Understanding The Human Foot An Illustrated Guide To Form And Function For Practitioners

[Lalo Scalf]

Understandingthe Human Foot is an insightful, provocative, and well-organized tour of the foot. While it is aimed at readers with an understanding of basic anatomy, author James Earls carefully explains terms and concepts as he goes along, making the book approachable to new readers as well.

But this is not just an anatomy book. An entire chapter, written by Pilates instructor Lucy Wintle, is devoted to Pilates-inspired foot exercises. Links are even provided to videos going through these exercises. Chapter 8 also teaches several tests and analysis you can perform with your clients to better gauge their foot health.

This chapter begins with an overview of what bones are and how they strengthen or weaken. Earls has a gift for simplifying rather complicated kinesiological concepts, and he does so in explaining the concepts of stress and strain. The chapter provides the explanatory mechanisms behind the particular and peculiar shapes of the bones of the human foot, which prepares us for the next chapter.

With some caveats, Earls follows the division of the extrinsic muscles into the superficial posterior, lateral, deep posterior, and anterior compartments. While Earls suggests that those who are familiar with this musculature only skim the chapter, it still deserves a close read. The attention to, for example, the fibularis longus (p. 148) and quadratus plantae (p. 152) are worth studying, and Earls often has insight that goes beyond what is discussed in most text books.

Chapter 8 begins with a summary of relevant findings from the previous chapters. Earls also offers solid advice for offering your clients the best service while remaining within your scope of practice. He encourages practitioners to be versatile and open-minded in their applications.

The final chapter encourages readers, now that they understand the human foot, to consider human foot houses: shoes. It might come as no surprise that high-heels and tight shoes are given the boot, but Earls also points out that most shoes are just too pointy.

Understanding the Human Foot is a full-colour, up-to-date overview of the structure and function of the foot, written for physical therapists and movement practitioners looking to deepen their understanding of holistic anatomy. Readers will gain perspective on the impacts of foot shape; the interdependence of form and function; and the cellular processes that determine how our tissue is designed. Most importantly, author James Earls demonstrates how the foot relates to and interacts with the rest of the body during movement, laying the groundwork for a comprehensive holistic approach to assessing, troubleshooting, and addressing functional and structural foot issues.

JAMES EARLS, MSc., is a writer, lecturer, and bodywork practitioner specializing in functional movement and structural integration. He is the director of Born to Move, an education platform teaching real-life anatomy for movement and manual therapists, and he is popular presenter at conferences and workshops around the world. Earls is the coauthor, with Thomas Myers, of Fascial Release for Structural Balance and Born to Walk. He also writes regularly for professional magazines and journals, and has collaborated with many authors in the production of their titles.

Biophilia in Context looks at the evolution of biophilic design in architecture and planning and presents a framework for relating the human biological science and nature. Design Considerations explores a sampling of factors (e.g., scale, climate, user demographics) that may influence biophilic design decisions to bring greater clarity to why some interventions are replicable and why others may not be. The Patterns lays out a series of tools for understanding design opportunities, including the roots of the science behind each pattern, then metrics, strategies and considerations for how to use each pattern. This paper moves from research on biophilic responses to design application as a way to effectively enhance health and well-being for individuals and society.

This paper was supported by Terrapin Bright Green, LLC. We thank Alice Hartley for editorial assistance, Allison Bernett and Cas Smith for production assistance, the Review Committee and Contributors for their technical guidance and expertise, Georgy Olivieri for her relentless energy and dedication to spreading the word, Stefano Serafini and the International Society of Biourbanism for providing guidance and encouragement.

New research supports measureable, positive impacts of biophilic design on health, strengthening the empirical evidence for the human-nature connection and raising its priority level within both design research and design practice; however, little guidance for implementation exists. This paper is intended to help close the gap between current research and implementation. The intended audiences of this publication are interior designers, architects, landscape architects, urban designers, planners, health professionals, employers and developers, as well as anyone wanting to better understand the patterns of biophilia.

This paper puts biophilic design in context with architectural history, health sciences and current architectural practices, and briefly touches on key implementation considerations, then presents biophilic design patterns. The patterns have been developed through extensive interdisciplinary research and are supported by empirical evidence and the work of Christopher Alexander, Judith Heerwagen, Rachel and Stephen Kaplan, Stephen Kellert, Roger Ulrich, and many others. Over 500 publications on biophilic responses have been mined to uncover patterns useful to designers of the built environment. These 14 patterns have a wide range of applications for both interior and exterior environments, and are meant to be flexible and adaptive, allowing for project-appropriate implementation:

Finally, this paper discusses these patterns in a general sense for the purpose of addressing universal issues of human health and well-being (e.g., stress, visual acuity, hormone balance, creativity) within the built environment, rather than program-based or sector-specific space types (e.g., health care facility waiting rooms, elementary school classrooms, or storefront pedestrian promenades). As such, the focus is on patterns in nature known, suggested or theorized to mitigate common stressors or enhance desirable qualities that can be applied across various sectors and scales.

We hope this paper presents the foundation necessary for thinking more critically about the human connection with nature and how biophilic design patterns can be used as a tool for improving health and well-being in the built environment.

Nature themes can be found in the earliest human structures: Stylized animals characteristic of the Neolithic Gbekli Tepe; the Egyptian sphinx, or the acanthus leaves adorning Greek temples and their Vitruvian origin story; from the primitive hut to the delicate, leafy filigrees of Rococo design. Representations of animals and plants have long been used for decorative and symbolic ornamentation. Beyond representation, cultures around the world have long brought nature into homes and public spaces. Classic examples include the garden courtyards of the Alhambra in Spain, porcelain fish bowls in ancient China, the aviary in Teotihuacan (ancient Mexico City), bonsai in Japanese homes, papyrus ponds in the homes of Egyptian nobles, the cottage garden in medieval Germany, or the elusive hanging gardens of Babylon.

The consistency of natural themes in historic structures and places suggests that biophilic design is not a new phenomenon; rather, as a field of applied science, it is the codification of history, human intuition and neural sciences showing that connections with nature are vital to maintaining a healthful and vibrant existence as an urban species.

Artists and designers of the Victorian era, such as influential English painter and art critic, John Ruskin, pushed back against what they saw as the dehumanizing experience of industrial cities. They argued for objects and buildings that reflected the hand of the craftsman and drew from nature for inspiration. In the design of the Science Museum at Oxford, Ruskin is said to have told the masons to use the surrounding countryside for inspiration, and the results can be seen in the inclusion of hand-carved flowers and plants adorning the museum (3. Kellert & Finnegan, 2011 ).

Wright abstracted prairie flowers and plants for his art glass windows and ornamentation. Like many in the Craftsman movement, Wright used the grain of wood and texture of brick and stone as a decorative element. Wright also opened up interiors to flow through houses in ways that had not been done before, creating prospect views balanced with intimate refuges. His later designs sometimes include exhilarating spaces, like the balcony cantilevering out over the waterfall at Fallingwater.

The translation of biophilia as a hypothesis into design of the built environment was the topic of a 2004 conference and subsequent book on biophilic design (10. Eds., Kellert, Heerwagen & Mador, 2008 ) in which Stephen Kellert identified more than 70 different mechanisms for engendering a biophilic experience, and contributing authors William Browning and Jenifer Seal-Cramer outlined three classifications of user experience: Nature in the Space, Natural Analogues, and Nature of the Space.

Alternatively, it could be argued that everything, including all that humans design and make, is natural and a part of nature because they are each extensions of our phenotype. This perspective inevitably includes everything from paperback books and plastic chairs, to chlorinated swimming pools and asphalt roadways.

The key issue is that some designed environments are well-adapted (supporting long term life) and some are not. So while golf courses and suburban lawns may be a savanna analogue, in many cases they require intense inputs of water and fertilizer and thus are unfortunately unsustainable design practices.

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