Washington Monthly - September/October 2020 - 109

on political books
Ecology of the
Indoors
Interior spaces deserve as much
scientific inquiry as the wilderness.
By Christina Larson

am unapologetically indoorsy," writes the science journalist Emily Anthes in her
new book, The Great Indoors. "Lots of journalists file dispatches from far-flung
places-reporting on wildlife in the Serengeti, floods in the Mekong Delta, and ice
cores in Antarctica-but I've always felt most comfortable plying my craft from deep
inside my living room."
As the era of COVID-19 self-isolation wears on, those of us lucky enough to be employed and able to work remotely have spent months plying our craft from the sofa or
the basement. But being stuck inside doesn't mean being nowhere. Indoor spaces can be
just as consequential as outdoor ones, whether a cozy bedroom nook or a swirling marble
staircase. The Great Indoors is a rollicking exploration of how everything from lighting to
ventilation, noise levels to stairwells, shapes our physical health and mental well-being.
The book's central premise is that the great indoors deserves as much scientific and
sociological investigation as the wilderness. "The indoor environment shapes our lives
in far-reaching and sometimes surprising ways," Anthes writes. We may daydream
about mountains and oceans, but most of us, at least in the developed world, spend
the bulk of our time under a low ceiling. "Modern humans are essentially an indoor
species," she says, pointing to research that North Americans and Europeans spent
nine-tenths of their lives indoors even before the current pandemic. The global tide of
urbanization will only accelerate this indoors-ification. The United Nations estimates
that over the next 40 years, indoor square footage-enclosed spaces of homes, offices,
airports, stores, and more-will nearly double.
The science of buildings, especially life inside them, is not a discrete specialty, so Anthes
takes a broad approach to her inquiry. She interviews microbiologists studying bacteria
in bathrooms, neuroscientists looking at how our brains respond to lighting changes, and
anthropologists investigating how architecture shapes personal interactions. The book is
not marshaling evidence to make a narrow argument but, rather, inviting readers to find
unexpected significance in the familiar spaces of our homes, hospitals, and workplaces.
One point of consensus: Open offices were a terrible idea, even before COVID-19 arrived.
They don't facilitate productive brainstorming, and no one does their best work surrounded by germs and background chatter. In fact, a 2011 study in Denmark found that people
toiling in open offices took 62 percent more sick days than people who worked in private
offices. Cramming people into crowded indoor spaces also raises levels of carbon dioxide
"high enough to make us drowsy and muddle our thinking," thanks to our own breathing.
Anthes sifts through piles of scientific research to dig out such tidbits, which tend to
be surprising in their mathematical precision and yet often confirm our intuition. A 2016
study in Canada looked at medical records for nearly 8,000 adults who'd suffered cardiac
arrests, some of them living in high-rise apartments. Patients living on a first or second
floor survived 4.2 percent of the time; those living above the 16th floor, just 1 percent of
the time. "The higher up people were when they collapsed, the longer it took paramedics to

The Great Indoors:
The Surprising Science
of How Buildings Shape Our
Behavior, Health, and Happiness
by Emily Anthes
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 306 pp.

Washington Monthly 109

Washington Monthly - September/October 2020

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