Living on the Edge: Why and How We Should Spend More of Our Time Indoors on the Outer Edges of Interior Spaces

Author : Kevin Nute

Abstract :Humans evolved primarily as an outdoor species, yet today most of us spend the majority of our lives indoors. This paper suggests that we pay a significant price for this mismatch between our physiology and current lifestyle, in the form of increased stress, reduced alertness, and disrupted sleep. It argues that better access to three outdoor resources—skylight, visible natural movement, and information about the wider environment around us—could help to reduce these problems. With this in mind, it proposes practical ways of relocating a range of everyday activities to the experientially rich zone immediately inside windows. It argues that occupying this peripheral zone would enable building occupants to feel both protected from and at the time connected to the outside, and that this sense of having the best of both worlds can be enhanced through the design of edge spaces that appear to be in between indoors and out.

Keywords :Indoor Living, Outdoor Resources, Proximity to Windows, Edge Spaces.

Conference Name :International Conference on Therapeutic Design and Architecture - (ICTDA-25)

Conference Place Osaka, Japan

Conference Date 11th Nov 2025