Multisensory Comfort and Human-Centered Design: The Impact of the Built Environment on Health and Well-Being

Dear Colleagues,

The built environment plays a central role in occupational health and well-being, shaping how people perceive, inhabit, and interact with spaces. Beyond structural safety, environments influence comfort, cognition, and social interaction through sensory and ergonomic factors. Ergonomics provides the methodological foundation for aligning human abilities and task demands, while comfort emerges from the multisensory integration of light, sound, temperature, and spatial organization, supported by building technologies and innovative design methods. These dimensions affect not only work-related performance but also overall health, resilience, and inclusivity in daily life.

Visual comfort and daylighting are particularly critical within this context. Adequate daylight improves task visibility and reduces glare, while also providing non-visual benefits by regulating circadian rhythms, enhancing alertness, and sustaining mood. Such effects, documented in occupational health and environmental psychology, not only directly influence cognitive load, fatigue, and productivity but also extend to broader well-being by shaping sleep quality, mental health, social interaction, and the positive perception of inhabited spaces. In this sense, daylighting affects both occupational performance and quality of life, intertwining physical health, psychological balance, and social participation.

Acoustic balance, thermal regulation, indoor air quality, and the smellscape likewise contribute to multisensory coherence, reducing stress and supporting health and performance. For neurodivergent individuals and those with sensory sensitivities, the stakes are even higher: the environment can either amplify stressors or act as a protective factor. Yet research on design requirements for sensory-sensitive users remains scarce. Adaptive and human-centered strategies, combined with inclusive “design for all” approaches, embed accessibility, equity, and dignity into everyday contexts.

Considering multisensory comfort and perception as integral to human factors, this Special Issue seeks to advance our understanding of how architecture, ergonomics, psychology, and engineering converge to shape health, well-being, and inclusion. Alongside established methods, it also welcomes contributions exploring emerging approaches—such as visual attention scans, VAS-based simulation, and AI-driven models including large language models (LLMs)—to complement traditional evaluations and better assess perceptual, cognitive, and affective qualities of the built environment.

Dr. Federica Giuliani
Dr. Federica Caffaro
Dr. Luca Zaniboni
Dr. Valerio Roberto Maria Lo Verso
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• occupational health
• well-being
• ergonomics
• daylighting and visual comfort
• non-visual effects of light
• multisensory comfort
• human-centered design
• design for All
• neurodiversity
• perception and sensory experience
• innovative construction technologies applied
• AI and simulation tools for design and evaluation