Designing Wellness

In the world of wellness, we’re used to hearing about diet, mindfulness, and even forest bathing. But what if the walls around you—the colors, the height of your ceilings, even the scale of a room—are as critical to your health as what’s on your plate? It turns out, the architecture of our spaces may be speaking directly to our guts. Literally.

The dominant narrative in both architecture and health has historically separated the built environment from the body. Architects design for aesthetics, function, and form; health professionals treat symptoms within clinical walls. The body is compartmentalised, the mind is isolated, and the spaces we move through are rarely considered co-regulators of our biology. But that narrative is breaking down—thanks to a rising body of research that reveals a surprisingly intimate relationship between space, brain waves, and the gut.

At the Creative Women’s Association (CWA), we see this differently. Built environments aren’t just backdrops. They’re active participants in our physiological experience. In fact, CWA positions architecture as a key influencer in the gut-brain conversation—particularly via the vagus nerve, the major neural highway that regulates stress, digestion, inflammation, and emotional regulation. According to Deakin University’s “Architecture with Feeling” project, the design of a room—its color, height, light, and spatial scale—can influence the autonomic nervous system and alter brain oscillations. That means architecture isn’t passive. It’s a biological intervention.

Take color: blue tones, long thought to be ‘calming,’ actually produce measurable changes in brain wave patterns, particularly alpha and theta waves associated with relaxation and vagal activity. Or scale: smaller, more intimate spaces trigger different emotional and neurological responses than vast, open-plan environments. These responses aren’t just mood-based—they affect the body’s internal state, including the gut. For women navigating chronic stress, digestive imbalances, or post-pandemic burnout, this connection isn’t decorative—it’s therapeutic.

But this isn’t just about calming color palettes and zen-like aesthetics. It’s about designing systems that work with the body—not against it. The CWA lens reframes architecture as a potential site of intervention for creative health and social prescribing. Schools, workplaces, hospitals, and even domestic spaces can be reimagined as biofeedback loops—supporting healing, not just housing productivity. And critically, women—so often the invisible infrastructure behind caregiving and community cohesion—must lead these design conversations. Not just as users, but as creators.

The future of wellness isn’t in a supplement aisle or the next luxury spa retreat. It’s in the spaces we already occupy—if we redesign them with intention. As more research emerges linking built environments to gut health, emotional resilience, and neural connectivity, one thing becomes clear: architecture is no longer just an art or a science. It’s a health tool. And for those of us building new systems—economic, creative, ecological—it might just be the foundation we’ve been missing.