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 rejected as fire hazards in the U.S., grace many a Scandinavian meeting room.
Some of the elements of hygge are more readily applicable at offices in North America than others.
Fires and candlelight are almost definitely out in workplaces on this side of the Atlantic, but warm light, natural materials, and design that features a few more curved lines and contours than might generally be seen can make a space seem hyggelig.
So would shielded workspaces where people feel they have some control over their experiences and ability to determine what happens next – being surprised is very un-hyggelig. This means workspaces where circulation paths pass behind seats are out, for example. Using light to create zones is hyggelig, and also a positive in many workplaces. Spaces that are bathed in a warm circle of light and surrounded by slightly darker areas are clearly “owned” by the people in them – and that joint ownership builds interpersonal bonds. Creating territories with light is also possible in North American workplaces.
Modern day Vikings are coming, this time with hygge instead of swords. This invasion will be much more positively received than the last.
Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.