Have you ever looked at some spot in your building or office and thought, ‘Hey, perhaps this could have been designed a little better’? ‘The air is too damp here’ or ‘the light is too bright there.’ In our daily lives, we find many such examples of environments that don’t exactly help our productivity. These are certainly not healthy buildings.
The immediate questions that come up then are – what is a healthy building? What are the benefits of healthy buildings? How can we know it is healthy without having lived/worked in it?
In this article, we answer all these questions and more to give you a comprehensive idea about everything related to healthy buildings.
Introduction to Healthy Buildings
Simon Turner, CEO of Healthy Buildings, gave the quintessential definition of a healthy building in his interview with CRE Radio – A healthy building is an efficient building that allows the people within the building to operate at their highest functionality.
This gives us a pretty clear idea of what is meant by a healthy building. Now, let us explore the idea in more detail.
Ideally, a building should maximize the comfort and overall health of its occupants so that they can be happy and productive in their work. Whether at home or at work, healthy buildings are engineered to optimize the efficiency of individuals as well as of the building. In such a case, the design, architecture, and engineering of the building function in harmony to deliver maximum comfort for its human inhabitants.
Statistics show that we spend over 90% of our time indoors, making it absolutely imperative that an atmosphere conducive to physical and mental well-being be maintained at all times. However, the fact is that many times, the pollution levels indoors are much higher than those outdoors. Thousands of chemical and biological pollutants can be found indoors which have a significant impact on human health and fitness.
A healthy building mitigates the effect of these pollutants by implementing the appropriate structural and design modifications and improving indoor air quality.
Of course, this makes one wonder, is indoor air quality the only criterion that constitutes a healthy building? Absolutely not. Let’s explore all the parameters that need to be met in order to call a building healthy.
What Makes a Building Healthy? – Important Parameters
“The essential components of a healthy building are those things that help our bodies respond to our environment in ways that are healthy for us.”
– Carolyn Rickard-Brideau, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, WELL AP provisional, Corporate President at Little Diversified Architectural Consulting
As a species, our bodies are very sensitive to the environment of the room we are in. There is a reason why some places seem cheerful, some seem depressing; sometimes, simply walking into a bright room makes you happy, while sometimes, staying for too long in a dark and claustrophobic room makes you irritated and nervous.
Therefore, to understand the parameters of a healthy building, it is first necessary to see what exactly is the impact unhealthy buildings have on people. Here are some statistics.
- People living in unhealthy buildings are 40% more likely to suffer from asthma
- The risk of severe ill-health or disability increases by 25% during childhood and early adulthood, because of poor housing conditions.
- Increased noise levels are associated with higher systolic and diastolic blood pressure, changes in heart rate, and hypertension.
- 21% of adults in the UK said that a housing issue negatively impacted their mental health in the last 5 years.
- The wellbeing of employees and productivity correlate directly. Poor indoor air quality can create a 6-9% productivity loss.
Thus, these repercussions give us an idea of the parameters that define a healthy building; the ones that solve all these problems!
A study by the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health lists 9 foundations of a healthy building. These are:
1. Air quality
Air quality, or indoor air quality, includes all the chemical and biological pollutants in gas, liquid, and solid states, which we are exposed to indoors. As we have seen previously, humans spend the maximum of their time indoors, which makes it imperative that indoor air quality is excellent.
2. Thermal health
Thermal health encompasses all the factors that affect, not just the comfort, but the mental well-being of humans in the building. This includes temperature, humidity, and other such thermal conditions. Building design, building geography, and orientation play an important role in determining the level of thermal health. In addition, building structure, occupant density, ventilation strategies, and modes of ventilation matter a lot.
Evidently, efficient mechanical heating and cooling systems and appropriate MEP design affect the thermal health of the building and its occupants to a large extent.
3. Moisture
The presence of moisture leads to dampness and consequently the growth of mold and mildew, which is extremely harmful to the health of the building and causes allergen-generated diseases among the occupants.
Therefore, a lack of moisture is an important parameter for judging the health of the building.
4. Dust and pests
Statistics say that an adult breathes in up to 100 mg of house dust per day, while a child breathes in up to 200 mg per day. Dust and dust particles act as reservoirs of bacteria, viruses, chemicals, and allergens, that cause numerous breathing problems and skin diseases.
Thus, a healthy building must be free from areas where dust can accumulate and wreak havoc. In addition, it is also free from all pests such as termites, ants, bugs, cockroaches, mice, rats, etc.
5. Safety and security
According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, man craves the comfort of social acceptance and the feeling of safety in society, once his basic needs like food, water, and shelter have been dealt with. When it comes to buildings, safety and security are directly tied to the mental well-being of its occupants.
Hence, a healthy building is secure, protected from external threats like robberies and crimes, ensuring the protection of the mental health of humans. There are several factors that come into play here, starting from the geographic location of the building while considering the crime rate in that locality, accessibility of police stations, hospitals, other buildings, etc. in the event of an emergency, building peripherals such as security personnel, safety equipment, and more, which all contribute to alleviating the psychological distress of the people to the maximum extent possible.
6. Water quality
Contaminated drinking water is one of the leading causes globally of diseases such as cholera, dysentery, polio, and typhoid, affecting 240 million people every year. Microbial contamination and the presence of high levels of neurotoxic materials like lead in community drinking water are the principal reasons for the incessant outbreaks of water-borne diseases.
Thus, a healthy building is naturally one that eliminates this threat of polluted community drinking water, through the use of efficient technology and design. Ideally, a healthy building should ensure the supply of clean and potable water regardless of the state of the community drinking water system. For example, even if the pipes supplying the drinking water are in poor condition, the building should have technologies like UV filters, pH monitoring, regular tests for lead accumulation, and so on, to make sure that the water quality is not compromised at any given point of time.
7. Noise
Noise can be loosely defined as any unwanted or disturbing sound which causes distress to human beings and interferes with the task at hand, reducing productivity. Some sources of external noise are traffic, trains, lawn mowers, heavy equipment on construction sites, etc., while indoor sources can be HVAC equipment, industrial machinery, vacuum cleaners, or even loud conversations.
Hence, a building can be said to be healthy when all the external and internal sources of noise are negated to produce a calm and soothing atmosphere, which is conducive to the type of work being done. For example, corporate offices aim towards creating a quiet ambiance that increases productivity without compromising on the dynamic work environment required in the office.
Thus, healthy buildings have perfect control over the noise in their immediate environs. Studies show that continuous exposure to high levels of noise can have a negative and lasting impact on children and adults. Increased noise levels are the root of higher systolic and diastolic blood pressure, hypertension, stress, changes in heart rate, adrenaline and non-adrenaline, fatigue, irritability, and lower levels of physical activity. Hence, a healthy building is one that is free from noise, thus safeguarding the psychological well-being of its occupants.
8. Lighting and views
Humans have evolved biological rhythms that are synchronized with the daily cycle of night and day. We require appropriate indoor, outdoor lighting to ensure our circadian clocks stay in tune, avoiding problems like sleep disorders.
In general, healthy buildings have adequate and appropriate lighting systems to maximize visual and non-visual responses within the room, depending on its purpose. Hospital corridors may have dim, muted white lighting to ensure that is it not uncomfortable to patients, while restaurant lobbies and dining rooms might have cozy yellow and blue lighting to project a warm and welcoming air. In addition to the hue, the amount of light is also important. Healthy buildings have enough light at all times so occupants can see everything clearly.
9. Ventilation
Ventilation in buildings is required to bring fresh air in from outside and dilute the effect of internal pollutant emissions such as carbon dioxide. These systems also impact the temperature, humidity, and air pressure in the building, making proper ventilation one of the most important parameters of a healthy building.
Efficiently placed doors, windows contribute to natural ventilation while HVAC systems are chief drivers of artificial ventilation in the building. Metrically speaking, ASHRAE standards require a minimum 20 cubic feet per minute per occupant (cf/m/person) to call a building healthy. This is the minimum requirement to ensure the required air quality.
Thus, we complete the overview of the 9 basic parameters that we assess to determine every healthy building. With the growth in sustainable construction, we must certify buildings from official organizations, as having considered and designed for optimum health.
The principal certification for healthy buildings today is the WELL Standard.
The WELL Standard – Everything you need to know
The WELL Standard is a tool for performance-based measurement, certification, and monitoring of the building’s impact on health and wellbeing. As per WELL, the three primary goals of every healthy building are to prioritize health, take a verified approach and meet set goals.
The WELL Building Standard is the integration of scientific and medical research and extensive reviews of existing literature on environmental health, behavioral factors, health outcomes, and demographic risk factors. Thus, it works to clarify and harmonize existing thresholds and requirements by adopting the best practices in building design and management that coincide with the guidelines set by governments and other professional organizations.
Hence, the basic structure of WELL project classification and principles is as follows:
Building types are classified as New and Existing Buildings, New and Existing Interiors, and Core and Shell. Here, the certifications available- Silver, Gold, and Platinum levels- depend on the percentage of preconditions and optimizations achieved by the building.
Thus, the WELL Standard is applicable to all sorts of buildings including offices, retail spaces, multifamily residential, educational institutes, restaurants, commercial kitchens, etc. The process of WELL certification is as follows:
- Registration
- Assessment of the Project
- Document Submission and Review
- Complete Performance Verification
- Certification
Complete information about the registration-to-certification process can be found on the official WELL website. In the meantime, let’s see the 7 concepts of wellness, which the WELL Standard considers while assessing the building health.
The 7 Concepts of WELLness
There are seven categories WELL assesses for classifying a building as healthy – Air, Water, Nourishment, Light, Fitness, Comfort, and Mind. Furthermore, we can divide these seven concepts into 105 features, each addressing specific aspects of occupant health, comfort, and knowledge.
Here we see a few, selective factors in these 7 categories. Nevertheless, the complete, updated(Q1 2019) list of features can be found here.
1. Primary factors for the assessment of Air:
- Air quality standards
- Ventilation effectiveness
- Air filtration
- Mold and moisture control
- Outdoor air systems
- Advanced air purification
- Toxic material reduction
2. Primary features for the assessment of Water:
- Fundamental water quality
- Organic and inorganic contaminants
- Public water additives
- Water treatment
- Periodic water quality testing
3. Primary features for the assessment of Nourishment
- Fruits and vegetables
- Processed foods
- Food allergies
- Nutritional information
- Food contamination
- Responsible food production
- Mindful eating
4. Primary features for the assessment of Light
- Visual lighting design
- Circadian lighting design
- Solar glare control
- Low-glare workstation design
- Color quality
- Automated shading and dimming controls
- Daylight modeling and fenestration
5. Primary features for the assessment of Fitness
- Interior fitness circulation
- Structured fitness opportunities
- Physical activity spaces
- Active transportation support
- Fitness equipment
6. Primary features for the assessment of Comfort
- Ergonomics: visual and physical
- Exterior noise intrusion
- Internally generated noise
- Thermal comfort
- Olfactory comfort
- Reverberation time
- Sound reducing surfaces
7. Primary features for the assessment of Mind
- Health and wellness awareness
- Integrative design
- Healthy sleep policy
- Adaptable spaces
- Material transparency
- Self-monitoring
- Stress and addiction treatment
This is just a brief idea of what each of these seven categories entails. As we have said before, achieving all these parameters is not mandatory for all levels of WELL certification. Thus, the different levels allow for different thresholds of performance, calculated on the WELL Scorecard.
Thus, being a WELL certified building today is a matter of great prestige and value for any construction company. Furthermore, the awareness regarding the WELL Standard has been increasing over the years.
Endnote
Healthy buildings and the WELL Standard are inextricably intertwined for one cannot exist without the other. A healthy building is essential for the physical and mental comfort of the building occupants, towards which WELL contributes wholeheartedly.
At Consistent Engineering Consultants, our resident expert Selvaraj Narasimhan, WELL AP, says, “The WELL Standard is important because it goes beyond most other standards in considering the wellness and comfort of the human mind. It does not focus only on the MEP or design aspects to create healthy buildings, but takes into account the aesthetics and physical comfort of the occupant as well.”
For example, he says, consider an office space. “The WELL Standard suggests that the chairs used by the employees should be adjustable in height and have back support. Also, the screen of the monitor should be adjustable in order to lower the glare. These are small things, but ultimately they play a big part in providing comfort to the mind and increasing productivity.” Similarly, he adds, for residential spaces, the WELL Standard suggests play areas, gardens, and fountains, to create a pleasing effect for the human mind.
There is no doubt that the WELL Standard has been instrumental in promoting the development of healthy buildings all over the world, as its 1698 projects encompassing 370 million square feet over 50 countries attest to. Nevertheless, there is still a long way to go and a gargantuan target to reach.
What has been your journey towards building a healthy building like? Any stories you would like to share? Drop a comment to let us know!