Concurrents – Environmental Psychology: Office Hygge

by Sally Augustin, Ph.D. | March 6th, 2017

Scandinavians have been designing in hygge for a very, very long time. Now that Penelope Green has written about it in the New York Times (“Move Over, Marie Kondo: Make Room for the Hygge Hordes, December 24, nytimes), it’s likely that Americans will be talking about hygge, too. Ms. Green succinctly defines “hygge”: “Hygge (pronounced HOO-gah, like a football cheer in a Scandinavian accent) is the Danish word for cozy. It is also a national manifesto, nay, an obsession expressed in the constant pursuit of homespun pleasures involving candlelight, fires, fuzzy knitted socks, porridge, coffee, cake and other people.” Humans are relaxed and comfortable in hyggelig spaces; done right, they seem to encourage a bliss-like altered state of consciousness. All sorts of spaces in northern Europe are hyggelig; corporate conference rooms can be as hyggelig as residential salons, for instance. Worksite candles, that would stand a good probability of being …