Post-COVID, Building 'Health' Matters, Too

May 11, 2023 -- In 2017, Shangwen Kennedy, an experienced, Harvard-trained designer and municipality designer, wanted to effort thing new: Creating spaces that would amended nan wellness and well-being of group who usage them.

She and her hubby bought a mini inn successful Encinitas, CA, adjacent San Diego, and conducted an extended renewal of onshore and property. Shangwen had learned astir a caller certification programme to thief building developers and owners found a toehold successful nan nascent well-being building space, akin to nan better-known LEEDS modular for environmentalism.

Creating beautiful spaces was nary longer enough, and Shangwen saw a challenge: “How do you supply a lifegiving space. It requires a different way.”

Now, their Inn astatine Moonlight Beach has garnered world media attraction since it became nan World’s First WELL Certified hotel. With its biologic enhancements, herb and rootlike gardens, state-of-the-art ventilations and water-purification systems, and relaxed, serene atmosphere, this five-suite inn is portion of a increasing activity to guarantee wellness and well-being successful shared spaces.

Buildings ample and small, successful each kinds of industries astir nan world, are being built to summation and beforehand WELL certification. It began earlier nan pandemic, but COVID-19 launched concerns astir information and cleanliness successful communal environments, and WELL has responded to supply a scope of authentication to supply standards and confidence.

To summation WELL recognitions, buildings must meet standards connected topics for illustration water, air, light, thermal comfort, and sound.

“Before COVID and aft COVID is simply a wholly different game,” said Yan Tai, elder vice president of PR and communications astatine nan International WELL Building Institute, nan world’s starring certification assemblage for patient buildings. “It utilized to beryllium thing really bully to have, but now it’s really a must-have.”

A ‘Commitment to People-First Places’

The International WELL Building Institute is based connected a “commitment to people-first places,” its website says. “Organizations everyplace – from startups to Fortune 500s – usage WELL to prioritize nan wellness and information of their people, maximize existent property worth and optimize nan quality and societal superior capacity of their business.”

Its investigation says that investing successful patient buildings pays backmost pinch improved capacity and accrued financial returns. For example, employers study a 28% summation successful workplace satisfaction, and a 10-point jump successful median productivity scores.

WELL is moving pinch 41,000 projects successful 124 countries. Featured projects person included nan National University of Singapore, nan Rose Quarter Campus successful Portland, OR, and Edge Technologies successful Amsterdam.

Some governments are utilizing WELL standards, including Chicago. It’s included successful nan Fannie Mae Healthy Design Certifications.

"More than ever before, companies are being held to a higher modular for really they attraction for their labor and negociate nan downstream impacts of their products and services,” says Matthew Trowbridge, MD, MPH, nan WELL institute’s main aesculapian officer. “IWBI applies nan subject successful nan WELL Building Standard to thief organizations meet and transcend manufacture capacity standards to go leaders successful health."

The world Standard Chartered Bank sewage progressive pinch nan WELL process partially to bring wellness and information standardization crossed its locations. The slope gained the WELL Health-Safety Rating, an evidence-based standing focusing connected installation operations and management. 

“At nan very beginning, our purpose was to person thing that will thief our colleagues consciousness comfortable to travel backmost to nan agency [after nan pandemic],” said Peter Simpson, caput of information and security. “We had made each steps to make our workplaces cleanable and safe during nan pandemic, but we wanted thing that we could visibly show to our labor truthful they tin consciousness confident.”

The WELL programme is akin to nan much well-known LEED standing from nan U.S. Green Building Council for building and promoting communal spaces that are environmentally friendly. 

But nan WELL attraction is connected nan group who usage nan buildings.

“People walk 90% of their clip inside,” said Jessica Cooper, WELL main merchandise officer. 

“Does nan physical, built situation impact quality health? The reply is simply a resounding yes.”

A Boost From nan Pandemic

WELL founders gathered nationalist wellness experts, architects, designers, and others to reside ways to support quality wellness pinch buildings.

“We look astatine things for illustration aerial and h2o quality. We look astatine ways to support patient eating done nan environment, ways to beforehand activity and beingness activity, lighting quality, thermal comfort.,” Cooper said.

WELL encourages plants being onsite, pinch entree to nature, and policies to support parental leave, among different topics.

After COVID hit, WELL realized location was a hunger for standards that could support well-being without being arsenic all-encompassing arsenic its original, omnibus certification. So it created much focusedratings, “a subset of strategies from nan larger WELL modular that attraction connected wellness and information issues, chiefly related to buildings, operations and management,” she said.

Applications soared during nan pandemic, she said, because builders, employers, and businesses wanted a measurement to beryllium recognized for their efforts, “especially successful hospitality and different sectors that weren’t arsenic fresh to enroll successful afloat certification. ... The modular sewage much robust arsenic a consequence of nan pandemic.”

Before nan pandemic, astir WELL clients were successful commercialized agency aliases business abstraction aliases successful multi-family residential buildings.

“But pinch COVID, each assemblage started paying attention. So nan inn successful California was nan first to get WELL certification,” and now aggregate chains are involved.

Back astatine Moonlight Beach

At nan Inn astatine Moonlight Beach successful California, Kennedy was an perfect early adopter and evangelist of nan WELL standards.

She proudly described nan painstaking restoration of patient ungraded to turn nan lush gardens of lavender, bamboo, rosemary, mint, kale, and countless much varieties.

“The privilege was nourishment and systems for a biodynamic environment, and nan WELL standard, not astir nan structures truthful much,” she said.

The inn has received sum successful section and nationalist media. A sojourn provides a afloat sensory acquisition – pinch nan orchestra of floral and herbal scents, an water breeze, and an enveloping tranquility. 

“It’s not conscionable astir really beautiful things are,” Kennedy says. “It’s astir really overmuch they thrive.”