In one of his blog posts, I read this note:

“Working with a ruler is pretty straightforward. Just about anyone can extend a line, or fix something straight if it breaks. It’s on the line or it’s not.

But curves? Curves are complex and hard to get right.

It turns out that humans bring curves with them, wherever we go.”

Seth Godin

Which triggered my research mode into what I instinctively knew about curves.

Most offices and schools have no traces of curves. Instead, they prefer the rulers. The straight lines. The cubes.
Ofcourse cost is one of the reasons. But what about perception? Could it be that we needed to stay in a straight line to be considered professional? Does it have something to do with the industrial economy and the factory production mentality? Do we crave structure because we’re afraid of being more imaginative? More creative? More curvy?

Research shows that curvilinear movements offer more flexible thoughts. (read: heightened creativity). What’s more, in her book “Joyful”, Ingrid Fetell Lee explains how curves made people more likely to believe that racial categories were socially constructed and elastic, rather than biological and fixed, and less likely to make discriminatory judgements about others based on stereotypes. (read: curves makes one less judgmental. Perhaps less racist)

Brining work and play together can start with incorporating playful curves into your workspace. Curvy room dividers, circular furnishing, round carpets or a flowing art design is a good start. It may be enough to be in a place where you can simply look at curves in order to think more flexibly.

Look around you, what curves do you see?