents want more beauty, more care, more meaning

Only 4% of residents in the UK’s post-war new towns spontaneously used the word “nice” to describe where they live. Yet 87% say future new towns should make people feel proud, and 81% say they should make people feel valued and cared for.

People are clear: they want buildings with character, not just housing units.

3. Boring buildings drain us – literally

In field studies in London and Toronto, Jatheesh Srikantharajah and Colin Ellard found that low-complexity façades were associated with significant drops in skin conductance (-0.41 in London; -0.63 in Toronto), indicating reduced alertness and emotional engagement. High-complexity façades, by contrast, were linked to far greater pleasure, interest and beauty ratings – with no difference between experts and the public.

Joyful design isn’t superficial – it has significant physiological effects.

4. Science can now predict which façades will overwhelm us

Cleo Valentine’s experimental modelling revealed that façades containing ~3 cycles per degree – the peak sensitivity of human vision – produced fivefold increases in predicted visual stress. Metallic, repetitive screens were the worst offenders; curvature and irregularity the lowest.

We can now pinpoint – and avoid – the patterns that make cities feel harsh.

5. Applied to Seoul, the picture becomes even clearer

Analysing 78 buildings across five architectural eras, Valentine found that contemporary Seoul façades showed over 35% higher predicted visual stress than traditional Korean architecture. The building’s era – and the design choices embedded within it – explained around 73% of the variation. Large-scale repetition produced extreme stress spikes, especially from afar.

Historic Korean streets feel calmer for a reason: they are richer, warmer, more varied, more human.

6. What Seoulites say they want

Our survey of 1,000 residents showed overwhelming preference for buildings that feel cared-for, distinctive, textural and human-scaled, and clear frustration with repetitive, harsh or overly glazed façades.
People want variation, not monotony. Texture, not glare. Identity, not anonymity.

Cities that delight us are cities that support us.

7. Bringing the science together

All these threads culminate in the Global Evidence Review, the first systematic synthesis of 80+ studies showing how façades influence stress, attention, memory, emotion and social connection. It moves the conversation from instinct to evidence and gives architects, planners and city-makers a scientific foundation for designing healthier, more human places.

Across biometric fieldwork, computational modelling, community surveys and environmental psychology, the evidence now gives us a clear, science-based understanding of why humanising our towns and cities matters – a foundation strong enough to demand change. The next step is developing the tools, methods and design insights that will help us make that change real.