Page 47 - Yellow by TCW Issue 4

“Designing so that employees have more access to natural sunlight and outdoor areas can also make for happier, more engaged employees.”
and behavioral science to educate people and help them form new, positive habits in largely automatic ways. By this I mean that design interventions
can make better choices easier and/or constrain behaviors by making certain actions more difficult.
For example, staircases can be placed front and center in offices to encourage employees to walk between floors instead of taking the elevator. Designing so that employees have more access to natural sunlight and outdoor areas can also make for happier, more engaged employees. Other design elements like
sound masking systems can greatly contribute to a person’s overall wellness and happiness, too.
What is your advice to a client that wants to certify its new interiors for WELL but not to LEED? What would you advise a client that is building
a new building and wants to choose one or the other? This question is prevalent in conversations with end users who feel that they want to pursue both but can only afford one or the other.
Environmental sustainability and health and
wellness go hand-in-hand. The health of the planet
is as important as the health of building occupants, and for this reason the WELL Building Standard is inherently in close alignment with leading sustainability standards. Where there are synergies, WELL has purposefully aimed to overlap with sustainability standards like LEED. In order to promote both environmental sustainability and human health, WELL was designed to work harmoniously with LEED at its inception. Additionally, both systems are third- party certified by GBCI, which further streamlines the way in which the systems work together.
Just recently, The International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) announced alignments between the WELL Building Standard and LEED to make it easier for green building projects pursuing dual certification.
Through this crosswalk, IWBI and U.S. Green Building Council have identified specific credits whereby submitted documentation will be recognized by Green Business Certification, Inc. (GBCI), the certifying body for both LEED and WELL. This alignment saves project teams the time and costs, and reduces documentation. We are making it easier for project teams to incorporate both LEED and WELL Certification in their buildings through this credit crosswalk. If every story about a green building is a story about people, it’s essential that we bring greater focus on the positive human impacts our buildings can have and explore ways to incorporate them into every office, classroom, store, stadium and other places that make up our built environment.
Teknion has advanced our thinking and culture to align with restorative sustainability. We began in 2010 with advocacy for Living Buildings; we have made material transparency an everyday practice from the top down in manufacturing and design development. As we register our five new North American showrooms to pursue WELL Certification, what would your words of encouragement be to
our employees as well as our senior executives?
We spend more than 90% of our time indoors, which means that buildings can have a profound impact on human health and wellness. It is therefore imperative that we harness the built environment to promote biological sustainability. Real estate is the largest asset class in the world at about $180 trillion in value globally. Health and wellness is the fastest growing industry in the world at more than $4 trillion per year. By bringing the two together through innovative design and building solutions, we are creating new opportunities for the marketplace and giving people the tools to build and foster healthy, restorative
and forward-thinking offices and communities that will further drive adoption and establish a renewed vanguard of global leaders in sustainability.
45
T-C-W.COM.AU