Land of Dochia, Issue No.2, January 2023

Sharing a home is What you need to know to work well from home

PART 1

How to become an ECO-Smurf

From forest to homes and back to the forest

The birth of Mental Health welcome to the health age, we're all in this together

PART 1

Dochia Trending Newsletter a retrospective

Letter from the Editor

History repeating is the forever-oiled revolving door of life's luxury hotel

No matter how many guests come through, some of the stories repeat over and over Only a handful of people, likely the ones behind the scenes working in the hotel, have the superpower to remember and learn from stories past

This first issue of the new year is yet another swing at that door dedicated to not forgetting how fragile life on earth is We only have power together from sharing the present wealth and the past lessons of those who lived before us Let's not repeat the mistakes of things past; let us remember and not call new what once was old but build forward on what we already have lived and learned Let's not, in the name of progress, forget the reverence of the sun that patiently rises with every spin of the earth The humbleness of its circular motion allowed our ancestors to live cyclical lives in harmony with the planet that housed them

From tips on adapting to working from home to showcasing sustainable living to a quick look at the history of mental health, we learn ourselves and teach our children how to become the eco-smurfs of the future

Happy reading,

Welcome to the rare artifacts exhibit.

This short 15min video is all we have left from Earth, a planet that was once part of the Milky Way galaxy.

The link between our health as a species, individual mental health and the slowly unrecognizable planet we occupy has been untapped for too long and we feel the effects It is only by altering the attitudes of the mind that we can trigger a better outcome before it is too late.

Fast forward to now, bumperto-bumper ski-lift line-ups follow the bumper-to-bumper drive up the hill through what, luckily, still stands as a beautiful forest

Here But not somewhere else

Winding up the hill in the fairytale of winter where forests filled with the chirp of sparrows line up the long, asphalted roads peppered with few cars and happy skigoers heading for the slopes, the pure, unadulterated experience of nature only slightly adjusted by humanity, not enough to pollute but good enough to get us around This was then; a generation or two ago

We like our forests close, yet tend to ignore the woods afar. Suppose too many of us forget about the forests of others, the sparrows, and the roads In that case, we will all be giving up, maybe unknowingly, the drive up the mountain and skiing, and with that, we will start losing all our fairytales.

The thing about fairytales is that they are not like our forests We tend to love the ones from afar much more than the ones close That's the hidden road to sharing a better planet

"The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind."

William James

TOPALIGNMENT

WHATYOUNEEDTO KNOWTOWORK WELLFROMHOME

Janna is working from home She has a small condo in Toronto's Upper East side, somewhere off Eglinton and east of Yonge. She's in her mid-thirties with an office job in finance, analyzing data of all kinds and producing reports The money is good but not great, the hours are fixed, and the stress is low. She lives alone.

During and after the pandemic, the effects of working at home have increasingly been studied on pools of people like Janna

Other surveys included people in urban centres that live in shared accommodations, households with small children and multiple working parents, or teenagers in high school where too many pets and noise often make it impossible to concentrate.

From working alone to co-working with your spouse, the kids, the cat and the mailman, data was collected to allow designers to create healthier workfrom-home environments and empower psychologists to help people cope with the hybrid work model that is likely to perpetuate in the future workforce.

We now know that health was impacted by excessive work-at-home pressures, with social and behavioural factors being in the lead Lack of social contact when living alone or the impossibility of adequately performing work tasks due to a chaotic environment hold the two extremes Results like stress increase, depression and sheer frustration have proven to have demoralizing effects of global magnitude

Notable data was also collected on the more practical and actionable front of design It turns out there are many measures we can take that would improve previously unmanageable conditions.

Start with the basics, air quality and light, and adjust your interior climate to suit

Air pollution is prevalent in our work environments 70% of workers are complaining about the air quality of their offices, yet, surveys suggest that when at home, the same percentage, if not more, tend to not pay attention to regulating the interior climate despite the increased control they have over it

Regulate your food intake and exercise

Having meals at regular times instead of letting the day fly by can be

enhanced by having those meals together with the rest of your family.

Regulate your food intake and exercise

Living alone poses the problem of eating while working. Instead, carving out a specific time to eat provides an easy pause necessary for the brain to recharge and keep going If breaks are strategically placed along the path of performing a task, productivity is

Mechanically controlled

are not always the best, as they cannot compete with the complex purification system of the outdoors atmosphere. Opening the windows and allowing fresh air to come in periodically ensures the oxygenation of indoor air meets the higher demands of more people in the same space for a more extended period

When the kitchen is the main workspace, having easy-to-cook meals during the day or healthy snacks limits the disruptive meal prep time Preparing lunch the night ahead, the way you would do it while going to the office, is also a solution.

Resist spatial dependency

Most people report that they work best in one place or another Having a space that allows appropriate concentration and does not invite chaos and madness is tantamount While all tasks we perform require attention, not everyone can concentrate in the same way and not every job requires the same level of concentration Yet this is the one ingredient that is common to everything we do

Despite the many benefits of a dedicated workspace that, when you have plenty of home, is easier to allocate, changing location and not being dependent on a particular spot also has its perks. It deflects the buildup of strong dependency ties that may, in the long run, prevent you from working well anywhere else

The call-centre model

With most jobs being computerbound, it is natural to focus most of your attention on desk space or computer space

While performing an activity in the home, a person occupies an area between six square feet when seated to fifteen square feet when cooking, depending on the size of your kitchen. Most other activities have a spatial extent in between

Mathematically speaking, any area of this size can be a workspace, including the kitchen table that can be shared between multiple bodies for eating; it can also be shared, with a few tools, for working: Headphones, organization, and visual barriers.

Portability

Laptops, tablets, and phones big enough to do anything on are an absolute must They allow the flexibility of moving from one area to another, break the associative bond between space and a particular task, and allow your body to periodically alter its position, which is conducive to better blood flow and prevents muscle cramps and stiffness.

Sound control and the Phone-booth

The less talked about conditions yet prevalent in so many households is the inability to have a designated private space to work and, especially, take calls Open space work has acclimatized us to working with the surrounding sounds of other people's activities around us You can theoretically be on the phone when others are around you The sounds of home differ, however, from those of an office It is also considered less professional to hear children in the background For instance, we all avoid taking calls or being on zoom when sharing a space in the home For those homes that do not have the possibility of setting up a designated work space for each, the bathroom can often be a great alternative and fun! Of course, you would need to turn your camera off since it is no more professional to take a call in the bathroom than to have children screaming in the background

With work at home happening simultaneous to domestic life has posed the most challenges for many The dissonance between the type of activities of family members differs from the continuous workflow in an office environment By adjusting your tolerance and familiarity, inevitably, one becomes less sensitive to it and eventually, with a little bit of help, adapts

RESISTSPATIAL DEPENDENCY

eat what you grow

Aherbgardenprovidesflavourinthe foodsandscentsinthehomeasidefrom thehealthbenefitsoftendingasmall garden

wear your clothes multiple times

Sharewithyourchildren

don't forget the pass it on!

Smurfs are creatures that live happily in tiny mushrooms in our forests

JULIA BEWCYK

Biophilia has recently broken through into the cultural mainstream It has the full momentum needed to establish itself as a new norm and increase awareness of the importance of living closer to nature

The Biophilia hypothesis is not new It is a forty-year-old concept introduced in 1984 by the American biologist Edward Wilson who proposed that humans are more at ease when surrounded by nature He went on to define the concept as the "urge [we have] to affiliate with other forms of life"

Later on, the concept was reduced to such an extent that the most commonly spread variation was the beneficial presence of plants in over-urbanized environments

Their beauty and uniqueness keep this style alive, and their faithful admirers are a clan of their own

This timber frame home features highgrade Canadian Douglas Fir hand-picked from sustainably managed forest within a 125-mile radius from the mill in BC. Stained and engineered prior to shipping in the Canadian-owned facility, the timber is then transported to the destination, ready to be installed in place

Construction is less wasteful since all structural elements are measured and carefully sized before shipping resulting in lower waste on the job site. The increase in logistics and strategy such a home requires sometimes poses challenges beyond what many homeowners are willing to take

There is, however, much more to learn from it than popular trends would let us believe, including the benefits of building our habitats in a way that is more akin to nature. If farmed responsibly, timber homes are the epitome of healthy living and bliss for a sustainable planet

Windows, for instance, are commonly ordered after the timber is installed Unlike stick frame construction where there is wiggle room around the openings, the windows must fit precisely between the timbers The wood cannot be relocated; it cannot even be nudged

Similar restrictions exist in treating the interiors There is a strong connection between interiors and architecture, and the wood acts as the armature that ties everything together Rules are stricter, and variation is limited

The kitchen hood was deliberately centred on the ceiling beams, reverent to the architectural bones of the home A minor detail that now, when everything aligns, is unnoticed. In a home like this, if misalignments were to be present, they would've been extremely bothersome to the eye and would make a disjointed architecture Many details followed suit and required equal attention. The careful coordination of every interior item with the architectural backbone was a challenge that came with a fantastic reward once the final product was complete.

The foyer is a long exposed passage leading from the front door into the grand hall. Completely open to one side, some may say that it allows little privacy. Yet for the keen eye and the rich soul, it is rather a treehouse that provides the unquenched freedom of living outdoors

The unobstructed view of the side garden with its grand trees standing tall, protective of the man-made home, reinforces the collaboration we have and always will with nature.

INTERIORS

Buildings like these are like bodies Infused with the right materials, they live and breathe with us

And we, as biophilia teaches us, want to be close to their hearts.

The kitchen hood had to be placed centered to the ceiling beams

PHOTOGRAPHY

JULIA BEWCIK

ARCHITECTURE

DAVID SMALL ARCHITECT

DOCHIA INTERIOR DESIGNDESIGN TEAM ADRIANA MOT OZGUR OGUDUCU

The foyer is a long passage leading from the front door into the grand hall. Completely open to one side, some may say that it allows little privacy. Yet for the keen eye and the rich soul, it is rather a treehouse that provides the unquenched freedom of living outdoors.

TOPALIGNMENT

THEBIRTHOF MENTALHEALTH

hen in 1946, the World Health Organization (WHO) appointed Mental Health as an actual discipline, it globally validated the field and closed the last loop on what human health is That was two thousand years since Hippocrates linked psychological disorders to biological causes and broke the pre-existing belief that mental illnesses were fuelled by supernatural intervention With that, the rest was history.

Yet despite sustained efforts, by the 21st century, most western world countries still had no national policies that treated mental health with the same level of importance as physical health and maintained a divide that now is known not to exist. It took seventy-six years to today for 48% of countries to have some form of mention of mental health at the national level. A much lower number have policies that effectively deal with it. In 2022 only a fifth of all countries included mental health in the general insurance policies

Historically, a turning point was the arrival of the passive house concept in the late seventies. The idea originated in the United States and Canada following the oil embargo of 1973 and the subsequent cost increase that led to the energy crisis In its infancy, it promoted efficiency as the most valuable energy. A series of construction principles were developed mainly around heating, ventilating and water reuse. The technology was new, but the concepts dated back to the Romans and beyond.

Pompeii in the 7th century B.C. had residential wells collecting rainwater for domestic use, distribution systems via terracotta piping and street

sewage management Their buildings not only reflected a wonderful example of sanitation, but displayed a subtle and positive connection of living with nature The highly developed and completely passive architectural construction relied, among others, on internal courtyards and placement of openings to control natural and energy-free residential heating and cooling It epitomized ecological living by sharing and reusing available resources responsibly and with the least damage toward the global balance.

The late XXth century marked the resurgence of rational talk around buildings and their impact on health, as sparse measures started to rise and promote industrialization slow-down. It took another sixty years until largescale impact was finally felt. And now, as we enter 2023, neurodesign, selftropy™, wellbeing, and mindfulness are the new pioneers that bridge the last gap between a healthy planet and a healthy mind

Part 2, Issue #4., March 2023

PASSIVE HOUSE 1997

Iuliu

unit residential complex Bucharest, Romania, 1997

A trailblazer at the time, this multi-unit home in a renovated historical building creatively pioneered the cornerstone principles of what was later to become the passive house as we define it today.

Designed based on roman principles, it contributed to the emerging dialogue on passive house models and got recognized as such Four residential units are placed around a central courtyard that acted as a well of light and rainwater collection. A small reservoir at the bottom recirculated the collected water to washrooms and kitchens, each equipped with a needbasis portable filtration system

Solar panels brought electricity, and the architectural massing of the building allowed for passive ventilation, eliminating the need for mechanical air conditioning.

Maniu Townhome multi-

HEALTHY AND

ECO-FRIENDLY ELEMENTS

Solar heating via panels and generator

Rainwater collecting and reusing

Passive ventilation, entirely through architectural design

The strategic placement of water and greenery views in the courtyard (that later became an integral part of the biophilic design)

Solar positioning resulting in circadian rhythm synchronization by controlled window placement and window covering integration

The interiors also proposed a series of stimuli some aimed at increasing brain activity, some calming in nature, and provided a relaxing context (such as the tilted facade toward the street and diffused glass block toward the courtyard)

OF NOTE: the concept of architectural stimuli that Adriana proposed here was the germinal idea behind Selftropy ™ The psychological effects of interiors never became part of the passive house concept, however, they are increasingly in the spotlight in the new filed of neurodesign, within which Selftropy is an emerging concept.

Developed over the past twenty years, the selftropic method is the only neurodesign-based method that combines aesthetic, euclidian and non-euclidian spatial geometry and psychology-based design tactics to create a responsive environmental continuum and control emotional flow

This infill townhome complex, designed in 1997, was a theoretical project developed by Adriana Mot, then a student at The Institute of Architecture Ion Mincu in Bucharest, Romania and Waterloo University School of Architecture in Ontario, Canada It won the 1998 Joe Somfay Green Energy Award in Canada

Dochia TRENDING newsletter topics retrospective

Cover featured Adriana Mot interior design by Dochia interior design photography Julia Bewcyk

Editor's letter collage Adriana Mot images and graphics via Canva Focus landscape via Unsplash architecture, Greg Paupst

Images and graphics

Quote of the month images via Canva DIY collage Adrian Mot stock drawings and images via Canva

Mental health interior design by Dochia interior design photography by Chris Harrison Photographer other images via Istock and Canva

Showcase interior design by Dochia interior design photography, Julia Bewcyk exterior photo, Greg Paupst

Culture images via Istock and Dochia Media Passive house design and drawings by Adriana Mot

The team

Adriana Mot Jessica Cornacchia Theodora Zetu

1446 Don Mills Rd , unit #230 Toronto ON M3B 3N3 +1-416-492-7451 | dm@dochia com

www dochiamedia com

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