Bodies at work: Exploring the relationship between physical work environment, interoception, and well-being

The design of the physical work environment—i.e. the spatial design and indoor environmental qualities—is increasingly recognized as an important factor in employees’ health and well-being. Yet, how differences between employees’ bodies and resulting spatial, bodily, and emotional experiences affect their well-being in the workplace is rarely considered. Through a mixed-methods approach, the project “Bodies at work” sets out to investigate how individual interoceptive abilities to experience and attend to one’s own bodily sensations are linked to people’s well-being and the perceived (un)supportive elements of their physical workplaces. By bringing together the fields of architecture, building physics, and health psychology through the notions of embodiment and interoception, the project results will contribute to expanding the theoretical and methodological toolbox for understanding how diversity of bodies and their experiences influence employees’ satisfaction with indoor environmental qualities and physical workplace as providing resources for well-being.

Keywords:physical work environment, embodiment, interoception, user experience, mixed-methods

Disciplines:Architecture not elsewhere classified, Architectural design not elsewhere classified, Building physics, Health psychology, Environmental psychology, Occupational health and safety