Urban Stress
Shuyue Chen
In the rapidly evolving social environment, media contagion has put too much pressure on urban people. It seriously affects people's mental health and even generates aggressive behavior and antisocial behavior. In urban environments, people are often overloaded and overstimulated by noise, movement, and visual complexity. The experience of nature appears to be an antidote to the stress effects of urban living. The focus of this thesis is defining the methods of the interplay between individuals and their surroundings and exploring the associations between people's stereotype of the specific urban areas and their stress level.
According to my design methodology, people's body system has a stronger reaction than what they feel, and their perception will be affected by the atmosphere of different location and space. I went to 3 different locations in New York City and took photos of both environments and people's movement. This project aims to use photos and collages to create the image of different locations with strong emotional cues, to discover and produce effective factors that can regulate stress in an urban environment.
