Ernesto Rodriguez answers his phone. Yikes! He’s real!
He lives on Catalina Island off the southern California coast, is a former psychologist, and took a look around hospitals, schools, and other public structures with no windows.
Ernesto did a bit of research and found that when students look out the windows, they quiet down and their focus, attention span, and academic achievement are boosted. Hospital patients record lower blood pressure and slower heartbeat.
Students, doctors and teachers spend 85-90 percent of their day indoors.
Ernesto walked through California’s redwoods, taking pictures of nature’s ceiling. He takes 15 pictures, tilts his camera 30° and takes 15 more, does that again, and then takes one straight up. He then prints and installs tree canopy pictures on ceilings.
His creations are in more than 30 schools and 3500 hospital rooms.
When Ernesto sat on the floor next to a kindergartner and asked her what she liked about having trees in her classroom she said, “It calms me up.”