Breathing Room: Designing Work & Living Spaces for Quality Thinking and Decision-Making
- Amber Case
- 4 minutes ago
- 6 min read
Last year, I was in an all-day meeting in a new, multi-million dollar office building owned by one of the world’s top tech companies. Officially billed as a "corporate retreat”, I was helping the team brainstorm strategy directions for 2026.
We started in a meeting room at 9 am, and as we headed into the late afternoon, our brainstorming turned more into a drizzle. I noticed our conversation slowed and meandered. Eventually, someone at the roundtable jokingly blamed this on “the 3 pm slump,” a common office malady usually attributed to a heavy lunch or lack of hydration.
I had with me a more objective measure of the problem: Airthings, a Norwegian-built CO₂ and air quality monitor.
I immediately saw the issue the moment I looked at the display:
CO₂ levels were headed toward 1,500 parts per million (PPM). This was far over optimum. Outside environments are closer to 550 PPM, where there’s often more airflow and trees that can soak up these invisible particles.
It’s also poor atmosphere for cognitive work: research has shown that for every 100 PPM of CO₂ above the baseline (around 550 ppm), decision-making decreases by 10%. At 1500 PPM (like in our office), decision-making drops by 50%¹ (read the paper here).
The test measured 24 participants over 6 days in a controlled office environment. The setup included variable test levels to simulate a green building environment, from a low C02 at 550 ppm → to medium C02 at 950 ppm → to high C02 at 1400 ppm.¹
Participants then completed an assessment called the Strategic Management Simulation (SMS) test, which assesses higher-order decision-making abilities.
The observed effects found that C02 and air pollution were associated with large declines in crisis-response, information-seeking and strategy tasks¹:
- At ~945 ppm CO₂, cognitive function scores were 15% lower.
- At ~1,400 ppm CO₂, scores were 50% lower.
And again, I was experiencing this productivity dip in a new office building for one of the Internet’s most powerful companies, known for hiring some of the more qualified problem-solvers on the planet.
Why spend so much on talent in a building, and then hinder them with poor air control? I started to wonder how many bad decisions affecting millions of consumers were made in this meeting room, literally due to bad air.
It’s ironic that the top tech giants are so fixated on AI, but fail to emphasize the importance of quality human input. An office worker can have access to the most powerful large language model in the world, but trying to input prompts in a room with high CO₂ levels, their initial prompts may suffer, leading to mediocre results. And even when large organizations sponsor yearly corporate retreats in the mountains, forests, or by the ocean, any great ideas brainstormed there can fail to be implemented when they’re taken back to stuffy office spaces.
Designing Better Living and Working Spaces
The Babylonians made amazing use of passive underground rivers channeled into their buildings, to create a natural air conditioning system which also helped with air quality. It’s in spaces like these that the Code of Hammurabi, a seminal Babylonian legal text composed c. 1753 BC was considered and drafted. Or to put it another way: we owe the creation of early civilization to great air quality.
As for future homes and buildings, I’m excited to see architects draw from both the latest in air quality technology and designs through history.
A Scandinavian Secret to Clearer Thinking?
What I experienced in the office in New York is in stark contrast to what I’ve observed in Norway, a nation which boasts a strong GDP per capita.
There are many reasons the country performs well in relation to its size, but I’m convinced of another key factor:
Both Norway and Sweden’s air standards for homes and other buildings are some of the highest in the world. They sit at the high end globally—on par with Finland, Sweden, and Estonia—and are definitely stronger than North America, the UK, Southern Europe, and most of the world.
I starting using Airthings View Plus to see how Norwegian indoor ventilation compared to trains, homes and offices in US. It was surprising to notice how many US homes don’t even have proper ventilation for cooking, resulting in spaces filled with CO₂ and particulate matter).
Designing Spaces for Focused Work and Quality Thinking
reMarkable's campus in Oslo, Norway is specifically built to strenuous air quality standards, with plenty of plants, natural materials, and varied environments for better cognition and collaboration. They've even produced several “Rooms to Think”, including a space that feels like a train cabin.
In the long term, our future homes and offices should incorporate better ventilation systems in their design.
The first place to start is with an air quality monitor. Tim Heffernan of Wirecutter has a good write-up on recommended air quality monitors.
Once you've gathered results in different spaces at peak times, the next thing to do is making sure fresh air is cycled through your live/work space five times an hour – so if you’re adding fresh air from the outside (if you’re in a polluted environment, incoming air needs more aggressive filtration).
One popular idea for improving air quality is to add plants to an office or home environment. Many people cite this NASA study recommending indoor plants for clean air. However, it’s important to read beyond the headline.
It turns out that to be effective, many more plants than expected. 10 to 1,000 plants per square meter are needed to rival mechanical air purifiers, but plants are extremely good at doing something else: they contain fractals that stimulate the mind far more than human-built smooth surfaces (see our post on that here).
A Starting Checklist for Creating Better Air
When executives are planning to build a new office space, and they want their staff to be better thinkers, this is the kind of starting checklist to discuss with contractors and architects:
Ensure air is cycled five times an hour
Strive for maximize outdoor air intake and delivery
Use high efficiency filtration (MERV 13+) to control pollutant sources
Employ CO₂ monitoring and abatement tied to CO₂ levels. These CO₂ monitors can be installed in lightbulb wells, as power is drawn to these in electrical systems. They can inform when HVAC should be running at higher rates.
Include quietness and acoustic dampening processes for the HVAC system so that vents do not make loud sounds
Aim for strict HVAC cleanliness during construction, so that particles are not trapped within the system
Maintain an average of no more than 100 ppm CO₂ above outside levels, regardless of volume of number of people in the room.
If it's not possible to change the inside air, consider taking some meetings as walking meetings outside. Office buildings with access to a view of nature, a pond, walking trails, a park, or a courtyard are all good options.
As for late afternoon meetings in office buildings, it wouldn’t hurt to have more of those in an outdoor courtyard – or even better, a walk in a nearby park.
Are you developing products that foster better well-being inside our homes and offices? Consider joining our Calm Tech Launch program – details at this page here.-- or applying for Calm Tech Certified™ for Spaces.
Indoor air might be 2-5 times more polluted than outdoor air. Offices, hotels and other spaces that are eligible for LEED indoor air quality (IAQ) credit for fresh air get a point on Calm Tech Certified™ for Spaces.
Notes:
Associations of Cognitive Function Scores with Carbon Dioxide, Ventilation, and Volatile Organic Compound Exposures in Office Workers. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26502459/
Disclosure: Amber Case sits on science advisory board at reMarkable