Green Building Interior Design: Biophilic Design in Sustainable Interiors and Buildings — Biofilico Wellness Interiors

sustainable interiors or biophilic interiors? esports gaming room concept A.I. image BIOFILICO

What contribution can biophilic design and its natural elements make to a sustainable building strategy?

Biophilic design emphasizes the connection between humans and nature. It seeks to create a harmonious relationship between people and their environment by incorporating natural elements into green building strategies.

By doing so, it can help reduce energy consumption, lower the carbon footprint, improve air quality, and create a healthier indoor environment. Through its ability to improve the overall sustainability of a building, biophilic design can be an effective component of any sustainable building strategy.

Biophilic design can help reduce stress levels in occupants by providing calming visual cues and promoting well-being through increased contact with nature.

What is the difference between biophilia and sustainable design?

I see biophilic design as a bridge between the worlds of healthy buildings and wellness, real estate and sustainable interiors.

So biophilic design sits neatly between those two worlds. So nature effectively becomes a bridge between people and planet so it's then both a healthy environment for us as people in an indoor space or within a building or even within a city but also a space that is not negatively impacting the environment around us, so good for us and good for the planet.

I think biophilic design is really one of the very few interior design concepts that can do that. You know, the sustainability piece has now started looping back around to incorporate a more people centric or human centric wellbeing oriented approach.

Healthy interiors have some element of considering the environment too of course but in between lives this fascinating concept that we call biophilic design.

I think it is about interior design that is intended to reconnect us with where we came from, and create a more harmonious relationship between living systems our urban, dense built environments and our evolutionary past.

How does biophilic design contribute to a healthy building design?

When we’re thinking about how biophilic design impacts or contributes to the creation of a healthy interior and healthy building you could divide it schematically into two halves. Selecting products with no or low volatile organic compounds to preserve air quality and respiratory health is crucial.

We have mental wellbeing and our physical wellbeing - the latter is slightly more tangible, for example there are things we can do with technology to improve the indoor air quality, removing dust particles and other PM.25 or PM10 particulate matter from indoor air, upgrading HVAC filter systems to MERV13 or better, introducing air-purifying plants in abundance, and so on.

What is the difference between sustainable interior design and biophilic interior design?

Sustainable interior design focuses on reducing the environmental impact of an interior space by using materials and resources that are environmentally friendly and have minimal waste and environmental impact.

This means looking for products made from recycled or sustainable materials, such as bamboo, cork, and organic cotton. It also involves promoting energy efficiency by reducing energy consumption through the use of efficient lighting and appliances, as well as incorporating natural ventilation.

On the other hand, biophilic interior design is more focused on bringing nature into an interior space to create a healthier environment for occupants.

This could involve adding natural elements like plants, wood accents, and stone features to an interior space to mimic nature in some way.

Additionally, biophilic design emphasizes creating a connection between the indoors and outdoors by incorporating large windows or skylights that get fresh air and offer views of the outside environment.

So while the two concepts are inherently linked they are perhaps like brother and sister rather than twins.

sustainable interiors or biophilic interiors? esports gaming room concept A.I. image BIOFILICO

What are the scientifically proven benefits of biophilic design based on the latest research studies?

One of the most significant benefits of biophilic design is the improvement in mental health and wellbeing. Energy and environmental design principles contribute to these benefits by promoting energy efficiency, sustainable sourcing of materials, and integrating environmental impact considerations into interior design.

Studies have found that biophilic design can reduce stress levels, improve mood, and increase cognitive performance. It has also been shown to reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Additionally, biophilic design has been linked to improved physical health, such as lower blood pressure, improved sleep quality, and increased immune system function.

Furthermore, research suggests that people who work in environments with biophilic design are more productive and creative than those who don’t.

Finally, biophilic design can help to create a sense of connection with nature which can lead to a greater appreciation for direct nature of the environment and its inhabitants.

Healthy natural materials in biophilic design strategies

If you look at the different types of healthy materials for interior spaces on the market today, the vast majority of them are in fact natural materials, and as they are not man-made they will likely show some visual trace of their natural source.

They're 'imperfect' in other words, at least compared to synthetic, industrial materials that often have no texture or unique patterns to them. This wabi-sabi concept of beauty is where biophilic design can have most fun.

So there's a huge overlap between healthy materials and natural materials that we might look to deploy in a biophilic interior design project.

That's really the game here, it's about how can we integrate as many of these natural components into an interior space whilst also ticking as many boxes as we can from a wellbeing design perspective.

Mental wellbeing and biophilic design features

Then there's a whole other segment around mental wellbeing. So the tangible data-driven stuff is more to do with what materials we're putting in and how we're impacting the air quality while mental wellbeing is about reducing levels of stress and anxiety, while promoting feelings of positivity and boosting mood.

Studies show that you can improve productivity and concentration levels by being exposed to nature, for example a half hour during a lunch break, for example, and then going back in to work is a healthier alternative to having another coffee or sugary drink to pick you up.

Patient recovery rates in hospitals even improve when there are views out onto nature instead of staring at the inside of a windowless room - no surprises there perhaps but combining these physical wellbeing features with the mental wellness angle is what it's all about.

What industries or sectors are successfully using biophilic design?

sustainable interiors or biophilic interiors? esports gaming room concept A.I. image BIOFILICO

Offices

sustainable interiors or biophilic interiors? esports gaming room concept A.I. image BIOFILICO

If it's an office development, then it is all about improving staff wellbeing and creating a space that is desirable for corporations to spend their days (and sometimes nights) in.

Marijuana dispensaries

In a biophilic marijuana dispensary in North America, you can play on both the mental and physical wellbeing aspects but it's less to do with creating a sense of wellbeing right there and then as it's essentially a transitory space, clients are only there a short while.

So it's more to do with connecting the product and brand image with an interior design that reflects their values as accurately as possible.

Hotels & hospitality

Any hospitality business that has a connection to say sourcing local ingredients, or zero waste kitchen policies has a direct connection with nature and sustainability, making it a perfect opportunity for an interior design concept aligned with that positioning.

In eco-luxury hotels we’re seeing a number of brands who are bringing biophilic design in but also still playing in that five star luxury space, especially but not exclusively in resorts, it’s just a natural fit for that type of environment. Additionally, many eco-luxury hotels are using solar panels to generate electricity for powering lights, appliances, and building systems, enhancing their commitment to sustainability. a resort environments for them to be a kind of synergistic approach between inside and out.

Residential

Wellness real estate is focused on creating energy-efficient spaces in which we spend most of our time - where we live and work, then there are ‘secondary spaces’ such as your gym, cafes, restaurants, hotels and so on.

What are the the challenges of implementing biophilic design and its natural processes?

Definitely one of the big questions is always around maintenance because it does come up and clearly there is an element of ongoing operational responsibility when you when you create something like this because it isn't like putting up a sculpture on the wall and then leaving it there for five years and not worrying about it. living plants do need a little bit of love and care.

But there are always options and so there's a discussion with with the client at some point which is which plants are going to require this and and it just may not be possible in some instances to put plants hanging from the ceiling if there's also wiring and electrics and HVAC systems up there and plants don't want to be right near an air vent, etc, etc.

So you know, the realities are both operational and maintenance base, but also just the practicalities of installing this stuff in certain locations where space is limited, natural light is limited, or there's just other things that are taking priorities and so there's always a crunch time in any project where right Okay, well that's the that's the aesthetic that we're going for.

You end up with the MEP consultants or the mechanical electrical engineer with the cost consultants slash project manager, the architects and interior designers and me around the table trying to hash it out and it's a lot of give and take and that's just the messy reality.

But it's not that far off from any other project. If I'm honest, it's just that there's an extra there's an extra head around the table pushing for as much live natural direct by affiliate as possible.

And my second option, My Plan B is indirect biophilia, the things that represent nature that do a lot of the same things aesthetically without actually being alive. And that's where you can get into all kinds of other stuff.

Direct biophilia vs indirect biophilia - what's the difference?

Obviously there are elements of the natural world and natural processes that we'll never be able to recreate without actually being out in nature, but it seems that we can get pretty close in terms of the brain's reaction to those stimuli, whether that be from certain scents, sounds, visual prompts or textures..

What we have to avoid is any kind of dissonance, we have to make the natural spaces in a biophilic interior as cohesive as possible.

Biomimicry in biophilic design elements

Biomimicry is a relatively new field of study that draws inspiration from nature to create sustainable solutions for humans.

It focuses on studying and emulating natural processes and systems, such as the way a beaver builds its dams or how a spider weaves its web. By doing so, biomimicry can help us develop innovative solutions to human problems.

Biophilic design, on the other hand, is an approach to design which takes into consideration the human connection to nature.

It seeks to bring nature into our built environment in order to create more comfortable and enjoyable spaces that are conducive to better health and wellbeing.

Biophilic design can also be used as a tool for sustainability by creating green spaces that help reduce energy consumption and conserve resources.

sustainable interiors or biophilic interiors? esports gaming room concept A.I. image BIOFILICO

Where does biophilic design go from here? What does the future look like for this design trend?

I think biophilic design is now undergoing a subtle but important shift towards a version 2.0. It's no longer enough just to bring inside elements of the natural world, creating an interior that's inspired by the natural environment, likely full of plants and living green walls. That's version 1.0 right there.

Nowadays there's a new wave coming that is closer to a concept called 'organic design', this is how the trend moves on to its next life phase, opening up a wider palette of colours and materials for itself as well as taking inspiration from a far wider range of other natural elements, in the quest for improved human health benefits.

How did you first begin your career in biophilic design?

I came in via the world of real estate development. So I was initially in the Creative Director role in-house with a mixed-use real estate development in Montenegro called Porto Montenegro.

We had construction , design, operations and project management teams building out a small multifamily residential and superyacht marina destination.

I was in the thick of all of this and started to see how teams could literally pull entire buildings out of the ground for 300 units in two years or build an entire Marina and I thought, well, 'this is this is my industry, for sure'.

I enjoy working in the world of interiors and real estate and started to really understand how that process worked from the initial business case right through design, launch and operational phase.

What first inspired you to work in biophilic design and sustainability?

During an early chapter in my career I was placed in South Africa, Cape Town, an amazingly natural location where the big city kid me was taken out of the urban environment and dropped into this low key, nature-centric location and something awoke inside me while I was living there.

Later I found myself working for this real estate development project in a very small town called Tivat in Montenegro on the Adriatic coast, again completely immersed by nature.

So I've got this these two things happening, which was this combination of real estate interiors, architecture, construction industry, all while diving into the world of living in very natural , environments, having previously grown up in cities my whole life.

There was just this strong internal reaction, I stopped training in indoor gyms and started training outdoors, just connecting in a way that I'd never done with nature.

I started reading into this subject, at first it even took me a little while to come across the term 'biophilia' but I knew that something was happening and that perhaps this space of real estate and interiors, that was already my world, could be integrated with my nascent passion for sustainability and nature....the rest is history!

One Hundred Restrooms - sustainable interior design and healthy building concepts applied to the public restroom

one hundred restrooms atocha madrid

Green Healthy Places podcast

Welcome to episode 065 of the Green Healthy Places podcast in which we discuss the themes of wellbeing and sustainability in real estate and hospitality today.

This week I’m in the Netherlands talking to Marielle Romeijn, Co-Founder of One Hundred Restrooms, an innovative brand disrupting the public toilet market by focusing on the environmental impact, consciousness and wellness benefits.

Sustainable interior design for public restrooms

Their custom design modules can be found in shopping malls, railway stations and roadside service stations around Spain, Belgium and Sweden as well as their home country.

We discuss the birth of the brand, their business model, how modular design allows them to customize each experience according to the location, the integration of Internet Of Things technology, alignment with United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, how they use multi-sensory design to upgrade the toilet break experience and their relentless pursuit of ever higher hygiene standards.

A case study for interior designers and healthy building experts alike

Marielle’s company is an example of how concepts from green, building's energy efficiency and healthy building design are filtering down the value chain. Have a look at the design of their restrooms, it really is a breath of fresh air, so here she is Marielle Romeijn.

GUEST: MARIELLE ROMEIJN, CO-FOUNDER, ONE HUNDRED RESTROOMS

https://onehundredrestrooms.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/onehundredrestrooms/ 

View on Zencastr

one hundred restrooms on green healthy places

Matt Morley

Marielle, you know, we're often talking about buildings, or hotels on this podcast, or perhaps sustainable interior design in particular but you have taken a particular concept within a building or retail space, or a service station and for me at least, completely reinvented it for the better.

I was saying before we started recording, I went down to experience a One Hundred Restroom yesterday evening, myself, and was blown away by the level of detail and thought that's gone into it.

So I want to allow you some space to share that story. Why don't we start with how the business was born and where it came from? What were the trends in the market that led you and your co founders to say, I think there's a market for this?

Marielle - One Hundred Restrooms

So I have to be honest, we have a history in public restrooms. We used to work for a company called 2theloo. And this company was actually one of the first brands in public restrooms.

What they discovered is that if you look at if you look at it, it's a bit strange that all the core needs that we have like sleeping, eating, going to a toilet, most of them are we have a lot of choices, like like we can choose hotels, we can choose restaurants, but we don't have a good choice in public restrooms.

Most of the times, it's scary, it's unsafe, it's not clean. And it's far from relaxing. So they already discovered that niche in the market. And they said, Okay, this is an opportunity to change. And then they came with a concept which was comfortable and clean, and it was more into fun.

We used to work there with a couple of our co founders we discovered that, of course, there were trends, where we saw that people were more involved into their own wellbeing.

We saw some technology trends, where we saw that restrooms and bathrooms in general becoming more smart and can do also health health analysis.

So there were a couple of things that we thought were interesting to see how we could how we could integrate them in the restaurant concept.

one hundred restrooms

Moving into the wellbeing space

Then we decided to start it over to start it ourselves with a new concept based on the same needs - to have good public rest rooms but with a different vision about how to fulfill this need.

We really wanted to create a new standard. That's that's how we call it a new standard in public restrooms.

This standard we believe is something that goes from a moment of stress and anxiety even, to a moment of wellbeing and of course there's a lot in between because you can also offer just simply good and clean toilets but we thought 'let's move it ahead to the future and make it a moment of wellbeing and make it like a five minute boost'.

Wellness interiors and sustainable materials in a public restroom

Matt Morley

I think there's so much there. I saw biophilic design, I saw elements of wellness interiors and sustainable interior design where you're creating a multi sensory experience, I saw parallels with what's happening in the healthy building movement. So many ideas!

So could you perhaps paint that picture? What are they seeing? What are they hearing on the sound system? What are the services that you're offering?

Marielle - One Hundred Restrooms

So when you see the restrooms, it looks like a retail store, I could say even as a storefront. And from the outside, sometimes you don't even see the toilets yet, we have a zone that we call the reload zone. And that is where you enter.

And the reload zone is a zone where we offer additional services, like for instance, hydration station, nursery, disabled room, but also a health check, pre health check.

Inside, we have a turnstile, where you pay for the toilet entrance. And then we call it a transition zone, which is a black area, where you really make the transition from the outside, which is most of the times basically we're on public areas, you go through a black zone, and then you enter like a white Zen kind of area, which is the restroom area.

Natural light and eco friendly interior design

And there we work with light, indirect lighting, we work with sounds, we use certain sounds which are working on a certain frequency that calms you calms you down, we have a certain sense that we based on nature, nature kind of sense mixed together.

Biophilic design

So it all, I think I think the combination of sensory experiences, makes you feel calm quite soon. Then then we have our toilet cubicles, they are fully private, so we don't have like open how they call it open doors.

Natural materials and multi-sensory design

So you have your private moment, you have the sounds, is of course clean, it feels safe. So all the elements work towards a moment of well being. And, yeah, everything inside is I mean the materialization, we use HPL as our core material. HPL is a very clean material.

It's easy to clean, but also when something happens when people try to put gravity on it or or whatever it's we can take it away, that's also very important thing is that not only cleanliness, but also repair maintenance. And keeping it as new is a very important factor.

Matt Morley

You provide, obviously the sustainable interior design piece and the construction as in you're delivering the product or installing the product for whatever your client might be.

But it doesn't end there because you also have a role in terms of the operations and ongoing maintenance? Is it something that the owner of the client can decide to do themselves or it's you maintain control of the experience on an ongoing basis from the initial design through to whenever the contract ends?

Marielle - One Hundred Restrooms

Yeah, this is really our concept because it's our brand, and we want to keep the standards really high. So it's a full package. We build like you said, we do the interior design and we build the restroom. We aim to create durable and timeless spaces and we incorporate sustainability principles.

But we also operate and maintain the whole concept during 10 years. Meaning we have our own team, our own mechanics, we have field coaches who do audits every week to check if everything is still okay.

We have our own staff, we call it a comfort crew. They clean but they also welcome the guests and explain certain services. So the full concept, including IOT to monitor from a distance is what makes it a success.

Locations for these new healthy environments - restrooms

In general, we are focused on high traffic areas. And these could be shopping malls, train stations, like highway service stations, and sometimes food markets. And of course, it depends a little bit on the on the market.

If they have like big shopping malls with lots of visitors, or if it's small shopping malls, then it's not interesting enough for us from a business case perspective.

So depending on the market, and also depending on the market opportunities, because a lot of times we are part of tenders, so sometimes we we just, of course, there's always an opportunity for a restaurant is not every year, most of the most of the real estate companies rebuild the restaurants maybe once every 10 years or something.

We are always focusing on train stations, railway, highway and shopping malls, in every country in Europe,

Matt Morley

You mentioned the IoT, Internet of Things. So how do you use that technology to maintain visibility on the operations on all of your sites?

Creating spaces that integrated IOT

Marielle - One Hundred Restrooms

Yeah, so we currently have around 40 sites in four countries. And what we have invested in from the start is to really build on a dashboard that we use to monitor all the sites. And we do it by connecting all the hardware.

So starting with with, of course, the turnstile, where people enter to monitor the number of visitors etc. But also the dispensers are connected. So we can see whenever a dispenser is empty, we have the water flows connected with water flow systems, so we can see when something is flowing, or when something stops flowing, then there's also a problem.

So all the all the information together, we also have connected repair or maintenance system, the field coach visits are reported.

So all the data combined gives us a very clear vision on the state of our toilets. And of course, by by combining it by saying like, okay, we can see that on a Saturday morning, we have a lot of visitors, and we can see that the rating was going down a little bit. So maybe we should put more effort into cleaning at that hour. So it gives us a lot of data to work with.

Elements of sustainable interior design in One Hundred Restrooms

Matt Morley

So in terms of sustainable interior design and how that integrates into the brand itself, how are you? How are you playing to future proof the business by working also on environmental friendliness?

Marielle - One Hundred Restrooms

Yeah, we are we are focusing on sustainable interior design now because from the beginning, we choose our partners based on their sustainability goals and sustainable materials.

But what we are doing now, currently is we have we have created, we have measured our footprint ourselves for the whole concept, like a lifecycle analysis to see okay, what kind of material input do we have? How much is the usage?

Green practices

What kind of materials can we maybe change to make our footprint less? So that is something that we are currently really focusing on. And apart from that, I think the well being part is one of the it's one of the factors that we can create a lot of impact with and of course, it's not sustainability in the in the in the terms of climate that it's it is in a bigger perspective, it can create a lot of impact and that is something that we think we can make a difference because we are in the public area.

Matt Morley

As the name of the podcast suggests, I think green combined with healthy is the path for businesses when they're looking to the future, it's that combination of the two sides of one coin.

Mitigating health problems with advanced design concepts

And so on the health and wellbeing piece, you mentioned a couple of things. Hygiene clearly is a big factor. I'd like to understand a bit more beyond just particular materials, but also how you deliver that and using any kind of the UV cleaning systems, or is it just sort of traditional eco cleaning products.

Marielle - One Hundred Restrooms

Okay, so to start with the hygiene and the cleaning. Of course, that is that is the basics. And that is the foundation of our success.

We have cleaning procedures that we follow all the time, and the cleaning procedures, the ultimate cleaning is to clean after every use, because then people feel like, Yeah, welcome and like the restroom is clean for them.

This is not always feasible, but what we try to do is to clean all the time. And apart from from cleaning all the time, we also have specific deep cleaning schedules that we do every morning or every week or every day. So everything is worked out in processes.

And we work with eco friendly materials, like you said. But apart from that, we are also always in every area, we are trying out new things. And one of the things that we are currently testing is a nano formalistic coating, that you can spray on surfaces that are most vulnerable for for hygienic topics, like, for instance, the toilet seat. And it helps. Yeah, it helps to prevent viruses and bacteria from sticking to the surface.

We are also piloting a system now it's called ozone cleaning, it's actually water with some proposal, I don't even know exactly what the technology entails. But we are we are testing it, and it seems to work very well.

And of course, it's more sustainable, even then, then the Eco cleaning. So all kinds of innovative systems are coming to us, we get approached a lot. And we tend to also be very open to try out these these new things.

Matt Morley

The cleaning, I think was it's had a lot of success in the field of dentistry. And so like dentist clinics, I know, they've been using that for a little while, even before the COVID crisis. And then even more.

In gyms and fitness centres, hygiene is especially important there as well, because you've got a lot of people who are exercising, sweating, not necessarily thinking about how they leave a machine afterwards. And so, you know, there's so many other areas where I think the principles that you're applying, I think we can take lessons from what you're doing and what also what you're not doing, because I assume you've tested and discarded a lot of ideas too!

Marielle - One Hundred Restrooms

Yeah, sure. Yeah, absolutely. It's all a matter of routines and consistency as well just just make sure that you do it every day or every morning or every week. Because we also have more challenging situations where we see that when you check it because we check it every week. You see that some some corners are getting a little bit dirty or some something is not like we want it and then you need to find a new procedure if you if you let that go.

But you need to be focused on every single detail. And we find new things every day, as sometimes we see like, ah, there is a little chalk on the fourth step, what can we do? How can we solve that, we buy a new brush, and we try to solve it. So it's a lot about routines and details and discipline, I think as well, apart from the materials that that are new in the market.

Matt Morley

And then there are a number of, say, optional extras that seem to go a little bit beyond the basics. You know, I noticed the motivational mirror was giving me various tips beyond the weather and the time and a few other bits of information it was suggesting, how long to wash my hands for and a beauty bar for ladies to do their makeup and to hydrate?

Who's typically going for the optional extras? Do you see, perhaps service stations keeping it quite simple, just sticking to the core product, and then a luxury shopping mall might want a few extras that are less functional?

Marielle - One Hundred Restrooms

Yeah, that's, that's true. And it has a lot to do with the square meters that we have available on the one hand, and on the other hand, the visitor profile and how much time they have to spend, and what is also a need that they have during their shopping visit.

But in general, it starts with the square meters. The basic idea is that we always have relieve, Refresh and then reload, this is the third part and our goal is to always have the three pillars inside every room, whether it's 25 square meters, or 250 square meters.

But of course, when you when you have 250 square meters, you can add some additional services like for instance, a massage chair with breathing exercises that we offer in certain places.

The Health Check area, sometimes we have a vending wall, we are now testing fending walls with self sampling kits that you can do testing on yourself.

Matt Morley

Okay, so final question then is where does it go from here? You've got 40+ sites in four different territories. There's a market for this. How do you grow and scale a business from here?

Marielle - One Hundred Restrooms

Yeah, so we grow on different sides. But the first one is simply expansion. So what we do is, first of all, we want to grow in our current countries , then we want to grow more in Europe, we already pinpointed some countries that we would like to grow.

And we have a lot of contacts as well. Then from Europe, we might go to the US in five years. But this is a big step, because then you really have to create a new market and create your organization there as well. So we want to focus on Europe first.

What we are also exploring is new business models, to see if we can maybe in the future, separate certain modules and put them for instance, in a corporate business environment, or maybe even in a pharmacy, because the more we develop on health prevention, the more it becomes interesting to see how we can use it in other areas, it could be even a fitness center.

Depending on who pays the CAPEX - sometimes it is the owner, sometimes it's us - then we have a revenue share model based on who has paid for the CAPEX. So the one who paid for the capex gets a little bit more of the revenue.

Sometimes we pay a little bit of rent, sometimes we have a mixed business model. But in the end, when we leave, after 10 years, the assets stay. So in the end, it's the asset of the real estate owner, and we take away our brands, items or our branded items.

Green Building Barcelona: Best Sustainable and Healthy Office Interiors — Biofilico Wellness Interiors

entegra office building barcelona

The six best green and healthy office real estate developments in Barcelona are all located in the PobleNou district. This ex-industrial area, the avant-garde centre of the city, is rapidly evolving into the hub for sustainable construction.

Barcelona is a model for sustainable urban development through its implementation of superblocks and sustainable architecture, creating pedestrian-friendly spaces, reducing traffic congestion, and improving air quality.

Each one of the buildings reviewed, is built with its own ESG approach and priorities such as energy efficiency or environmental and public health first, often achieving renowned certifications like LEED and WELL.

The office developments covered below are:

• Badajoz 97

• Entegra building

• Green Business District

• T3 Diagonal Mar

• Wittywood

• Lumen Offices

what is a sustainable office interior?

A sustainable office is part of the broader concept of sustainable architecture, which encompasses eco-friendly and energy-efficient workspaces designed to reduce the carbon footprint and promote sustainability.

The concept of sustainable office interior design has gained popularity in recent years, especially in the real estate industry, as businesses are increasingly becoming aware of the impact of their operations on the environment.

Sustainable office interiors are designed to conserve energy, minimize waste, and use environmentally friendly materials throughout the space.

what is sustainable office interior design in sustainable architecture?

The design of a sustainable office interior includes various sustainable practices such as natural lighting, energy-efficient systems, and the use of sustainable materials. These features encompass energy-efficient lighting systems, water-saving plumbing fixtures, and HVAC systems that consume less energy. The use of sustainable materials such as recycled wood, bamboo, and other renewable resources is also a key aspect of sustainable office interiors.

The workplace design should also incorporate green spaces, such as plants and green walls, which not only enhance the aesthetic appeal of the workspace but also contribute to air purification.

benefits of sustainable office interiors with energy efficiency

Sustainable office interiors have several benefits, including reduced energy costs, improved indoor air quality, increased employee productivity, and enhanced brand reputation.

These benefits are driving more businesses to adopt sustainable office interiors as part of their corporate social responsibility initiatives.

what is a healthy office interior with natural light?

A healthy office interior is an essential aspect of any modern workplace focused on improving the mental and physical wellbeing of employees. The interior design of an office can have a significant impact on employee health, meaning an office space will affect their productivity, creativity, and to some extent overall job satisfaction.

On this basis, a healthy workplace should be designed with the aim of creating a comfortable and stimulating work environment that supports the physical and mental health and emotional needs of employees while they are in the office building - how they deal with their home office environment is a subject for another blog post!

how to create a healthy office?

The interior design of an office should provide ample natural light, fresh air, and comfortable temperature levels to promote a healthy environment. The use of natural materials, such as wood and stone, can create a soothing atmosphere that reduces stress and anxiety levels.

Additionally, incorporating plants into the office decor can improve indoor air quality, promote health, and create a calming effect on employees.

Ergonomic furniture is a crucial aspect of a more healthy office design and interior. Chairs, desks, and other office furniture should be adjustable to accommodate different body types and promote good posture. This can help prevent back pain, neck pain, and other musculoskeletal issues that can arise from prolonged sitting.

The color scheme of an office interior can also impact employee wellbeing. Bright, bold colors can be energizing, while muted tones can be calming. It is important to strike a balance between these two extremes to encourage employees and create an environment that is both stimulating and relaxing.

In conclusion, a healthy office interior is essential for promoting the wellbeing of employees. The design should prioritize natural light, fresh air, and comfortable temperature levels, incorporate natural materials and plants, feature ergonomic furniture, and use a color scheme that balances stimulation and relaxation.

By creating a comfortable, productive and stimulating work environment, employers can improve employee productivity, creativity, and job satisfaction.

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green business district, barcelona

Green Business District healthy office development Barcelona

The Green Business District is a 15,507 sqm project developed by Glenwell Group that offers a sustainable balance between life and work. The four office buildings comprising the complex are connected through an extensive natural environment that highly improves the quality of life of those working in the District.

This innovative complex designed by the architectural firm BCA offers a unique combination of historical heritage and highly innovative contemporary buildings, as the existing modernist architecture is beautifully restored and included as part of the project.

The different buildings are harmoniously merged together into one stimulating environment through the natural landscapes.

The interiors are designed as state-of-the-art flexible office spaces ready to meet the unique needs of each of their users. Still, despite the versatility, each space provides thermal and acoustic comfort as well as the highest standards of quality, sustainability and health. The use of innovative air conditioning systems, such as free-cooling units and sensor-regulated systems, achieves energy efficiency and reduces CO2 emissions.

The different biophilic and environmental design features have contributed to acquiring a LEED Platinum Certificate and a WELL Gold Certificate.

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entegra office building barcelona

Entegra sustainable office building Barcelona

Entegra is an eight-story, sustainable office building of 4,138 sqm designed by the architectural studio Batlleiroig and developed by Urban Input. The singular look of its facade is granted by a charred wood cladding as the project enhances a connection with nature.

The offices aim to enhance the well-being of the users by providing space to breathe. Each storey offers a spacious open floor plan interior that expands into a large wooden deck offering a  limitless perception.

The expansion provided by this experience, as well as the presence of vegetation, inspires the users to take a breath and rest which positively influences their physical and mental health and well-being.

The different sustainability features included in the Entegra design contribute to the LEED Gold Certification. Additionally, the application of different bioclimatic strategies such as thorough insulation and smart automated natural ventilation highly reduces the energy demand.

This energy efficiency is supported by a solar power installation, including photovoltaic solar panels, enabling it to achieve a near Net Zero Energy Building (NZEB).

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Wittywood, Barcelona

Wittywood sustainable office design Barcelona

This 3,600 sqm project developed by Colonial is the first Spanish office building built entirely of wood. Betarq, the architecture studio in charge of Wittywood‘s design, chose to raise this construction with a wooden structure as a solution to lower its environmental impact as well as to contribute to a healthier work environment.

Using wood as a construction material reduces the carbon footprint by as much as 50% but also provides a good thermal resistance which helps improve the energy efficiency of the building. Additionally, the project produces its own renewable energy with solar panels, cutting down the energy demand considerably.

Such green building strategies contributed to obtaining a LEED Platinum Certification, though given the commitment to prioritise the user’s well-being, Wittywood has obtained a Well Platinum Certification as well.

The interior spaces are thought to create a natural work environment and offer spacious open floor plan designs, finished with prime natural materials and floor-to-ceiling windows to maximise daylight indoors.

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Badajoz 97, Barcelona

Badajoz 97 real estate development Barcelona

As part of the 2019 Urban Improvement Plan, this 14,000 sqm building developed by Conren Tramway and designed by Batlleiroig architects harmoniously integrates past and future.

Located in a rapidly evolving neighbourhood, Badajoz 97 embraces its industrial heritage with a black ceramic facade while opting for a highly innovative structural solution that enables modern-looking large open floor indoor spaces.

This sense of openness is enhanced by the addition of a wide terrace at the end of every floor. These exterior spaces are designed as gardens and aim to enhance the connection to nature, contributing to a healthier environment with improved air quality.

The different strategies utilised to improve the well-being of the users have granted this building a WELL Certification.

https://www.batlleiroig.com/es/projectes/oficines-badajoz-97-a-barcelona/

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Edifico Lumen, Barcelona

Lumen Offices office real estate Barcelona

The presence of extensive vegetation contributes to the environment as well as promoting biodiversity and helps maintain stable temperature and humidity levels.

Other sustainable strategies such as passive design features and the installation of photovoltaic panels help reduce the energy demand and grant the building with a LEED Gold Certificate.

This unique office building is conceived out of the sustainable idea of repurposing an existing structure. Designed by Batlleiroig and developed by Heptaprim-Odiseus, the Lumen Offices maintains an early 90's garage structure and turns it into an example of sustainability and efficiency. 

Aimed to improve the well-being of its users, this office building enhances an indoor-outdoor relationship and uses different biophilic strategies to integrate nature into its design.

The terraces and exterior spaces are essential to this project as having been designed as gardens, contribute to an improved air quality.  

The broad extension of plants surrounding the building provides a filter protecting the direct, hot sun rays from overheating the interiors.

As a result, vegetation helps maintain a temperature of comfort cutting down energy consumption. The energy efficiency of the Lummen Offices is further supported as it produces its own renewable energy with photovoltaic panels.

https://edificiolumen.com/equipo/

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T3 Diagonal Mar, BArcelona

T3 Diagonal Mar green and healthy offices Barcelona

This innovative project developed by Hines and Hendersons Park is designed to meet the highest standards of sustainability and well-being. A combination of wood, vegetation and avant-garde technologies has led the team behind this building to receive three distinguished certifications: LEED Platinum, WELL and WiredScore.

Designed by Batlleiroig this 3,610 sqm project is divided into four open floor plan stories. With the intention and focus of providing a healthy building, the interiors are finished with warm wood, equipped with ventilation systems, and flooded with natural light.

The floor-to-ceiling windows and terraces contribute as well to creating an indoor-outdoor transparency offering a sense of connection to the city. 

To increase productivity and minimise energy consumption T3 Office building is designed using passive strategies. Yet, the self-production of solar energy and the usage of the latest industrialised systems contribute to a reduced energy demand.

future-proof real estate with the smart building collective

wellbeing & sustainability in real estate & hospitality podcast

Welcome to episode 063 of the Green & Healthy Places podcast in which we discuss the themes of wellbeing and sustainability in real estate and hospitality.

In this episode we’re in Amsterdam talking to Nicholas White, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of the Smart Building Collective, a smart building and pro-tech business with its own certification framework focused on leveraging technology to measure how a real estate asset is performing. 

It covers key metrics such as the building usage, its performance, the building environment, health and safety, user behavior and connectivity.

We discuss how a smart tech is at the heart of both sustainable green buildings and healthy buildings nowadays, as well as playing a role in real estate ESG strategies. We also look at some of the more innovative real estate developments that he’s been a part of recently that give a sense of where the industry might be going in the future.

https://smartbuildingcollective.com/

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Matt

Nicholas, thanks for joining us on the show. Amazing to have you here. You're dialing in from Amsterdam where you’re based?

Nicholas

Yes, I am. Thanks for having me.

Matt

Listen, why don't we start with a bit of background to give the genesis of what you do with the Smart Building Collective. How did the whole thing start?

Nicholas

I personally came from the corporate sector doing large scale IT transformation projects, we were attacking these from the human perspective, really change management, trying to help people maximize the usage of of tech, and getting the most out of it. And what was always quite disheartening was the corporates would kind of roll over their people in that process, which was was quite painful to watch.

I thought there needs to be a better way, there needs to be a more engaging way, a healthier way to do these kinds of transformation programs.

So I left the corporate sector, and I teamed up with a woman by the name of Elizabeth Nelson, and she was doing research into burnout and human performance. I came more from the practical side of working with leadership teams and working in corporate space to make things better.

impact of the built environment on physical and mental health

Then we got this amazing opportunity with CBRE to do a research study on the impact of the built environment on people.

They built a ‘living lab’, the cost was probably about 250,000 euros to build then they started changing all of the things in the office environment, from the plants to the food, air and light over the course of 10 months.

They would do cognitive tests on people to see what the impact was. So the results were amazing. And then when we left, Elizabeth was asked to do it again, with booking.com. And we did a huge research study here in Amsterdam, that dictated their new headquarter plans, which was really quite cool.

Same thing happened, you know, it took a long time to build, expensive and the research results were amazing. The Living Lab collapsed after the research study was done, which looking back is completely logical that that happened.

Then we did it a third time, this time for GSK in the UK - GlaxoSmithKline. After that it was, okay, is there not a better way to do this? Where is there a standard? And this was around 2018 -2019. Where is there a standard that we can just plug into and do research more effectively, more efficiently and more collectively.

Developing a smart building standard for real estate

We came across the smart readiness indicator, which was the EU's approach to a smart standard but for the rest, nothing else existed. So we started to think about doing it ourselves. And that's kind of what we did. And we launched in 2020 The smart buildings certification.

green buildings, healthy buildings and smart buildings - whats the difference?

Matt

Okay, so let's go a level deeper, because I think a lot of people will have heard perhaps the term a green building, which is essentially a building that's designed to minimize its environmental impact, so externally oriented while a healthy building is a terminology more oriented internally thinking about the impact the building has on its occupants.

You just used the term smart building, it's in your brand. It's in your name to the core of what you do. So how does a smart building fit into that spectrum of green buildings on one side and healthy buildings on the other?

smart tech in buildings for real time management efficiencies

Nicholas

For us, you know, smart building is about technology, it's the digitization of real estate, it's an enabler. It's nothing more than that it shouldn't be a goal in itself to make a smart building, it's about the results that we're trying to achieve with that asset, and then working back to think about, okay, how can we make that more efficient and easier to do and more real time.

So it isn't essentially a tech component on both sides - on the healthy building scene, if you're not measuring it and monitoring it in the long term, you can't effectively justify the upfront investment that you put in, you need to keep an eye on what's happening.

You have sustainability, you have health and wellbeing in real estate. But there's also efficiency gains through the management and maintenance of your asset, creating a better user experience, which isn't just about the health of occupants, it's also about human performance and culture and community and building a way for people to connect with each other. And with the asset, you also have kind of new business models that are emerging from the enablement that tech provides.

I think we all have heard the pressure that the commercial real estate is under with the changing of work, flexible working and so on, with a smart building we have the ability to see what's working versus what's not working, I think you're in a much better position to make rational decisions as an owner or developer.

the smart building framework

You've created essentially your own framework that gives some structure to how you think about smart buildings. I think that's such an important piece of of how you communicate your position and the your, let's say, view of the real estate industry.

So it's clearly at the core of what you're about, perhaps you could just give us a quick overview of those component parts that make up your framework.

Nicholas

Yeah, sure. So the smart building certification, where we always are saying is founded in research, and practice, and we're constantly optimizing it with our community, we actually made a change from the smart building certification to the smart building Collective, we did that last year in August. And the reason for that is that as we were certifying buildings, we see that not a single one of them is similar. They're all completely different.

So the certification really is being informed by the collective, the smartest buildings we find and the smartest solutions we find are informing the benchmark and constantly changing it. So in a way, you can start to think about it as a bit of a web 3.0 approach to certification in the sense that it is dynamic, and it is moving and and we're learning as we go.

But in essence, the certification that we have created, starts with the results, right? Like what are we actually trying to do with these assets? And then works back to the technology of how do we get to that result. And that result is broken into a number of different modules within the certification.

Smart building usage data, performance and indoor environment

So the first module is building usage, you know, how does one have kind of overview and control over how the assets are being utilized - from occupancy, to how amenities are being used, these types of things.

What kind of technology do you have in place to understand how your asset is being used, the next module is building performance, then you can really think about your sustainability aspects, your energy consumption, your water consumption, how the asset is actually performing against the goals and against the promise.

We have a module on building environment, which is thinking more about your health and well being. And it's really about your indoor environment being sound, light, indoor air quality, these types of things.

How do we use technology to make sure that the environment is healthy and in state for people to use it in a good way. We also have a module on safety and security, of course, which is both physical security, but also digital security. As you put more smart building more technology into a building, we need to keep it safe, we need to keep the cybersecurity at the forefront. But it's also about physical security and Disaster Mitigation.

The last module is user behavior and collaboration. So how can people find each other? How can they interact with the building? How does community get created?

Integrative design in smart buildings

And then all of those modules are actually brought together by a module we call integrative design, which is how can we actually with the least amount of technology, maximize the value in the results and all of those different areas? Instead of having a technology for each piece? How can we make sure that the technology becomes an aspect that adds value to all those different areas?

governance and real estate esg in smart buildings

One of the things that really sets us apart is we have a huge emphasis on governance, process, access to data, do the right people have access to the data to do something with it? And is the organization structured in a way that actually can do it? Because I think, you know, a smart building without actually using that data is you could argue, is that smart?

Matt

Perhaps for anyone who's not aware of some of the intricacies of how that works, then you're effectively looking at the facilities management, the building management company that's looking after the building, we're talking a fairly large scale, say mixed use or office development on behalf of the tenant or on behalf of effectively behind that the investor? Or is it the tenant themselves who has some role and wants access to that needs to be involved.

Nicholas

Well, you know, ideally, it's a communal effort, the whole idea is to break down silos and to be working together, to forge better relationships between the owner, property manager, tenants and all the different suppliers that are in there. I think where the industry is, right now, which is challenging is that all of those things are being done in silo, every single one of those different stakeholders is dealing with their piece of the puzzle, which in the end, makes it quite a quite challenging.

Ideally the stakeholder map would be doing this together. But what we see in practice is that it's coming from different perspectives, like we will do a certification for a tenant that is interested in understanding what their building is capable of doing for them from a tenant perspective, and they can use it to then work with the landlord to say, ‘hey, from my ESG perspective, I need to have better energy consumption or at least better insight into my energy consumption’, these types of things.

We also do it from a building owner perspective that says, ‘Hey, I've laid in an incredible tech stack for my potential tenants and my property managers. How can we help them?’ So with with your certification level, and with your communication and your training, how can I improve it? How can I make it better?

real estate ESG and the role of smart technology in buildings

Matt

It's tapping into this rising tide around awareness of ESG. I see it coming from above in terms of pension funds and investment groups coming in, then applying pressure on the investors or the building owners, but also from below, sometimes from the employees themselves, and oftentimes from tenants of the building.

Nicholas

Yeah, and you know, where we're at right now is just meeting people where they are, right, like, we have some of the most, you know, the smartest developers in the world, who, on one side, want to help tell the world that they've created something really spectacular, and something really special.

At the other side, they want to say, Okay, where are my holes? Where are my gaps? What am I not thinking about yet, so that I can, you know, push push the envelope for, for this development, or my next development? And then you have people who are like, well, what is smart? Like, how do I even how do I even start?

How do I even where do I begin, and that was one of the main reasons we pivoted to the smart building Collective is that, you know, we're not here to say, this is how you build a smart building, the collective is informing this certification, and then there's a ton of people in this community that are there to help, you know, from all different walks of life, but different culture different, you know, views, different ways of supporting, and so you can find the solution when you when you're looking for it.

size and scale in smart building certification projects

What is the minimum size that you're noticing in the market, in terms of buildings, and developers coming to you with an interest in in going deeper into this, you know, oftentimes, you might see smaller developers, smaller building owners, smaller tenants who have increasingly aware of this ESG angle and want to get into it, and then look at the breadth of a big healthy building certification such as WELL for example and just even to go for one or two elements of that looks like a big undertaking. We don't have the manpower, we don't have the budget? How does smart fit in? Is there a bespoke approach that one can adopt, as you say, just to kind of get started? Or is it all or nothing? And therefore, is it a certain size of building that makes more sense?

Nicholas

No, it's definitely not all or nothing, it's, start, wherever you are, start small, start getting a little bit more control in different areas. And, and, you know, what's so exciting about the benchmark system that we've created is, is that it's, it's moving, you know, it's rolling, but it's also applicable to whichever asset class whatever size, you know, whatever type of property in whatever country, because what we what we are doing is actually starting to build some benchmarks, right.

So if you are a building of 5000 square meters, which is, you know, not that big. Let's compare you to other 5000 square meter buildings. And we get the we get the question, you know, should I have a user wrap? Well, it depends, you know, it depends on the context that depends on what you're trying to do. It depends on the value cases you're after, what are you trying to accomplish with your property. And in that sense, you should really be compared to like minded buildings, and not to, you know, all of them.

Smart app technology in building management

So a user app would then be a smartphone integrated user face where you can see what's going on around you in the building in terms of key data points and metrics, from air quality to light usage and electricity usage. Is that essentially what it does?

Nicholas

Yeah, they come in all different shapes and sizes. A lot of user apps focus on the community aspects of a building, you know, what kind of workshops are happening today? What kind of events? What run happening this afternoon with a group of people. Some of them go beyond the building itself and connect you to the community in the smart city space, you know, what's going on in the neighborhood. But you also see them as being utilitarian where they start to become the key to doors or the light switches.

To get the utilization up of those apps, you start with the utility piece, if you can't open the door without it, then you're going to start using that app. And then growing into that community aspect, we also see the app becoming kind of the financial backbone of the building that it manages everything from room booking to amenity usage.

So sky's the limit as to what you can do with that functionality. That's a big one.

peer reviewed smart building certification and accredited professionals

And around the the actual smart building certification process itself and your accredited professionals or your “APs"“, how does that network function?

Nicholas

Our certification comes from the world of academics. So when you research and you write a publishable paper, it always gets peer reviewed. A scientific paper doesn't get published in the market until it's been peer reviewed. So we thought, you know, Shouldn't that be how we assess buildings? So we built a peer review model, where you have independent assessors who are looking at this building, and those assessors come from different cultures different, you know, parts of the world, and they look at your building. And then what we have in the certification process is we have quantitative data, and we have qualitative data. The quantitative data is very much based on, you know, do you have the technology?

Do you have the functionality, the coverage, you know, is it there, and that's quite black or white, right? It's either there or it's not there. The qualitative data is much more the grays that are going on in buildings, right? It's like your governance structure. How are you organizing yourself as a building, your integrative design?

You know, how did you decide to build your smart building? Did you use a one massive supplier for the whole tech stack? That's, you know, really been around for 30-40 years? Or did you use a bunch of startups and scale ups and have them work? Together? Right? There's no kind of wrong answer there.

You just make different decisions for different reason. And so there's definitely a qualitative piece that needs to be taken into consideration of a this is what we see in buildings, this is the pros, this is the cons. Maybe this is something you should think about, you know, moving forward.

And that peer review model has been hugely successful in the sense that these assessors get to, you know, assess buildings all around the world, and they get to see the different cultures and the different ways that they're built. And it's become a really, really incredible community of people who not only are working together daily to find good solutions for their own work, but but also helping inform the collective to improve this certification improve what we do.

Matt

Is there a particular building or case study that you've been involved in that could be representative of where things are going or where things are at today in terms of smart building excellence?

a leading example of a smart building

Nicholas

One that we just certified that is amazing is the Hausmann’s Hus in Oslo. It's a family office that built this incredible building from an altruistic perspective, they said, it's not about building a smart building, it's about building the best building we possibly can. And it just happens to be digital.

They created these smart grids throughout the building, which allows them to configure the building any way that they want, for however big or small a tenant would be, and give that space its own smart infrastructure, its own energy metering, its own light metering, completely self contained. A traditional building will take the energy of the building and divide it by the amount of square meters, and send a bill to the tenant based on that calculation.

This is a completely more sophisticated way to do it. And then it's just the most beautiful high quality building. They also have open, transparent contracts with their suppliers, where they say, we're gonna guarantee you your margin, but we're going to discuss the cost. And they originally thought that the budget of the smart building was going to be significantly higher, because of all this smart tech but by managing it in an open and transparent way with their suppliers, they've actually been able to create a building that's the same cost, which I think is something we all need to learn from. It makes good business sense.

Matt

Where do you see your growth over the next three to five years?

Nicholas

I think part of our role is that we need to get these success stories and these stories out. We need to write these cases, and we need to make them quantified, and share how impact is being made. I think we're gonna get to this point of - what is the right level of technology for buildings, and what's too far? The emergence of having buildings be larger than themselves, I guess, being part of a community and not just stand alone.

buildings become part of a community

We’ll also see that with co-working spaces and you know, community spaces, these kinds of things. I think that's going to be a huge component in the future. We just certified a building in in Finland that has its own geothermal energy plant that they built under the building. And it is now feeding the energy to the entire grid around that building. There's something to be said about being a global citizen with your project!

I have the strong belief that out of challenging times, which the commercial real estate is definitely in right now, comes some incredible opportunities. And I think the emergence of cultural, experiential type places, is emerging. I'll be very curious to see how that evolves as it becomes a completely different asset class, not a museum, not a concert hall, not an office or a hotel but something new.

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FURTHE READING:

• World Green Building Council Health Wellbeing Framework

Sustainable building data - 2050 Materials

Welcome to episode 61 of the green & healthy places podcast in which we explore the themes of wellbeing and sustainability in real estate and hospitality.

Phanos Hadjikyriakou is co-founder and Ceo of 2050 materials, an online database of sustainable building products and intelligent tools that help architects and designers in their efforts to create low-carbon, circular buildings and interiors.

In this podcast we discuss the genesis of the company, the unmet need it addresses in real estate and the sustainability problems it tries to solve, such as toxic building materials and those that are especially damaging to the environment when viewed from a Life Cycle perspective, considering its extraction, use phase and disposal options at its end of life.

We also cover some of the many sustainable building material certification systems as well as how Artificial Intelligence could start to leverage this type of database to propose sustainable, healthy solutions to architects and designers in the not too distant future.

Check out 2050-materials.com while you’re listening along!

https://app.2050-materials.com/

FULL TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS COURTESY OF OTTER.AI - EXCUSE TYPOS!

Matt Morley

First of all, thank you for making the time to join us today on the podcast. Pleasure to have you here.

Why don’t we talk about the genesis of the business? So how did 2050 materials start as an idea? And what’s that journey been like, from the initial concept through to where you’re at today?

Data on Real Estate Supply Chains

Phanos Hadjikyriakou

Yeah, great. So I guess that goes back a little bit to my background. I’m an engineer by training. And I would say I’m pretty much a data person in my brain, I was working basically in the financial sector, helping investors align their portfolios with different climate strategies, and essentially giving them different kinds of data on climate change risk.

2025 Materials Principle

The whole idea behind 2050 Materials started when I was working with a few very large real estate investors who started talking about supply chains and supply chain emissions and embodied carbon in the portfolios and in the buildings they owned. I come from a family of architects and people working in materials distribution.

So that sparked my interest, what I figured out very quickly is that what investors were starting to ask for and talk about, everything related to supply chain and material impact, is something that the people on the ground, the designers, the contractors, the building materials suppliers, simply did not have the right data to deliver on sustainability performance.

So I thought that, first of all it’s a big problem, secondly, it’s a big opportunity to fill that gap with a solution. I generally have an affinity for innovation within the material sector. I just think it’s very cool when you see a new material that you can actually touch and feel. And there’s a story behind where it comes from and what it’s been made of. And also if you can add the impact data to it. And that, for me makes it very interesting.

Much More than a Sustainable Building Materials listing Site

Matt Morley

So let’s look at that. Because obviously, on one level, what you’ve developed is, if you like a database of materials, that for someone like me, who’s involved in real estate, primarily interiors, less the construction side, there’s a constant search for new innovative materials that not only look good and fit into a particular space that we’re trying to propose to a developer, but also that are doing some good or and certainly doing less harm to the environment.

Then there’s another level to all of this, from what I can see, it’s a bit more than just becoming an online collection of materials, right, there’s more depth to it that I think is really where it starts getting interesting. Can you talk to us about those calculations and about that extra level of detail that you’re able to get into around the body carbon and the impact of the materials? The platform provides simplified metrics to help designers quickly assess the impact of materials.

Moving to a Low Carbon Construction Industry

Phanos Hadjikyriakou

Well, let’s start from the assumption that we need to transition to a low carbon economy and to Climate Neutral economy. And the construction sector, whether you’re an interior designer, or an architect, or just work in the built environment, the impact your work has is actually massive. And our thesis is that data is the key to getting to a stage where we are designing and eventually building buildings in line with the climate emergency.

Now, the interesting thing about this space is that there’s an abundance of data that shows impacts of specific products and materials in the sector. The problem is that that kind of data is all around the internet, usually in PDFs, and usually in a format that’s very technical. So it’s usually what’s called the lifecycle assessment or an environmental product declaration that states these kinds of values.

Unfortunately, the assessment and the output of these reports are meant to be read by a specialist in the sector. And what the reality is, you need designers and architects who are not specialists in the sectors to still be able to access and understand that data.

So something that’s often, let’s say, misconception of a lot of people when they land on our platform, is that we do a lot of assessment of existing product. In fact, all we do at this point is gather existing data from different sites, we digitize it so that it’s actually accessible on the platform. And you don’t have to look through 1000s of PDF files to extract the information you need.

And then finally, we, and probably most importantly, we actually simplified to the extent that it keeps its accuracy, but it’s actually understandable by a non specialists. So what that means is that we filter out the detail that is probably unnecessary to most designers and architects, so that we quickly give them the numbers they need in order to make an assessment. And we put that at the forefront of the platform, providing easy to consume data on the sustainability performance of building products.

3rd Party Certifications for Sustainable Materials

Matt Morley

Just as a note, I would say I’m totally on board with that approach. I think there’s absolutely no issues in relying on established third party certification systems, whether it’s an environmental product declaration, or a healthy product declaration, or something like that, declare a red list to the cradle the cradle, for example, those are the gold standards, and when you have a little bit of knowledge about this space, then I think you can leverage that, you’re standing on their shoulders.

Phanos Hadjikyriakou

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what we always say is that we are trying to democratize these kinds of sustainability assessments, and that exactly pointing to the fact that yes, we do have Sustainability Consultants and specialists using the platform. But what we are building the platform for, or the person, or the stakeholder we’re building the platform for is actually the average designer, architect, contractor, who is having conversations with a customer or with a colleague around sustainability.

They need to start understanding this kind of data without going back to university and getting a degree in this. The platform is built for designers and architects to use data during the design and specification phases, simplifying metrics for easy understanding and use in this context.

The Evolution of Sustainability Data on Sustainable Building Materials

Matt Morley

It's interesting, if you tried to do this, five years ago, 10 years ago, you probably wouldn't have had quite so many materials, right? So it's a sign of where the industry is at now that you're able to have such a wide collection, I think it's, it's the right time, because it is now becoming the choices quite expensive. And it's becoming actually sometimes harder to filter through that. But why don't we take a step back?

I understand that perhaps not everyone may not understand the context, which is that there are unhealthy versions or unsustainable materials going into our built environment, both from the construction and then the interior fit out.

So from your perspective on the inside of this industry, like what are the main dangers there? And what are what are we? What are you battling against presenting these more sustainable healthy materials? And what's the problem here with the unhealthy buildings?

Phanos Hadjikyriakou

That's an interesting question. So I would say, let's look at human health. First, when it comes to coming into contact with harmful substances and pollutants, we actually come into contact with those in our daily lives more frequently than we realize. So that might be from building insulation that's, that's packed with flame retardants, to chemicals in our food packaging, in might be wet paint that's emitting VOCs, volatile organic compounds.

So all of these things actually contribute or can contribute negatively to human health and cause things like asthma and a bunch of other health issues. There's definitely there's definitely, let's say, a very imminent health issue that is fixed when you start looking at more sustainable products. But I would say that a big driver of health is also just global health and looking at climate climate issues.

I would say that, yes, in the short term, we want to avoid, for example, vocs emissions in our buildings, because we, we don't want to have respiratory diseases in the long term. And it's not even that long term. If we don't stop emitting as much carbon from the construction industry, then we all of our lives, I believe will be impacted from climate impact. I would split the two things into let's say, direct human health today and then long term health for us. For our kids for, for basically everyone who is living.

Matt Morley

Well “green and healthy places” is the name of the podcast. I think that connection between green as in good for the planet, and healthy, good for us, or in this case, good for the people spending time in a space, then the yin and the yang interact, I think is fundamental.

Do you think there's, is there an element of perhaps sustainability being more applicable to the building materials themselves? Just in terms of the quantities involved for concrete and steel, for example, versus say the interior fit out? Where perhaps it's more to do with health? Or is that is that dichotomy to generalist?

Environmental Impact of a Building Over its Whole Lifespan

Phanos Hadjikyriakou

I think traditionally, you know, I think concrete and steel is obviously the two materials that kind of get the spotlight, especially when we're talking about carbon emissions. And that's because the industry as a whole is producing a lot of carbon emissions. So if you look at a building, it's an interesting case study, actually, because if you look at the buildings materials, you would see that yes, most of the carbon emissions of a new building is in the foundation and the frame. So usually carbon, usually concrete, and steel and aluminium.

Unfortunately, if you actually look at a specific time span, let's say 50 years of a commercial building that hosts officers, say in central London, the reality is that the fit out the change of fitouts. And the frequency of change of fitouts, actually can cause up to four times the emissions of the of the envelope of the building.

So if you take, for example, an office in central London that has new desks, new chairs, new cabinets, new flooring every, let's say, two to six years, which is the average time of fatal change, then all of those emissions related to the products and the materials that go into the, the interiors are actually much larger than the building itself. And of course, all of this has, has a certain assumption. So if we were to reuse a lot of those products, then of course, we would reduce the impact.

But as it stands today, where most of those things are either thrown in the landfill, or let's say down cycled over big extent, fitouts are massively important. So I know it's not an extremely helpful answer, because it might, it would be nicer if we could focus on a couple of a couple of sectors.

But I think what this kind of research is starting to show is, truly, if you work in the built environment, whether you are doing fitouts, or interior design or residential project, or you're a structural engineer, or anything else, your work really matters, like it really matters to be able to have access to this kind of information and to do your part in reducing emissions.

Value and Purpose in Prioritizing Sustainable Building Materials

Matt Morley

I find at some point, it becomes more about your values, or the values of your business and what you're trying to do in your work that pushes one designer or someone working in this space to consider both equally. And sometimes there are decisions to be made. And you know, what materials are better for the planet and not quite so good for their human health or vice versa? It can often be quite complicated.

I think that's why platforms and software such as what you've developed is, is important so that at the next level of detail, then when we're actually on the website looking into some of these materials, doing our research, how are you helping users to kind of make some calculations beyond just Oh, that's a green certified material, but then in terms of its actual impact once it's applied, in terms of the quantities and the scale, and where it's coming from.

So in terms of those details, is there a way you're able to help your users to factor those into the into the equation?

Circular Economy Design Metrics in Building Materials

Phanos Hadjikyriakou

Yeah, absolutely. And your question comes at a good timing, because we’ve launched the tool to do a lot of the things you just mentioned very recently, and users can trial it and try it out for free to start with, essentially what this tool allows you to do is get anything that you would find on the library and make a list of it.

And this can be done at any stage of the design process or it can be done really early stage where you’re not really thinking yet about designs and quantities and you just want to understand more or less what it means, what are the forecasted footprint of my building with me.

Once you have a bill of quantities and you really have a data list of everything you’re about to procure. What we are doing is we collect the data of the products that are on the library within this tool once you’ve selected it as a user.

We show, of course, the total carbon footprint, as well as some numbers, like the embodied carbon per meter squared of gross internal area and do some comparisons of that number to industry benchmark as well as some of the recommended numbers in the industry, we actually go a step beyond just focusing on carbon, we calculate currently a couple of circularity metrics, like the weight of the recycled content in the products that you’re selecting.

And the recyclable contents are kind of how much of the products and the materials that you’re specifying may actually be possible to recycle or reuse at the end of life. And I guess, one thing that that became important when we’re developing this tool, with a few large offices is we we initially were thinking that designers will use this tool solely based on actual products that are available in the market.

So meaning, you know, x brick by this kind of supplier or this kind of manufacturer, what we’ve developed now is we’ve developed an extra layer where it’s generic data for a specific type of product or type of material.

So something that says, for example, a clay brick from the UK without necessarily specifying who the manufacturer is. So that kind of gives a workflow that allows you to, if you’re starting by just considering materials in the beginning, you can choose your materials. And then once you get into the specification process, or if you want to see whether there is an applicable product in your area, to actually go into the product selection process during the specification phases.

Yeah, and one thing I did not mention, but you did actually in your question is, of course, the impacts that we show, you know, they show the manufacturing emissions of the product. So what’s in lifecycle assessment terms is called the A 123 lifecycle stages. But the interesting thing about setting a platform like the one we have is, we have the project location.

And we have the manufacturing location of each of those products in the library, which means that we can quite accurately calculate what the estimated carbon emissions are of transporting those materials.

So one of the things that you can do in the tool is you can pick a bunch of products from the, from the platform that are, let’s say, from China, or a London project, and you’ll see in the breakdown of emissions per category, that the transportation emissions exceed everything else, versus selecting local materials.

And I think there’s an interesting opportunity there to see, you know, what kind of products maybe does make sense to ship from a little bit further away, even though they might not be available locally versus other ones, which, of course, would outweigh the benefits.

Matt Morley

For anyone who’s done a project before with a sustainability or a healthy materials component to it. The reality is this type of detailed conversation, almost every material and it becomes a major headache pretty quickly, you’re constantly evaluating or trying to get to this type of information about not just where materials from how it was produced the impact of extracting it, and its raw format, then in terms of the manufacturing, production, then the transport, and its end of life, as well as it’s in use phase.

And combining all of that is really complicated, because it’s just, you’re trying to move fast, you’ve got climate pressure. And so I think for anyone who’s perhaps, you know, feeling frustrated or overwhelmed by this amount of information in its platforms like this, like your library that help ease that pain, and I think that’s what I what I see here, which is, it’s very easy to be drowned in the information.

We need to make decisions as quickly as possible once the project starts, there’s just no, there’s no time to lose. And I think you’re helping to smooth out that process. That’s really where I see that the sort of main benefit in terms of using this. So once you’re, once you’re building into the library, like what process are you using to screen or to filter materials?

What are you looking for as a sort of, oh, that’s suitable or that’s not suitable? Have you got your own internal benchmarks in terms of where you do or don’t accept the material?

Sustainability Standards for Materials on the Platform

Phanos Hadjikyriakou

That's a really interesting question. So first of all, I guess we live in a constant state of research within 2050. So we are always on the lookout for new new products, new materials, especially when they come from smaller companies that are just popping up whether it's a startup or a company that's been operating for a few years and we just have not seen it before.

But having said that, there is a very important point to be made about how we work. So we do not police what kind of product or manufacturer makes it on the platform, we actually want to have as many products as possible appearing there and we don't have a specific requirements for products to get on the platform, what we enforce as a library is that there needs to be some level of documentation that provides transparency on the impact of the product.

So, if you go to a library, you can look up concrete and you will find very heavily emitting concrete products and concrete manufacturers, we want to have these products, we understand the sector, at least for now still needs a lot of these products, what we ensure is we essentially put transparency over some some abstract assessment of what is a sustainable material or not, because there are no sustainable materials, in my opinion, there are materials that are suitable and can generate the Sustainable Design and there are materials that are non suitable, and the specific data related to each material does not necessarily give the answer to that.

So in short, anything can land on the platform, what we ensure when we onboard the product is that there is some level of transparency related to the impact of the material or the product is causing.

Matt Morley

Sounds like a very pragmatic and practical approach. So some degree of thinking on the part of the user is still recommended, you know, we're still going through that mental process of, of evaluating and arbitrage right, trying to decide which which one is the best in this case, and it may not be the most sustainable, as you said.

Phanos Hadjikyriakou

Yeah, I guess that's, that's one of the things that initially, you know, you start and you are very ambitious, that you will give the perfect answer to everyone and point them to exactly the one thing and they don't have to spend any time thinking. Quite honestly, we very early this very early on, we decided, you know, the specialists are the designers, they are the architects, they know how to do the research to find the right kind of product or material.

So we are not trying to replace their their specialization and the work they know how to do, what we're trying to do is replace a process that would currently take something close to three or four or five hours to compare a few products to something they can do with essentially 10 clicks within two minutes.

Matt Morley

What is the business model going forward? Is it going to eventually be some kind of a paywall so that you pay for access to the materials or the materials suppliers, manufacturers paying to be listed? How do you how do you set things up from a commercial perspective?

Phanos Hadjikyriakou

Yeah, so from a commercial perspective, we essentially list the way that we list products is is an important point as well. So we partner with essentially every certification body that is out there that certifies building material products, and furniture and all of that. And we on board the basic data that the certification bodies have.

So out of so we populate the platform, even without charging anyone really. So it's free for designers, it's free for suppliers. We currently do charge and work with suppliers when they want to have access to those pages, to enhance them to add data sheets to add better pictures to add more technical information that would help a designer actually finalize a specification or a procurement decision.

So that's currently how we work. On the project side of things, as I mentioned the beginning, there's a couple of projects that you can create as a user for free now, but that's going forward something that we would like to charge on a per project basis, obviously, as clients or regulators demand these kind of reports.

Evolving the Sustainable Materials Industry in Future

Matt Morley

That makes sense. Okay, and looking forward them to the next, say, five to 10 years. Where are you seeing this industry around healthy and sustainable materials evolving? Like what are the main sort of trends that you can see taking place that you expect to continue over the next five years or so?

A Data Driven Approach to a Climate Neutral Construction Industry

Phanos Hadjikyriakou

Yeah, so I've said this a couple of times. I think, for us, you know, the key to moving towards the direction of Climate Neutral construction sector and design sector is the data. And that's why we've had so much focus on the data. I mean, moving forward, I think what's really interesting about data is we are starting to have some pretty amazing stuff that's happening on on the AI front and on the generative design front.

I think that more and more, we're starting to see solutions that can make suggestions and generate designs for architects and for interior designers that would allow them to meet certain goals. And again, I don't think we'll, we I, I don't see a scenario where architects are no longer needed or anything like that. I think this kind of doomsday thinking is really not something I agree with.

What I see is similar to all of the hype that's happening right now with Chat GPT, where you ask it questions, and you can have it give you a lot of suggestions, an architect can have very specific tools where they say, I'm trying to achieve a net zero building in central London for this kind of client, and it needs these XYZ specifications. And then a tool would be able to give you five different scenarios of designs, material products, that would actually allow you to get there.

Then again, it's up to you as a designer, or as a specialist to kind of do the next step and, and move from there. So I personally think that data alongside the whole AI revolution that's happening right now is going to open, amazing doors and something that to the mission that we have as 2050 of democratizing these kinds of assessments and understanding very much contributes to

Matt Morley

Yeah, that's a big idea. I like that one. And in terms of how the business evolves over the next 12 months, 24 months, like, what's the as an additional functionality expanding the, the depth and breadth of the library materials? And what are you working on this next year?

Phanos Hadjikyriakou

Yeah, so we have, we are constantly working on onboarding more products. So currently, we are testing a very big push, which will expand your database to include almost every product that has an EPD globally. So that kind of does a big jump from around 4000 products to something like 50,000 products. So from a library perspective, we expect to have something in the next couple of months that is much more complete and uncover actually a lot more markets and the UK, which we've been focusing on.

On the product development side, we have some really exciting features and product pipeline around the projects tool. So currently, you're able to select you know, individual materials and make a list of your, of your materials that make up your projects. We're very much moving towards the direction of allowing, allowing people to create assemblies and see within a specific assembly what is best, and then allow them also to have some functionality of of saving their own assemblies.

Because a lot of designers architects, they reuse a lot of the designs they've done.

So our goal is to move towards a direction where you can actually start building your internal library of systems and assemblies that you're able to very quickly build projects with and also get quick assessments.

Matt Morley

Fascinating. sounds really interesting. Well, I'll be I'll be very happy to watch as you evolve over the next year, and hopefully, five or 10 years is growing the business. So listen, thanks so much for your time. Where can people find out more about the business where you what social media you engaging with at the moment?

Phanos Hadjikyriakou

Yeah, I think thanks a lot. Also for the time, people can just search for 20 Quickly materials on Google on LinkedIn. We're very active on LinkedIn, with content and educational articles and all of that stuff. And then the platform is is easily accessible and free on https://app.2050-materials.com/

Connecting people, places and plants: biophilia with Junglefy, Australia

Welcome to episode 060 of the Green & Healthy Places podcast in which we discuss the themes of wellbeing and sustainability in real estate and hospitality. This episode I’m in Australia talking to Suzie Barnett, CEO of Junglefy, a full service living infrastructure specialist focused on bringing more plants into our cities.

Junglefy began life as a landscaping business and evolved over the last 13 years into one of the world’s leading green wall, green roof and urban greenery businesses.  

Suzie is on the Board of the Living Future Institute of Australia, Chair of the Biophilic Design Initiative and was pivotal in establishing the Green Building Council of Australia. She’s an industry powerhouse in other words and this conversation didn’t disappoint. 

our Discussion topics related to biophila

• we discuss the all-important ‘why’ behind integrating this type of abundant greenery into a building or public space

• their involvement in scientific research studies quantifying Return On Investment on indoor breathing walls in terms of productivity, feelings of wellbeing and improvements in air quality

• why it’s so important to consider upfront not just the initial investment cost on a living wall system, irrigation and lighting as well as ongoing maintenance

• their ideas for sharing outdoor living facade maintenance costs with local councils in reflection of their community benefits and the outputs of their tech-enabled product development process in collaboration with the University of Technology Sydney

https://www.junglefy.com.au/ 

https://www.instagram.com/junglefyourcities/ 

https://www.linkedin.com/company/junglefy-pty-ltd/ 

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Full transcript follows, please excuse any typos!

Matt Morley

Could you start by giving us a quick intro to the Junglefy business? I'd be particularly interested in understanding how its products and services have evolved over the years?

urban greenery and green walls

Suzie Barnett

Yeah, absolutely. So our main purpose is to cultivate that critical connection between people, places and plants. And we are a full service organization. So we grow the plants, we consult early on in the design process of the built environment to make sure we can give the latest information on how these products should be installed, and also maintained. And then we do the installation and the maintenance.

Our systems are modular so that gives our clients an opportunity to have a much longer life for the plants than other systems. Has it always been that way? No, we started out life 13 years ago as a landscaping business but we had a lot of people asking for these things called green walls so the owners decided to start a sister business called Junglefy.

They had both businesses running at the same time, the landscaping business and the green wall business. And the green wall business was, I think the thing that excited them the most, and they saw the future in the market. They decided to close down the landscaping business and purely focus on green walls, which has evolved a lot over the last 13 years to look at roofs and facades and different types of products fit for purpose, depending on the opportunity and what the clients are looking for.

At the beginning, Junglefy was very much involved in the latter stages of the project. So we would get involved once the design had been done. It had already been contracted out to a builder, but it's very hard at that time to get the best outcomes. because you're at the very end of the process.

Today, it's very different. We get involved at the very beginning of the process before real estate developers and architects even conceptualize what they want. And clients come to us and say, what's possible, what can we do? And what's even more encouraging over the last couple of years is they're also thinking longer term, how can we design this for the longer term as opposed to that aesthetic of just looking good on day one. And then after year one, year two, year three, you know, it starts to degrade, whereas we design it to look good at year one, year five year 10, you know, well into perpetuity. And I think that's probably the biggest evolution of what we do.

the business case for adding plants, biophilia and nature into real estate

Matt Morley

What are the key drivers behind your clients decisions to to start working with you, what makes them decide they need to bring some of the outside world in with greenery, with indoor landscaping, possibly a green wall?

Suzie Barnett

It's a combination of all of those things. So originally, and still, to some degree, some people are very much driven by just the aesthetic of plants. They look amazing. People love them. But they don't really understand the deeper purpose of plants and why people love them. And I think that's what's starting to be understood in the market.

So plants look good, but they have a very strong purpose in that they connect people to that place. And they connect us with nature, which is fundamentally one of the most critical things we can have in our built environments because they have been designed really for, I call it for domination.

You know, they're engineered and they're designed in a way for us as humans to dominate nature. And what we're now seeing is an opportunity to rethink that and look at how we can design and build with nature at the forefront. So it's inclusive to, are they still? Are they still being driven by return on investment? Absolutely. But what we're seeing is a very strong return on investment for those who do include plants in the right way, fit for purpose and for longevity.

So, a couple of years ago, we actually commissioned an organization called the Center for International Economics. They are people who take data and convert it into dollar terms. And this is something that normally only governments ask for because they're paying tax, they're spending taxpayers dollars.

benefits of green walls - productivity, positivity, air quality

We asked them, what would that look like using our scientific data for our return on investment, for a particular product that we have called breathing technology, which is an activated green wall essentially. They told us that the return on investment, if you installed a breathing wall inside would be $3, if you spent $1, you would get $3.44, in return, because of the productivity gains, and the response that people have to having plants and nature inside, because they're very active at cleaning the air, removing nasty pollutants, such as co2, particulate matter, vocs.

Thanks to that biophilic response that we have with nature, if we put a breathing wall externally, the CIA report told us that you'd get $1.95 in return. And these are big numbers, these are return on investment numbers that we know the market needs, because what we're doing is still challenging the industry, it's still considered quite niche, and quite new, even though we've been doing it for 13 years and other companies around the world.

The property sector is very much price driven. We had to convert that feel good notion of plants, making people happy, into real dollar terms, and that's where we're at now. And we're starting to see that driving decision making now beyond just it being an aesthetic, we're finding the scientific research we do is driving that as well.

So developers and owners want to be able to provide a strong business case, to get the funding, or to convince you know, the CIO, entire economic times, it all comes down to dollars. So the combination of scientific research and economics is is definitely driving decisions.

It's quite frustrating, because the science on plants and our relationship to them is, is probably the largest global body of evidence you will see on anything. And yet people still question its value. Yet we see it's starting to resonate, I feel optimistic that this information is starting to hit the market, and the early adopters are using it to their advantage.

Matt Morley

I know one of the questions from a client will be - “okay, great. It's gonna cost x to setup, the upfront investment and installing a wall indoors or out, then what about ongoing costs?

From your experience, when would a living will be a sensible choice and in what circumstances should it perhaps be avoided or replaced with an alternative? There must be some instances where you just have to be honest with the client and say, look, this is going to be a challenging space to maintain long-term.

when to install a green wall and what are its challenges

Suzie Barnett

You're absolutely right, it's as much as what you say no to is what you say yes to, because for us as a business, every single plant we install is our brochure in the future. And even and it's not just ours, it's a whole industry, because we're leaders in the industry. So every failure of a greenwall is someone's reason not to do it in the future.

The initial capex cost is definitely a barrier for adoption for some because you've got different decision makers and different budgets, and what a developer will want to do may not align with the interests of the company managing that development in the longer term.

So whatever decisions they make, if they make poor decisions on lighting, if they under invest in lighting, if they don't invest in the right, fit for purpose living wall system, then they're not the ones paying for it down the track when the problems mount up, it's going to be the the future owner, facility manager, or tenants, you name it. So that is certainly one of the biggest challenges.

We've certainly said no to projects, when they have not wanted to invest in the correct lighting or irrigation system because we're also the company that's maintaining it, and we don't want to create more problems in the future, we only want to create a really good solution. The way around that really comes down to education and making sure that those who are making early decisions, are aware that they're making decisions on behalf of others in the future.

We have done this so many times, and we have so much experience, we are in a position to walk away if we don't feel like they make the right decision. That's fascinating how many people come back, when they realize, you know, this is what we really want, and we appreciate it, they want that kind of advice.

So I think in the future, or for anyone out there thinking about this, the advice I would give is, Do not think that this is a set and forget kind of decision. You can't say yes, I want plants, I want them to look pretty just on day one, you must be thinking longer term; the benefits of the plants totally outweigh any of the costs.

green facades in green buildings - living infrastructure

I spent over a decade working with the Green Building Council of Australia. And they facilitate and manage the Environmental Rating System Green Star which is equivalent to LEED or BREEAM globally, and Green Star had a perceived cost, so people would sometimes say “we can't do it, it's going to cost too much”.

We're seeing the same now looking at any kind of living infrastructure or nature based solution. And I think what's going to happen is we just need to keep educating the market and make them see that the cost is actually an investment and what you get from that investment is more benefit than financial investment.

Factors to consider before installing a green wall

Clients must think about lighting, accessibility, how will it be accessed in the future, if it's in a really hard to access place, so you can't get to it on a ladder or ropes then the plants will eventually fail because they need to be looked after just like us. So access and future maintenance is really important. Plant selection is absolutely critical. It's all about the light and it's all about what types of plants will survive inside on a north facade versus on an east or west facade.

Plants are pretty predictable actually when it comes to which can survive in those environments. And they have to see that regular maintenance is actually an investment that saves money over time. The analogy I use, Matt is, no one buys a car thinking that the day they hand over the money, and by that they never have to do anything to that car ever again. In fact, they know that they will have to get it serviced regularly. And if they do, they will get a lot more out of the life of that vehicle than if they did nothing and just drove it into the ground. Our products are exactly the same, except that the plants are living and they can be replaced quite easily!

public-private collaboration for green facade maintenance costs

The other concept that we've been considering, and obviously, this is much bigger than Junglefy, this is an industry wide idea that we're starting to talk to people about, is this idea of sharing the investment in maintenance, particularly for exterior applications. So when you think about it, a lot of our local councils, you know, they plant the trees in our streets, they maintain them, they look after them. And they do it for the benefit of the community, because we know the trees are they're creating biodiversity habitat, they're cooling temperatures down there cleaning the air to some degree, you know, they and they look amazing. A leafy Street is what adds value to any property.

So what we're finding fascinating in our conversations of late is, why aren't living facades considered the same way? Because they are also giving an enormous benefit to the community, not just to the users of that particular building? There's no shared investment there. And I see a future where potentially, there may be a contribution by local councils or other government departments. Because the benefit of those plants on facades, whether it's a green wall, a breathing wall, or green facade is community wide, not just to the benefit of the users of that building.

product innovation in green wall design

Matt Morley

So it's interesting, because you've got concept, design, plant selection, installation, ongoing maintenance, but there's also this piece of the front end around manufacturing the technical components too. Not every company out there does this and I find it to be one of your sort of USPs.

Suzie Barnett

Yes, we have taken our knowledge, our 13 years of experience and we've invested a lot in in research and development around products and our research partnerships with plant scientists at the University of Technology Sydney has also helped us to evolve our products from a very much a scientific and an engineering perspective. So unlike other living wall applications, we're not just putting plants in a pot and whacking it on a wall and hoping for the best we've actually delved deep into the science and the engineering behind how that plant will survive long term.

The first innovation that we came up with was our, our module itself. It's a square module. We purpose grow the plants into that module so that when they're installed on site, they're already grown in and established and will last longer. They don't go into shock because they're already established. And the X frame is our system of installing that on site. So you literally, we actually love seeing the X frames, once they're installed, they look like a beautiful piece of industrial design. And then we wait. So we do that on the project. And then whilst the building is undergoing other forms of construction, the plants are always the things that go in last, because once the plants are there, they need looking after. So we do all of our work up to a point, which allows us to install it in the schedule and timeframe of that construction project.

Then we wait until the project’s sort of at the very last days, which is usually the highest stress point, but then the plants come in. And what's always amazing to me is, once the plants are in people on that site to stop and go, Wow, how amazing is that? Whereas up to that point, they're a little bit like, what are you doing? And it's not till they see the plants that they realize how impactful it is, and it's literally a matter of a day.

Biophilic in public infastructure projects

Our latest innovation is we've taken our standard module and X frame, and we've put multiple, sometimes eight, sometimes 10, on what we call a mega module. At the moment we're installing mega modules on quite a controversial project in Sydney, their ventilation shafts as part of an underground tunneling project called the WestConnex. But this is a piece of functional infrastructure that sadly we need in our cities at the moment because we are still driving around in cars. And what the government decided to do was actually cover those ventilation shafts with plants and we came up with our mega module concept, which means they literally get craned on already planted, already installed. Now they're they're creating an amazing opportunity for biodiversity to establish themselves and can connect to the ventilation shafts with the parklands, so the surrounding it.

So the application of our modules, because they're modular, they can, they can be in very, very small applications, or very, very large. We've also come up with a way to rotate them for easy maintenance purposes.

So that means you know, we've put rotating walls on car parks and on the side of very busy motorways so that when you maintain them, you literally flip them. So they're facing the opposite side, it's very safe to maintain and easy.

science-backed research into benefits of green wall systems

Then our breathing technology, which is an activated living wall system, we have our standard jungle firewall, then we have our breathing wall. And the breathing wall is what we've invested most of our research into with the scientists at University of Technology Sydney, the results of our breathing wall have astounded them. And I have to say a little bit the industry, sometimes they think we're making it up, because it does sound too good to be true. But honestly, every piece of research we've done on this particular product has been peer reviewed.

So it is very much backed by scientific research. And our breathing wall is literally a system where we have created what we call a plenum, which is an air cavity behind the wall, we've introduced small fans, they're not very big, they don't use a lot of energy. They're literally the size of a computer fan or something you'd see a pipe about as big as your palm. And what the fans do is draw polluted air into the air cavity or the plenum behind the breathing wall, the air has nowhere to go but through the root systems of the plants through the back of our breathing module, directly into the root systems. And it's the plants root systems that actually remove the nasty pollutants that are circulating in our air.

As I mentioned before it's all about particulate matter, carbon dioxide and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and the Breathing wall has been proven scientifically to remove those pollutants faster than any other type of plant system on the market today. And there's a lot of other benefits as well, it reduces air temperature, it pushes out higher volumes of clean air, which means you're getting a lot better air quality. If it's applied internally, that's really what's driving that $3.44 return, because you're getting basically a biofilter. working as hard if not harder than the high tech system.

Matt Morley

I think it's absolutely where the industry needs to go Suzie - integrating this extra component of tech to enhance the tangible impact of these walls is the way to answer the doubters and take it to the next level.

Suzie Barnett

To be clear, it's actually quite low tech. We produced a version of our breathing tech, which we call our breathing stand. And it literally is to replace the volume of pot plants you would need to do the same thing. So our breathing stand, uses about 140 plants, it has its own lighting, it has its own water reservoir and irrigation. And the combination of those elements creates an opportunity to produce cleaner volumes of air in an indoor environment, then you would literally need hundreds of pot plants that are taking up valuable real estate on your floor plate.

Matt Morley

It's exactly that, the sheer quantity of plants required to have a tangible impact on the indoor air quality versus taking up floor space, it' always comes up in interior design projects in particular.

One of the things that caught my eye on your site was this Manly Vale carpark case study - not somewhere typically we're looking for examples of biophilic design.. tell us about that?

green walls for car parks and other public real estate

Suzie Barnett

Yes, absolutely. So the original design of the car park was typical of any other car park basically - it was a facade covered in steel, it was quite artistic, you know, it looked quite pretty. But the local community 100% said, No, not in my backyard. I do not want this car park. And so the government had a tricky situation on their hands.

Fortunately, somebody introduced them to us at Junglefy and we suggested our breathing technology. And that's how we innovated actually the rotating, breathing wall because it's a car park and it's a government project and they wanted the safety of maintaining it from the inside.

So what we did is we covered that carpark entirely in our breathing technology, we basically created a biofilter for a car park, which is unheard of really - usually car parks are the ugliest things but highly functional. We've now created a car park that most people don't even realize it's a car park when they drive past. They think it's some fancy bar or retail facility because it looks so beautiful.

The local member of parliament called us into his office at Parliament House and said, What did you do? Why does the community want this so badly? And we had to then explain, you know why people love nature and plants and that looking down on the carpark covered in plants actually makes them feel good as opposed to looking at something that's concrete and steel and full of cars.

So we were able to transform a very functional and require an asset to something that the community wanted. And, you know, we're hearing similar feedback on the ventilator. shafts as well like these, these assets that we have in our cities that can now perform multiple purposes. And I think this is what we have to do, we have to look at every asset, every built environment surface as an opportunity for urban greening, and do it in a way that that doesn't just look pretty it has to perform as well and actually give back more than what, what it takes.

Matt Morley

I know one of the initiatives that you're supporting is the national biophilic design award with the living future Institute. I in fact studied with them online a few years ago, I fully recommend that course too!

Suzie Barnett

This is really exciting, because the International Living future Institute has had a biophilic design awards for some time, and they have been global. But what we noticed is that there wasn't a lot of representation from Australian projects. And so the living future Institute of Australia, of which I was a board member for the last six years, and also worked on their biophilic design committee, I actually chaired the committee for some time, we came up with the idea of of localizing those design awards to really start to inspire people in Australia around biophilic design.

Australia is one of those amazing markets that when we move, we can move quite quickly. And it only takes a handful of projects to lead the way and create a point of difference that then creates competition in the market. I think it's one of my favorite things about working in property here.

On the sustainability side of properties, seeing them compete on the best sustainable, or the most resilient and restorative buildings that we're now seeing come online. So for us for Junglefy, you know, we see the Living Future Institute of Australia and the Living Building Challenge and the biophilic design competition as leading the way.

These are for built structures, not just concepts or designs. So they've been built, they're being used, they're paving the way for the future. And I think that's really incredibly important to recognize, because some of the early adopters, you know, they actually do pave the way for others. There's lessons learned in every single project. We just get better and better at it.

Without awards like this I don't think people see what's possible, or learn the lessons to be able to do it better next time.

Best Examples of Biophilic Buildings in Commercial Real Estate — Biofilico Wellness Interiors

Best Examples of Biophilic commercial developments

Examples of biophilic design in architecture are gaining prominence in high-profile commercial buildings around the world, here we examine the best concepts that combine elements of nature, wellbeing and sustainability

• LaMercedes, Barcelona / Developers: Conren Tramway / Architects: BatlleRoig

• Roots In The Sky, London / Developers: Fabrix / Concept Architects: Studio RHE / Project Architects: Sheppard Robson

• CapitaSpring building, Singapore / Developers: CapitaSpring / Architects: BIG

• Yorkville - The Ring, Hong Kong / Developers: Hong Kong Land / Architects: PHA

• NION, Frankfurt / Developers: Groß & Partners / Architects: Unstudio

• Holbein Gardens / Developer: Grosvenor Property UK / Architects: Barr Gazetas

Incorporating natural elements into biophilic design is essential for supporting sustainability and enhancing wellbeing.

LaMercedes Barcelona - a biophilic mixed-use development

LaMercedes, Barcelona by Conren Tramway (architects Batlleiroig)

LaMercedes, Barcelona by Conren Tramway (architects Batlleiroig)

Conren Tramway are a Spanish investor, developer group based in Barcelona and Madrid with an expansive portfolio covering office, residential and mixed-use development and investment projects.

In addition to the iconic Three Towers, ‘Les Tres Xemeneies del Parallel’, in Barcelona and various mixed-use developments in the new business distric @22 in Poblenou, this group have taken on what is perhaps their most ambitious urban regeneration project yet - LaMercedes, set to the first ‘eco-district’ in Spain integrating a variety of sustainable green building concepts, healthy building wellbeing strategies real estate ESG criteria.

What was once a car factory in an industrial area of the city is to be transformed by local architects Batlleiroig into an 185,000 sqm development that is “carbon and car-free”, a “sustainable island’“ in the city. Public services will include a museum, community center and an educational facility.

The project aims to mimic natural environments to improve the health and wellbeing of its occupants, as well as to optimize sustainability and environmental performance.

A total of 15,000m2 of retail space and 1300 residential units combined with 46,000m2 of creative offices and a ‘talent campus’ for 2000 students will make this a truly unique new addition to Barcelona’s urban landscape.

Another key feature of this ‘eco-illa’ will be the intelligent mobility system that pushes the infrastructure underground including a traffic system to leave the ground floor vehicle-free, meaning a pedestrianized and cycle-friendly experience for residents and visitors.

Expect to see an abundance of green space in the built environment, plenty of outdoor space to enhance wellbeing, an architectural design that integrates biophilic design principles and natural materials for human connection with the outside world.

https://lamercedes.barcelona/

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Roots in the Sky, London - biophilic design and natural light in office real estate

Roots in the Sky by Fabrix

Already attracting attention for its headline-grabbing 1.4-acre urban forest rooftop accessible by the local community, Roots in the Sky is a statement of intent by the developers Fabrix, showing their focus on - biodiversity and sustainability in real estate.

What was once a 1960s era building housing Blackfriars Crown Court will undergo an urban regeneration facelift into an all-electric 385,000 sq ft mixed-use development containing offices, community spaces and retail.

Based around a hybrid steel and CLT (cross laminate timber) frame that reduces embodied carbon content, the concept architects are Studio RHE led by Richard Hywel Evans and project architects are Sheppard Robson with environmental consulting support by Atelier Ten.

A passive ventilation strategy, operable windows for natural ventilation on warmer days, a feature atrium for waste heat extraction, and 1300 tonnes of soil on the roof to attract nature back into the city while protecting against the risk of flash flooding, all make this one of the most sustainable real estate developments to take shape in London in recent years, and there has been no shortage of them due to the increasingly strict planning regulations coming into place via the Mayor’s office.

That rooftop will accommodate a restaurant, landscaping by Harris Bugg, an estimated 10,000 plants and a passive water capture system for irrigation on-site reducing the building’s water demands.

This is an example of how to enhance well being in office buildings through a combination of natural light, natural landscapes and green walls as key biophilic design principles.

https://www.fabrix.london/project-item/blackfriars-se1/   

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CapitaSpring, Singapore - biophilic architecture in mixed-use real estate

CapitaSpring office building

Combine BIG Architects, a ‘city in a garden location’ and the backing of a giant developer and out comes this 51-floor, 280m high building of Grade A office space, serviced apartments and a four-story garden dubbed the ‘green oasis’.

Transforming the site of a former car park complex built in the 1980s this new example of biophilic design in architecture aims for icon status with its eye-catching exterior facade complete with vertical elements that appear to be prized apart to reveal flashes of nature emerging through the cracks, at a giant scale.

This interplay between building and nature is more common at an interiors scale but doing it here takes the concept in a completely new direction.

This is also, as we would expect, a ‘smart building’ full of IOT tech and sensors to facilitate customization of the building occupant experience.

Eight floors of serviced residences with a long list of lifestyle amenities such as a mini indoor jogging track, pool, gym, residents lounge and BBQ pits are topped by offices and the open-air garden space large enough for work breaks, lunchtime walks and more.

Natural features such as biophilic design in the interior environment, show how the developer, architects and interior designers have integrated natural systems and organic materials, natural forms and consideration for mental health, creating a seamless connection with natural environments.

To create spaces like this in modern society takes a bold vision of the health benefits of introducing an element of natural habitat back into dense urban areas.

https://capitaspringoffice.com/

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hongkong land's yorkville the ring - botanical architecture in real estate

hong kong land’s yorkville the ring

Located in Chongqing, China this 420,000m2 mixed-use retail-led development called Yorkville - The Ring is split between 170,000m2 of retail mall, 110,000m2 of offices and… wait for it, 70,000m2 of indoor botanical garden.

PHA Architects are behind the masterplan and design of this new lifestyle destination that has an enclosed landscaped commercial street embraced by two office towers.

This opens up the possibility of visual dialogue between the verdant, stepped terrace balconies of the towers above and the indoor botanical garden space.

In an attempt to blend a highly urban retail concept with a nature-centric, or biophilic design approach, the retail circulation spaces have been interwoven with the indoor botanical garden at various levels, inviting visitors to engage with the botanical experience as they navigate from one retail store to another, incorporating natural elements into the built environment.

Parametric modeling of the building facade allowed for a modular design, combining curved ceramic tiles with aluminium panels and LED lighting for an understated yet elegant aesthetic perfectly pitched for the expectations of both the local clientele and the all-important retail brand tenants.

Biophilic design principles such as respect for the natural environment in the interior space as well as natural ventilation, a strong visual connection with the natural world in respect of human evolution, even natural geometries evoking nature. There is so much goodness for human health in this building!

https://www.ph-alpha.com/project-detail.php?id=20&lang=en

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NION by Unstudio Frankfurt am Main - biophilic design in real estate

Unstudio NION office building

Designed with the deliberate intention to become one of Frankfurt’s if not Germany’s most sustainable office building, NION is located in the city’s Europaviertel West district where big things are happening in urban regeneration over the past two decades.

Unstudio have integrated ESG criteria and resource-efficient tech to deliver a sustainable building that considers its environmental impact as well as a social angle via the wellbeing of its regular occupants and of the community around it.

Abundant landscaping is nothing new nowadays in real estate developments such as this yet when combined with a low-carbon, modular and circular economy principles it takes on renewed meaning, becoming almost like the external signal of what is going on inside the building’s facade and daily operational energy use.

A green wall is one such biophilic design intervention that can be implemented to improve views and connect people with the natural environment within a built space.

When biophilia and greenery are purely superficial, this chain link falls apart; for us it a fundamental component of a biophilic design concept to combine elements of sustainability and wellbeing as in this example.

The planting serves to encourage biodiversity, contributing to an emerging urban green corridor in the district and giving insects, birds and wildlife an opportunity to return to this corner of the city.

Rainwater management systems improve water efficiency, geothermal heating and cooling reduce energy demands, smart building management ensure daily operations are fine tuned with the demand-based air conditioning (especially relevant now in the post-Covid, remote work era when areas of an office may be in greater or lesser demand at certain days or times of day).

Biophilic design focuses on well being for occupants while respecting the environment, so often there is a need for landscape architects to create multi sensory interactions via water features, naturalistic shapes, organic forms in the landscaping and so on.

Here we see a material connection between the indoor and outdoor environment by the seamless integration of biophilic principles thanks to the vision of UN Studio.

https://www.unstudio.com/en/page/16495/nion

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Holbein Gardens, London - biophilia in real estate

Sitting prime real estate near London’s Sloane Square station this 26,524 sq ft development by Grosvenor Property UK and Barr Gazetas architects dials in the sustainable building credentials to create what will be a highly efficient, low-emission building set to be Net Zero by 2025.

Holbein Gardens by Grosvenor Property UK

Sitting prime real estate near London’s Sloane Square station this 26,524 sq ft development by Grosvenor Property UK and Barr Gazetas architects dials in the sustainable building credentials to create what will be a highly efficient, low-emission building set to be Net Zero by 2025.

Barr Gazetas retained the existing structure rather than opting for demolition (equivalent to 59 tonnes of concrete / a 39% embodied carbon saving), reusing 13.5 tonnes of steelworks to reduce embodied carbon emissions, used a CLT structure, used reclaimed brickwork with lime based mortar for improved disassembly (Circular Economy principle). In total, 99.95% of all strip out waste was successfully diverted from landfill.

This all-electric, eight-story block powered by 100% renewable energy procured from the UK grid combined with photovoltaic panels on the roof generating around 17% of the projected maximum demand. As such, it is scheduled to save 50% operational energy consumption compared to benchmarks in the London, according to the developer.

Improved fenestration allows for enhanced access to natural daylight, reducing the need for artificial lighting at certain times of day.

Rainwater capture and reuse on the rooftop reduces water demand while a 714 sq ft communal roof garden with outdoor kitchen provides both biodiversity opportunities (135% net biodiversity gain) and access to biophilia for building occupants during their work days. That is in addition to the four green walls on the exterior facade.

Active travel features include 79 cycle spaces, 68 lockers and nine showers for those using active transportation methods to get to or from work each day.

Such passive strategies have obvious psychological benefits while also ensuring some ecological attachment at the start and end of a work day for example.

Cognitive function is enhanced via a connection to nature which can be both through direct experience and representations of nature, public spaces with potted plants, natural colours and local timber, outdoor areas with biomorphic forms in the garden design, if all urban environments looked like Holbein Gardens we have no doubt the foot traffic would explode as we all have this inherent need for a strong connection to nature.

A total of four different green building certifications are targeted, namely: BREEAM Outstanding, WELL Enabled, Nabers 4.5 and EPC A rating.

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Top 5 Sustainable Real Estate Companies for Nature Green Building and Healthy Biofilico Wellness Interiors

top five Real estate developers using biophilia for sustainability & wellbeing

biophilia = sustainability + wellbeing combined

Real estate companies in the residential, commercial, and mixed-use sectors are increasingly leveraging the occupant appeal and value-adding benefits of nature in their development briefs.

Why? For its unique position straddling both sustainable real estate (green buildings) and wellness real estate (healthy buildings); in other words, it benefits People and Planet through the built environment, which can only be good for the developer’s bottom line.

Here we look at a hot selection of developers from the global real estate industry that have captured our attention for their interest in the natural world, biophilic design, healthy indoor environments, wellness and green buildings.

• Beulah, Australia

• Coima, Italy

• Colonial, Spain

• Fabrix, UK

• Oxford Properties, Canada

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Beulah, Australia - a sustainable real estate developer using biophilic design

Beulah are behind the 25 ecologically sustainable two-storey townhouses in Melbourne called Brunswick townhomes leveraging sustainable building materials and a carbon-neutral concept inspired by natural systems.

Beulah's sustainable projects have also seen an increase in rental income due to decreased vacancy rates and faster renting of buildings. Beulah’s commitment to sustainability is further demonstrated through their LEED certified buildings.

Carbon neutral houses

Their ‘Wilds' project currently under construction contains 15 carbon-neutral houses immersed in nature with creek-front sites based on a healthy living concept, solar power, biophilia and sustainability.

STH BNK by Beulah, Australia

Their Fawkner House in Melbourne is made up of nine large-scale residences designed for health and wellness, key characteristics include abundant natural light, smart buildings systems for lower operating costs and a focus on occupant wellbeing.

STH BNK by Beulah, Australia

It is arguably their STH BNK development that stands out here though as Beulah's most ambitious development to date.

Currently under development, this UNStudio and Cox Architecture designed precinct in Melbourne will include a Four Seasons hotel, healthy living residences with garden views, pocket parks, a sky garden, auditorium, branded hotel residences and an entire level of the podium devoted to wellbeing.

This wellness precinct involves a curated selection of health and fitness practitioners focused on science, nutrition and medicine while workspaces combine co-working, sustainability, technology and greenery.

 https://beulahinternational.com/

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Coima, Italy - building with biophilia in Milan

Coima, Italy is a leading Italian real estate investment, developer and management company founded in 1974 that has set itself apart in the industry by focusing on three major aspects: sustainability, nature, and wellbeing. Coima strategically invests in affluent and densely populated communities to meet the high demand for sustainable real estate.

Coima also emphasizes governance as part of their ESG guidelines, ensuring that their projects are resilient and adhere to high standards.

With a strong commitment to these values, Coima has successfully managed to create unique and innovative green buildings, healthy building environments, and spaces that seamlessly integrate with nature.

Coima aims to create high quality real estate assets which enable sustainable growth over the long term

Porta Nova by Coima, Milano

Porta Nuova, Milan, Italy

Porta Nova by Coima, Milano

One of the most notable projects that exemplify Coima's focus on these principles is the redevelopment of Porto Nuova in Milan, Italy.

Porto Nuova is an ambitious urban regeneration project that has transformed a previously underdeveloped area in Milan into a thriving and sustainable district.

Spread over 290,000 square meters, the project has been designed with the adoption of cutting-edge green building techniques and technologies for enhanced building performance while providing access to significantly higher quantities of plants and green space.

These features not only help in reducing the environmental impact of the development but also contribute to creating a healthy building environment for its occupants.

Some of the key green building aspects of Porto Nuova include energy-efficient systems, rainwater harvesting, green roofs, and extensive use of natural light.

The integration of nature into the design and planning of Porto Nuova has been a central focus for Coima.

This is evident in the abundance of green spaces and parks throughout the development, which not only enhance its aesthetic appeal but also provide numerous benefits for the wellbeing of its residents and visitors.

By incorporating nature into the urban fabric, Coima has created a harmonious balance between built environments and natural ecosystems, promoting biodiversity and fostering a strong sense of community.

Another noteworthy aspect of Porto Nuova is its emphasis on wellbeing. Coima has ensured that the development offers a wide range of amenities and facilities that cater to the physical, mental, and social wellbeing of its occupants.

https://www.coima.com/it/homepage

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Wittywood, Barcelona by Colonial

Colonial, Spain - real estate with a conscience

Colonial, Spain, a leading real estate developer in the country, has been at the forefront of sustainable development and green building initiatives. Colonial's efforts to address climate change through their sustainable real estate projects have been noteworthy.

With a strong commitment to creating buildings that promote wellness, the company has been making significant strides in incorporating sustainable materials, energy-efficient systems, and state-of-the-art technologies into its property portfolio.

As a result, Colonial has gained recognition for its sustainability credentials and garnered international attention for its efforts in promoting green building practices.

Wellness in real estate

One of the key aspects of Colonial's approach to sustainable development is its focus on creating buildings that prioritize the wellbeing of occupants.

To achieve this, the company employs a combination of innovative design strategies, cutting-edge technologies, and best practices in environmental management.

Occupant health

By emphasizing wellness and occupant health, Colonial is not only reducing its environmental footprint but also enhancing the quality of life for those who live and work in its properties.

LEED

A prime example of Colonial's commitment to sustainability is its pursuit of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for many of its developments.

LEED is a globally recognized green building certification system that provides a framework for the design, construction, and operation of high-performance green buildings.

Furthermore, Colonial is an active participant in various industry initiatives and partnerships aimed at promoting sustainable development and green building practices.

This includes collaboration with organizations such as the Green Building Council España (GBCe) and participation in events like the Greenbuild International Conference & Expo.

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Fabrix, UK - focused on health benefits of nature and supporting local communities

Fabrix, a leading real estate developer in the UK, is committed to implementing wellness real estate and sustainable real estate strategies in its portfolio. Fabrix also focuses on improving their sustainability performance. And they really mean business.

By focusing on innovative design, energy efficiency, and environmentally friendly materials, Fabrix aims to create spaces that enhance the wellbeing of their occupants while minimizing the ecological footprint.

Roofs in the Sky by Fabrix London

Renewable energy

Roofs in the Sky by Fabrix London

One of the key environment friendly strategies employed by Fabrix is the incorporation of renewable energy systems, such as solar panels and wind turbines, into their projects.

This not only reduces the dependency on fossil fuels but also lowers the overall carbon emissions of the buildings.

Indoor air quality

Additionally, they make use of natural ventilation systems to improve indoor air quality and reduce energy consumption related to heating and cooling.

Biophilic design

In terms of healthy building strategies, Fabrix focuses on incorporating biophilic design elements that bring nature into the built environment.

This includes the integration of green roofs, living walls, and indoor gardens that not only improve air quality but also contribute to the overall wellness and productivity of occupants.

The use of non-toxic materials and finishes further ensures a healthier indoor environment free from harmful chemicals.

The Gramophone Works, London

A notable case study showcasing Fabrix's commitment to sustainability and wellness in real estate is their recent project, The Gramophone Works, in London.

This mixed-use development incorporates various green building features such as a green roof, solar panels, rainwater harvesting systems, and electric vehicle charging points.

The project also prioritizes wellness by providing ample natural light, high-quality acoustics, and a range of amenities designed to promote physical activity and social interaction among occupants.

 https://www.fabrix.london/

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Oxford Properties, Canada - Combining human health and green spaces

Oxford Properties, a leading real estate developer in Canada, has demonstrated a strong commitment to sustainability and wellness in their projects through the implementation of green building and healthy building strategies.

Oxford Properties has achieved a world leading position in sustainability and environmental certifications, showcasing their leadership and excellence in these areas.

This commitment is evident in the numerous case studies showcasing their innovative approaches to sustainable real estate development.

count those rooftop solar panels! Oxford Properties, Canada

Environmental footprint

count those rooftop solar panels! Oxford Properties, Canada

One of the core aspects of Oxford Properties' sustainability strategy is the integration of sustainable design features, such as energy-efficient systems and renewable energy sources.

The company actively seeks to minimize its environmental footprint by incorporating advanced technologies, such as solar panels, green roofs, and rainwater harvesting systems in their properties.

Indoor air quality

Additionally, the company focuses on improving indoor air quality and utilizes environmentally friendly materials in construction to ensure the overall health and well-being of occupants.

WELL Building Standard

A prime example of Oxford Properties' commitment to healthy building and wellness is their participation in the WELL Building Standard certification program.

This program evaluates buildings based on various factors related to human health and well-being, including air, water, nourishment, light, fitness, comfort, and mind.

The company has successfully achieved WELL certification for several of its properties, highlighting its dedication to creating spaces that promote occupant health and wellness.

EY Tower, Toronto

Case studies showcasing Oxford Properties' commitment to sustainability include their work on the EY Tower in Toronto.

This LEED Platinum certified office tower features energy-efficient HVAC systems, a green roof that reduces stormwater runoff and provides insulation, and extensive use of natural light to enhance occupant well-being.

Park Place III, Calgary, Canada

Another example is Park Place III in Calgary, where Oxford Properties implemented a comprehensive waste management program that resulted in a 77% waste diversion rate.

By prioritizing environmental considerations and occupant health in their projects, they are setting an example for other developers to follow and contributing to the creation of a more sustainable future.

https://sustainable.oxfordproperties.com/2021/materials.html

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Further Reading

• Posts in ESG

• Health & Wellbeing Strategies For Wellness Lifestyle Real Estate & Mixed-Use Communities

• Best Examples Of Biophilic Commercial Developments

• Posts in Sustainability

• Real Estate Posts

• Future-Proof Real Estate With The Smart Building Collective

• Posts Tagged Commercial Real Estate

• Posts Tagged Real Estate

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• An Introduction To Biophilic Design In Sustainable Buildings

Biophilic Architects: Architecture Studios for Biophilic Design — Biofilico Wellness Interiors

our overview of the leading architecture studios for biophilic architecture that bring the outside world in, combining sustainability and wellbeing in real estate.

• Batlleiroig, Spain

• Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), Denmark

• CookFox, USA

• GG Loop, NL

• Heatherwick Studio, UK

• K Studio, Greece

• Kengo Kuma & Associates, Japan

• M Moser, China

• Nomadic Resorts, SA & NL

• Stefano Boeri Architetti, Italy

• United Network Studio, Netherlands

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Oficinas Lumen, Barcelona

Founded in 1981 by Enric Batlle and Joan Roig, the Barcelona-based architecture studio Batlleiroig is all about tackling the climate emergency through a synergistic fusion of city and nature in the built environment.

The practice combines urban planning, landscaping and architecture, with recent projects showing a clear tendency towards biophilic design, sustainable real estate and occupantwellbeing in particular, often through the lens of greater contact with nature.

With over 140 staff members, this is one of the most influential architecture studios in Barcelona, and indeed Spain. They caught our attention for their ambitious plans for the LaMercedes urban regeneration development by Conren Tramway as well as the Net Zero Emissions Entegra office building, both in our home city of Barcelona.

Going beyond merely ‘sustainable’, Batlleiroig design buildings and indeed precincts that incorporate natural elements and have a deep respect for the advantages of using nature in real estate, be that through materials, plants, aesthetics or environmental protection measures. They emphasize the use of natural materials like wood, bamboo, and stone, all of which adds up to a lightness of touch and an undeniable ‘joie de vivre’ in many of their projects.

https://www.batlleiroig.com

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Bjarke Ingels Group, Denmark - starchitects and biophilic designers

BIG hardly need any introduction nowadays thanks to their attention-grabbing, headline-worthy approach to architecture. Their recent completion in Singapore, the 280m tall biophilic CapitaSpring tower (see image above) that proposes a new type of vertical urbanism, is just one of countless such examples.

The studio completed its first hotel project in September 2022, the Hôtel des Horlogers for Audemars Piguet in the Swiss Vallée de Joux, the design here blurs the boundaries between the surrounding landscape and the contours of the building, creating spaces that seamlessly integrate the indoors and outdoors, a nod to biophilic architecture if ever there was one.

Their 49,000m2 Sluishuis project outskirts of Amsterdam, has been billed as a ‘floating’ neighborhood with public roofscapes and riverwalks that offers a residential vision of life over water, a form of ‘blue nature’ (as opposed to ‘green nature’ in forests and parks)

https://big.dk/#projects

CookFox StJohn’s Terminal, Google building

CookFox, USA - nature inspired architecture

CookFox are a giant in the world of “integrated, environmentally responsive architecture” as they call it. They are also world-class biophilic architects, leading the way in integrating biophilia into residences and workplaces.

From their base in New York they leverage two decades of experience and a 130+ strong workforce to deliver projects that aim to “elevate the human condition and urban environment through beautiful, innovative, and sustainable design”.

Calling cards include the 2.2 million sq ft One Bryant Park tower, the first skyscraper in the world to achieve platinum LEED certification, and the forthcoming 1.3 million sq ft Google office tower in Manhattan called the St. John’s Tower.

As a studio, they have also made a name for themselves designing offices for healthy building powerhouses such as the International WELL Building Institute headquarters and Skanska headquarters, both in New York.

https://cookfox.com/

GG Loop, Netherlands - creative biophilic designers

The architectural and design firm, GG-loop, is a biophilic design inspired creative team in the Netherlands. The team of about 20 has been together since the beginning of the practice in 2014 and rally around the cause of architecture deepening the connection between people and nature through biophilic design.

Recent large-scale projects include Echinoidea, a pavilion in Milan, and Freebooter, a residential development in Amsterdam.

The studio's vision is to raise awareness on the importance of biophilic architecture to both professionals and the general public to fight the current climate condition.

https://gg-loop.com/

Heatherwick Studio, UK - biophilic design experts in London

Thomas Heatherwick’s eponymous studio is an architectural design practice and workshop in London, UK.

Their key concepts are improving lives through the built environment, especially through slow living and a connection with nature in urban environments thanks to biophilic design.

The team of over 200 have a strong stance on sustainability, the integration of nature, and a sprinkle of magic dust aimed at sparking a reaction of delight.

Recent large scale projects include 1000 Trees in Shanghai, China and the Eden in Singapore as well as collaborations with Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) on the Google Campus in London.

https://www.heatherwick.com/

K Studio, Greece - designers working with biophilia

Based in Central Athens, the K Studio is a practice of 60+ designers that has evolved a unique, nature-infused aesthetic that fits neatly into the category of biophilic design, without being defined or limited by it in any way.

From the bohemian chic of Scorpios on Mykonos island (see pic above) to more minimalist villas, and the Casa Cook resort properties around Greece, their range is impressive for a modestly sized studio.

Greek culture and a sense of place remain a constant in their architectural and design output, meaning they dial up materiality, keeping things pure and elemental whenever possible, yet always with a touch of nature.

Recent large-scale projects include the Marina Kaplankaya and the refurbishment of the Mykonos airport, suggesting they are on their way to becoming one of the country’s leading design studios with a bright future ahead.

https://www.k-studio.gr/projects/

Kengo Kuma architects, Japan - one of the world’s leading biophilic architects

Kengo Kuma & Architects (KKAA) have offices in Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai and Paris. With over 170 staff and over 360 projects completed, today they are one of the most significant modern architects not just in Japan but on the global design stage.

The team explores the relationship between buildings, nature, humans and technology, and incorporates natural elements into their designs. This approach, combined with a strong emotional component and undeniable influences from Japan, aims to provoke a serene, harmonious state of mind in occupants and visitors.

Projects are currently underway in a plethora of different countries covering use categories as diverse as museums, restaurants, offices, education, exhibitions, residential, factories and hospitals. A few highlights include the biophilic mixed-use development Welcome Milano in Milan, Italy (shown above).

https://kkaa.co.jp/en/selected-projects/

M Moser & Associates, China - biophilic office design experts

M Moser & Associates is a global firm with over 1000 employees, they are workplace design specialists and maintain a number of ‘Living Labs’ where they experiment with new design solutions before introducing them into their projects for clients.

The team have a strong stance on sustainability, meaning they combine biophilic design in their architecture and interiors as a way to promote occupant wellbeing whilst also keeping one eye on reducing their impact in every way possible.

Recent projects of reference include Shui On WorkX, a biophilic office space in Shanghai, the Dyson Global HQ in Singapore, Nestle offices in Jakarta and the Diageo offices in Shanghai.

https://www.mmoser.com/about/

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Nomadic Resorts, eco architects in South Africa, mauritius and Netherlands

Nomadic Resorts defy most conventions and definitions. They span across a range of disciplines, from masterplanning of entire nature-inspired resorts, to architectural design with biophilic influences, botanical landscape design and interiors.

Via offices in the Netherlands, South Africa and Mauritius they deliver projects with a sustainable edge, each inspired by their location, landscape and natural context.

Their expertise covers bamboo construction as well as treetop living, tented camps and avant-garde resort concepts that push the boundaries of how far sustainable resorts can push the concept of environmentally friendly hospitality. They are committed to sustainable development and fulfilling the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals.

By incorporating concepts such as low carbon engineering, regenerative landscaping and permaculture, they bridge the worlds of eco tourism, green building sustainable design. Their client list includes giants such as Six Senses Resorts and Spas; Soneva Group; Banyan Tree and &Beyond.

https://nomadicresorts.com/

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Stefano Boeri Architetti - designers of the bosco verticale vertical forest

Defining this architecture studio as the designers behind the Bosco Vertical vertical forest building in Milan, Italy is to put this multi-faceted team in a box that they outgrew many moons ago. In fact they are an international operation with offices in Milan, Shanghai and Tirana (Albania) from where they deliver research and practice in urbaism and architecture.

With over 20 years of experience, the infamous tower did at least help solidify their reputation as leading thinkers on urban sustainability and biodiversity, as well as social housing, urban development and regeneration projects.

Their multi-disciplinary approach engages with landscape architects, engineers, social scientists and agronomists showing that biophilic design can and should engage a wide variety of experts in order to succeed at scale in urban regeneration for example.

Present in the PRC since 2014 their office in Shanghai has delivered projects such as the renovation of the former Shanghai Stock Exchange and with the Nanjing Vertical Forest - the first Vertical Forest in China - current in construction.

Their Tirana office meanwhile is responsible for developing the General Local Plan and the strategic vision of the city, known as “Tirana 2030”.

Other assignments include the masterplan of Doha’s New Port and the development of the “triangle of Maspero”, a complex of towers and public facilities along the Nile waterfront, in downtown Cairo.

https://www.stefanoboeriarchitetti.net/

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UNStudio - architects and urbanists big on sustainability

With offices in Amsterdam, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Frankfurt, Dubai and Melbourne totaling over 300 employees, UNStudio is now a full-service architecture and design powerhouse.

Founded in 1988 by Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos, they now deliver architecture, interior architecture, product design, urban development and infrastructural projects around the world.

UNStudio see themselves as having to anticipate the future, in particular in terms of sustainability and their environmental impact. They consider social and ecological sustainability upfront while aiming for what they call ‘attainable design’ - projects that are both financially and socially feasible. Their commitment to sustainable architecture is evident in their projects, which incorporate innovative design features and sustainable practices.

Major projects of note include the Erasmus Bridge, Arnhem Central Station, the Mercedes-Benz Museum, the Doha Metro Network, Raffles City Hangzhou and the Hanwha HQ Remodelling.

https://www.unstudio.com/

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Sustainable Rooftop: A Key Element in Green Healthy Building Design — Biofilico Wellness Interiors

Why Green & Healthy building Rooftops?

Roofs can take up to 15-35% of the total land area of a city, making them a vital surface in urban settings (“Urban”). This often underutilized area of a building envelope can provide smart, healthy, and environmentally friendly design options that are increasingly being executed across cities.

The implementation of green roofs within a sustainable building strategy, for example, can provide benefits such as:

• a reduction of Urban Heat Islands

• increased energy efficiency

• improved rainwater management

• improved biodiversity

• the provision of amenity spaces

Compared to conventional roofs, green roofs have lower burning heat load and lower temperatures. They also include materials not found on conventional roofs, which contribute to their environmental benefits. Additionally, the installation of green roofs requires experienced roofing contractors to ensure proper setup and maintenance.

Green roofs are the most holistic and multifaceted design strategy for these surfaces, but other considerations such as cool roofs, the incorporation of rooftop gyms or exercise areas, and solar panels are a few examples of smart rooftop design that contribute to a healthy building or sustainable building strategy.

Sustainable building rooftops Reduce the Urban Heat Island Effect

One of the most important influences that rooftops can have is a reduction of Urban Heat Islands (UHI). This phenomenon describes the prevalence of higher temperatures that arise in dense, urban regions, due to the presence of man-made surfaces with higher heat retaining properties than those in natural environments.

Out of the entire building envelope, roofs are subject to the highest amount of solar irradiance, making their albedo properties the most important to curb the effects of UHI (Costanzo).

With the rise of temperatures across the globe comes the rise of heat related deaths. Increased respiratory disease, heat stress, reduced productivity, discomfort, and mental health challenges can all also occur due to increased warming (Swain).

With UHI compounded with the rising temperatures, the physical health and wellness of those residing in cities becomes more dire—making it an essential problem to address.

The most common strategies to reduce UHI on roofs is to implement cool or green roof strategies. Cool roofs use highly reflective coating such as white paint to reduce heat absorption, while green roofs implement plants and other vegetation, which acts as insulation and a cooling mechanism for the building and surrounding microclimate.

Additionally, green roofs and cool roofs can reduce the energy demand for air conditioning by keeping the interior temperature cooler and lowering energy bills.

Increase Energy Efficiency via green roofs

The implementation of smart roof design has the potential to greatly increase building energy efficiency. For one, green roofs can reduce building cooling loads and therefore increase HVAC efficiency. Also, Solar panels can be implemented on roofs to grow renewable energy use.

When used in tandem, green roofs and solar panels can be implemented on the same roof and provide dual benefits. Reducing energy consumption through green roofs can also help in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Generally, roofs are dark, heat absorbing surfaces that have the potential to raise building temperatures and increase cooling demands. Plants and greenery naturally reduce the temperature of roofs and add an insulation layer, diminishing the amount of hot and cold air affecting the building’s temperature, further regulating it.

In addition, the cooler microclimate created by rooftop greenery can increase the efficiency of rooftop HVAC systems (“Green Roof Benefits”).

In addition, solar panels can be placed on rooftops to act as a renewable energy source for a building. Although usually thought of separately, if a green roof and solar panels are used together, known as a biosolar roof, the benefits increase.

Like rooftop HVAC systems, solar panels work more efficiently in cooler climates, making the combination of vegetative cooling and solar panel energy creation a beneficial, symbiotic relationship (“Green Roofs-Solar”).

Improve Rainwater Management on green rooftops

Rainwater management and collection is a commonly mentioned concept in many building certification and rating systems, and can be improved through the implementation of green roofs. Impervious surfaces and hardscapes cause excess water runoff, which can disrupt natural hydrology and ecosystems, as well as contaminating water bodies with pollutants.

Green roofs reduce the amount of stormwater runoff and delay the time at which runoff occurs, resulting in decreased stress on sewer systems at peak flow periods. Pervious surfaces that allow for water absorption, capture, and reuse can be implemented through green roofs and through the incorporation of surfaces such as porous pavement or grid pavers.

Green roofs can capture the water as it falls, and filter out its pollutants naturally, reducing the burden on sewer systems and avoiding flooding, as well as preventing toxins from entering water bodies. It has been found that green roofs can hold 70-90% of the rain that falls on them in the summer, and 25-40% in the winter (“About”).

Once captured, this water can be redistributed throughout the building such as in irrigation, toilets, and other non-potable uses.

The use of green roofs and pervious landscaping can greatly impact rainwater management and reduce water demand within buildings.

One study done by researchers at Pennsylvania State University found that green roofs retain around 80% of fallen water, while traditional roofs captured closer to 24% of rainfall (“Green Roof Benefits”). However, when designing roofs for rainwater capture and reuse, it is essential that loads are calculated, and proper sealing of the building envelope is executed to avoid any leaks.

Improve Biodiversity with a green rooftop

Cities are barren compared to the natural world, and therefore provide fewer habitats for flora and fauna. Implementing green roofs within urban regions is a way to use often underutilized spaces to increase the presence and diversity of species within the built environment. Green roofs contribute to creating green space in urban areas, supporting biodiversity and improving the urban environment.

Increasing biodiversity in cities can not only improve the health of those ecosystems themselves, but also the systems that function around them–such as the hydrological or nutrient cycles. In addition, from a mental health standpoint, the visual presence and interaction with a diversity of species can be positive for human well-being (“About”).

Plants, especially native species promote the livelihood of birds, insects, and butterflies and restore the ecological cycles that are often disrupted in cities. In addition to providing an immediate habitat for animals, green pockets can provide places of respite for animals and provide more closely connected habitats for migrating birds and other species that would otherwise be fragmented by cities (“About”).

In addition to greenery, when solar panels are implemented as well on biosolar roofs, they can provide additional landscape diversity. The panels provide shade and protection, as well as a place for water runoff, creating a wetter side and a drier side. The implementation of PV can therefore cause a “habitat mosaic”, attracting a wider variety of flora and fauna and further increasing biodiversity (“Green Roofs-Solar”).

nike rooftop activation barcelona

Provide Amenity Spaces with a healthy building rooftop

In addition to the ecological benefits of green rooftops, they can also provide social and mental health benefits for building users. Strategies such as rooftop gyms and community gathering spaces can provide further benefits. Green walls can also contribute to urban greening by providing additional green infrastructure and improving air quality.

Outdoor exercise has been proven to have additional benefits when compared with traditional exercise, such as greater mood improvements, decreases in anxiety and increases in the desire to be active. Due to the mental and physical health benefits from both nature exposure and exercise, the combination of the two provides even greater gains (Loureiro).

Implementing exercise spaces and gyms on rooftops is an impactful way to improve the health and wellness of building users, while avoiding building footprint increases. Rooftop gardens can provide amenity spaces and enhance the sustainability of urban areas.

In addition, publicly accessible rooftops can provide places of respite and locations to gather as a community. Community gardens can be placed to encourage building users to spend time outside in nature, provide educational opportunities, improve nutrition and food awareness, and reduce the local community’s food footprint (“About”).

Finally, aesthetic roofs with various amenities can encourage occupants to utilize the space for events and social gatherings, further promoting community, connection to the outdoors, and overall wellness.

Sources

“About Green Roofs.” Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, https://greenroofs.org/about-green-roofs

Costanzo, V., et al. “Energy Savings in Buildings or UHI Mitigation? Comparison between Green Roofs and Cool Roofs.” Energy and Buildings, Elsevier, 12 May 2015, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378778815003527.

“Green Roof Benefits.” National Parks Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, https://www.nps.gov/tps/sustainability/new-technology/green-roofs/benefits.htm.

“Green Roofs and Solar Power – Biosolar Roofs Are Smart Green Infrastructure.” Livingroofs, 29 Oct. 2019, https://livingroofs.org/green-roofs-solar-power/.

Loureiro, Ana, and Susana Veloso. “Green Exercise, Health and Well-Being.” ResearchGate, Springer, Aug. 2017, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308099577_Green_Exercise_Health_and_Well-Being

Swain, Sunanda SwainSunanda. “Urban Heat Island Effect: Causes, Impacts and Mitigation.” Blogging Hub, 4 June 2019, www.cleantechloops.com/urban-heat- island-effect/.

“Urban Roofscapes: Using ‘Wasted’ Rooftop Real Estate to an Ecological Advantage.” Scientific American, Scientific American, 25 July 2008, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/urban-roofscapes-ecofriendly-rooftops/.

What is Circular Economy in regenerative Real Estate?

How do we define circular economy?

The built environment is one of many man-made systems that typically operates as a linear process - it involves the extraction, use of, and eventual disposal of resources.

Sustainability experts describe this as an unnatural model as it accumulates immense amounts of waste and contributes to the negative impacts of the built environment on our planet.

This is in contrast to nature itself, a closed loop system that does not produce any waste.

For example, it has been found that 25-30% of the waste generated in the EU comes from manufacturing and construction waste, and 10% of global CO2 emissions come from steel and cement production (Acharya). 

This makes steel and cement as the two main building raw materials to watch when it comes to reducing embodied carbon in a new construction and a transition towards more circular economy aims and alternative business models that consider economic growth in the context of a company’s greenhouse gas emissions and social impact, for example.

The circular economy real estate response

A circular economy perspective applied to a high-waste and high-growth system like the built environment can have meaningful impacts for all stakeholders involved through waste reduction and increased value of assets.

The overall goal of a circular economy approach to real estate is to manage the components of the built environment by keeping them in the loop, rather than producing waste for landfill, this means materials and products retain some of their intrinsic value for longer (Acharya). 

3 Principles of Circular Economy: The Ellen Macarthur Foundation

The Ellen Macarthur Foundation is a leader in this realm, promoting the ideas and concepts around the circular economy, aiming to create an economic system that is better for both people and planet.

The foundation has designated three main principles of a circular economy that are considered the backbone of the concept:

1. eliminate waste and pollution

2. circulate products and materials

3. regenerate nature (Circular)

eliminate waste in circular economy real estate

The first principle, to eliminate waste and pollution works to override the current “take-make-waste” system that our economy recklessly deploys without much concern for future generations. The waste that is produced from the built environment commonly ends up in landfills and those resources are lost, depleting our global stores.

In order to instate this first principle in real estate particularly therefore, buildings must first be designed to reduce and eliminate waste at all stages of their lifecycle, while shifting from a linear system to a circular economy system using circular design products.

This includes strategies such as applying life cycle assessments to understand materials at end of life, and choosing materials and products that can be reused, repaired, remanufactured, and recycled (Circular). 

See our dedicated HEALTHY MATERIALS page here.

circulate products and materials in circular economy real estate

The second principle, to keep products and materials in the loop, focuses on keeping them in use in the highest value form for as long as possible. This retains the value and usability of those materials while reducing extraction of additional natural resources from the planet.

Such products and materials can be kept in circulation through reuse, repair, remanufacturing, or recycling. In addition, biodegradable materials that often naturally decompose can be cycled back into the earth and circulated into the biological cycle.

To promote this strategy, designers should consider the ability for a product or material to be integrated into a cycle at end of life. For example, if wooden furniture was designed with biodegradable glues and paints rather than materials such as screws, they could be entirely biodegradable and more easily circulated (Circular). 

regenerating nature in circular economy real estate

The third and final principle, to regenerate nature, is implemented through the conversion to a circular economy and the promotion of natural processes and cycles.

Through this principle, the extraction of resources should be shifted to their regeneration, which will in turn provide more space for nature as less land is required to source virgin materials.

This can be implemented within the built environment through careful material selection and use. If we shift the priority to not only doing less harm to the environment but improving it, nature can be regenerated through the incorporation of a circular economy and principles (Circular).

Building-Level Circular Economy

The circular economy can be applied at a building level through the consideration of its entire ecosystem and lifecycle. The principles can be implemented in the design, sourcing, construction, operations, renewal, disassembly, and repurposing processes. The goal is to integrate all building phases with one another and plan for a closed loop cycle from the onset of design (Ellen)

The design process should include operation and performance strategies and incorporate energy-efficient approaches. Modularity and adaptability should be a focus and can include strategies such as selecting efficient resources that are easily reusable, durable, and flexible. Construction can aid in efficiencies through strategies such as modular building or off-site construction to reduce waste production (Ellen).

In the in-use phase, buildings should incorporate self-sufficient methods to mimic a living system, such as water capture and reuse systems, or a net positive solar production and storage system. We can look to natural systems for a guide, and whenever possible buildings should utilize and create self-fulfilling cycles (Ellen).

End of life is often the most forgotten yet one of the most important factors of a circular economy. Buildings must be designed for longevity, which can come in the form of durability, flexibility, or adaptability. Structures should have the capability to easily shift to another use if the initial use is no longer desired through disassembly and reconfiguration or shifted off-site for another use.

The goal at end of life is to maintain all building products and materials at their highest value possible through reuse. If this is not possible, as with the case of many organic materials, they can biodegrade back into the earth and close the loop, giving back to the earth from which they were extracted (Ellen).

Cradle to Cradle Certification in real estate

The Cradle to Cradle Certified Product Standard is a global standard that recognizes products and materials that are circular, responsibly made, and healthy. This standard is a great starting point for material decision-making as it provides materials that align with circular economy goals. 

The certified materials have been proven to be safe for both humans and the environment, and at end of life are guaranteed available for reuse without further pollution or contamination. When selecting materials, searching for this certification is a great indicator for a smart choice. 

In addition, as recommended by the Cradle to Cradle website, Materiom is an open source platform that provides locally-sourced biological material “recipes”. 

Integration with Sustainable Building Certification Systems

Sustainable building certification standards such as LEED, BREEAM, WELL, and the Living Building Challenge (LBC) encourage the use of circular economy concepts and products throughout a building’s design process.

These certification systems can provide guidance and direction for project teams looking for ways to implement circular economy principles into their real estate developments. 

Each of the various standards encourage the use of water retention / reuse and rainwater management, forming closed-loop water cycles within buildings. 

In particular LEED, BREEAM, and the LBC mention the importance of producing and using renewable energy and the incorporation of passive design, encouraging circular building design through self-sufficient energy strategies, whenever possible - most obviously in new build real estate construction.

In addition, each of these standards has a focus on choosing sustainable building materials that provide transparency and reduce waste opportunities at end of life.

Finally, each standard requires waste reduction and management throughout the design process and through smart material sourcing. 

The LBC also contains the “Place” Petal, whose goal is to encourage ecological regeneration, connecting to the third principle of the circular economy as outlined above.

The WELL standard also touches some circular economy approaches through the mention of hazardous waste management and reduction, material transparency, and carbon disclosures and reduction. 

Examples of Circular Design in Real Estate

There are many buildings in existence that utilize circular design principles. As highlighted by the Ellen Macarthur foundation, examples such as Villa Welpeloo (above) designed by Superuse Studios and Arup’s circular building pilot project (see video earlier in this article) both provide inspiration.

The Villa Welpeloo project focused on building locally with salvaged materials, highlighting the impacts of reusing resources that would otherwise become waste. Within the project, Superuse was able to include 60% locally recovered materials, which is now a strategy utilized in 90% of the company’s projects (Ellen).

In Arup’s circular building pilot project, they focused on creating a building that could easily be disassembled and re-fabricated if needed, designing for adaptability, and using the structure as a functioning material bank.

In addition, each material was carefully selected with a transparency and health focus instated from the beginning. Using BIM technology, the project team tagged each material with information on its properties and reuse capabilities to make collaboration across disciplines easier and to ensure the incorporation of the circular design principles (Ellen). 

References

Acharya, Devni, et al. 2018, From Principles to Practices: First Steps towards a Circular Built Environment , Arup, The Ellen Macarthur Foundation, 3XN GXN. Accessed 9 June 2022. 

“Circular Economy Introduction.” Ellen MacArthur Foundation, https://ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/topics/circular-economy-introduction/overview  

Ellen Macarthur Foundation, 2019, Circular Economy in Cities. Accessed 9 June 2022. 

Zimmann, Rainer, et al. ARUP, The Circular Economy in the Built Environment. 

BREEAM Standard 

LEED Standard

Living Building Challenge

WELL v2 Standard

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Further Reading

• Posts In Real Estate

• Real Estate ESG Frameworks

• Sustainable Real Estate In Urban Regeneration With Jonny Friedman

• A Guide To Green Building Certification & Healthy Building Certification

• Posts Tagged Green Buildings

• Healthy Building & Wellbeing Real Estate Consultants

• Circular Design With Soma Studio Milano

• Biophilic Design Consultant

• What Is A Healthy Building Material?

• Healthy Buildings Vs Sick Building Syndrome

• Waste Management In Green & Healthy Buildings & Interiors

• Sustainable Building Data - 2050 Materials

• Building Wellness & Sustainability With Evalore Spain

• Healthy Materials With Matter Of Stuff

• Best Examples Of Biophilic Commercial Developments

• Sustainable Boutique Hotel Brands UK

• Healthy Materials In Sustainable Interiors

• Marine-Based Circular Economy Materials

• Sustainable Textiles & Fruit-Based Bio Fabrics

• Best Examples Of Biophilic Design In Learning Environments

• Examples Of Biophilic Design Interiors Cannabis Retail Stores

• Sustainable Hotel Resort Standards, Certifications And Ecolabels

LEED Location and Transportation: Sustainable Buildings and Wellness Design Consultants

Globally, transportation accounts for 25% of total greenhouse gas emissions, making it an essential sector in which to implement reductions. LEED certification, particularly the Location and Transportation category, provides a comprehensive approach to sustainable building design and operation, encouraging environmentally responsible practices and promoting healthier, more efficient buildings. As green building consultants, a number of strategies are available in this regard, all part of a sustainable real estate development or sustainable refurbishment project.

Early decisions such as the site selection and location, or implementing a local procurement strategy will have tangible emission impacts from Day One in a sustainable real estate development, as will integrating Active Travel facilities, providing green parking facilities and tracking commuter emissions in the operational phase.

As sustainable building consultants, below we address each of these points in turn in order to provide the reader with a concise overview of the role transportation plays in the green building sector.

Choosing a Sustainable Building Location with Sensitive Land Protection

Sustainable site selection is arguably the most important decision in relation to transportation emission reductions and indeed opportunities for active travel. It also involves protecting sensitive areas such as endangered species habitats.

Although this choice is often made very early in the real estate development process, whenever possible, consideration for transportation and connectivity should at least play a part in that decision making process from a sustainable building perspective. Additionally, avoiding development on prime farmland is crucial for preserving valuable agricultural resources. Selecting a high priority site can bring both economic and environmental benefits to the surrounding community.

As outlined in the USGBC’s LEED standard / Location & Transportation category, there are several characteristics to be considered. Reusing existing infrastructure is crucial in sustainable site selection as it minimizes the need for new infrastructure and reduces environmental strain.

Primarily, consider the surrounding density and prioritise locations with diverse uses nearby, such as food retail, community centers, and other services. Building on previously developed land can offer benefits like existing infrastructure and points within the LEED criteria.

This allows people spending time in the building to have access to a variety of services nearby, within walking distance to encourage active travel instead of car use, while reducing the need for longer distance car travel.

Secondly, ‘access to quality transit’ - locating the project in a high-density area, close to multi-modal transportation options such as train, bus and bike share stations. making commuter times shorter on average, and commonly increasing public transportation uptake.

Local Sourcing & Procurement in Sustainable Buildings

Another strategy that comes early in the design process is selecting healthy building materials, products, and or machinery from local, nearby sources. Promoting more compact development can conserve land and reduce transportation emissions.

From a real estate sustainability perspective, the key is to understand the supply chain transparency of the most prominent selected materials (such as steel and concrete for buildings; or flooring, ceiling panels and wall finishes in interiors), utilize low-emission vehicles in the delivery process, and plan timely construction deliveries.

Local sourcing greatly reduces transportation emissions and should be considered early on in materiality sourcing and procurement decisions.

Healthy and sustainable building materials should therefore be selected based on those within a low-carbon system and within a close radius of the project.

Low-carbon systems can include the whole life cycle of a material and all transportation steps— as well as the incorporation of low-carbon shipping options.

In addition, within the construction phase, the just-in-time delivery method can be used, meaning the materials arrive on site when needed, not before - this helps avoid the loss or damage of resources.

A reduction in excess material use and therefore less waste production, in turn reduces the number of transportation trips needed to get materials on and off site.

Commuter Emission Regulation in sustainable buildings

During the in-use phase of a sustainable building, commuter emissions are the largest contributor to building-related transportation emissions. Choosing a neighborhood development location can significantly reduce these emissions by promoting walkability and access to public transit. The main goal is to reduce the number of people traveling to and from the building individually in petrol / diesel powered vehicles.

This can be done through the use of public transport, carpooling, or the use of electric vehicles. Promoting walkability and transport efficiency within the surrounding community is also crucial. In order to regulate and eventually reduce commuter emissions, strategies such as commuter surveys and greenhouse gas tracking are essential steps.

Commuter surveys can be implemented to better understand how employees, residents, or other building users travel to and from the site. This is the first step to understanding the impact of transportation emissions and what the largest decision-making factors are for commuter travel.

This information on transportation related greenhouse gas emissions can not only provide valuable data for real estate ESG reporting but also help guide future building site adjustments to reduce transport emissions, such as parking changes or active travel incentives.

Active Travel and Bicycle Network in Sustainable Buildings

From the transportation side of active travel, it is directly connected to the location of the building site and its connectivity, as well as business culture. The sustainable sites category in LEED encourages such practices to promote environmental and public health benefits. Neighborhood development can promote walkability and sustainable land use practices. The general goal of active travel is to increase the health and fitness level of building occupants, but it can also have impacts on transportation emissions.

If the building is located nearby various amenities, commuters and building occupants can walk or bike if they would like to go to the grocery store or get a haircut, for example. This not only increases occupant health, but also reduces transportation related carbon emissions.

In addition, active travel can be fulfilled through commuting to the site by bike or foot. In addition to location, building sites can encourage active travel through the incorporation of bike storage facilities, bike maintenance programs, and showers on-site for commuters heading to work.

Finally, company or building-wide active travel incentives, such a company-wide bike to work month competition can increase active travel participation. The culture of a company can have a large impact on commuter patterns, and active travel should be encouraged socially whenever possible.

The USGBC LEED green building standard ‘Bicycle Facilities’ credit rewards projects that promote bicycle use through locating the site entrance within 180m of a bicycle network, as well as providing short- / long-term bicycle storage and shower rooms on site.

Reduced Parking Footprint in Sustainable Buildings

To help reduce commuter-related transportation emissions, parking can be adjusted on site. Sensitive land protection is crucial in responsible land use practices, ensuring the preservation of biodiversity and ecological sites. Strategies can include limits on available parking, designated preferred parking spaces, and EV or alternative fueling stations installed on site.

Limiting parking overall will encourage different travel methods purely due to the inconvenience. In addition, parking that is available should contain designated spots for carpooling and green vehicles to further encourage reductions in commuter emissions.

In addition, parking lots should include EV charging stations to make the use of these vehicles more accessible. Also, when possible, alternative gas fueling stations can be installed on site to further discourage traditional, emission-heavy travel methods.

The Reduced Parking Footprint credit in USGBC LEED’s green building standard rewards real estate projects that deliberately limit their parking footprint, or eliminate it completely, to promote alternative transportation options. This integrates with the Electric Vehicle credit that rewards parking for EVs with dedicated charging stations.

Sustainability in Last Mile Logistics Real Estate

What is Sustainability in Last Mile Logistics?

Last mile logistics refers to the last step in a delivery process, describing the process of sorting and transportation to the doorstep of the client from a nearby warehouse or storage facility.

This delivery process is in high demand post-pandemic due to the boom in e-commerce purchases during lockdowns, making this an ideal time to assess the opportunity for integrating sustainability policies and green building strategies into the sector as a whole.  

Who delivers a sustainability strategy in last mile logistics?

The various businesses that invest in, construct, and operate the distribution centers as well as the transportation process are all key players in optimizing last mile logistics sustainability. 

A business model that includes real estate Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) goals not only upholds a company’s civic duty but also appeals to investors with a preference for sustainable investments.

Transportation is of course a central piece within last mile logistics, and therefore must be closely monitored and optimized to reduce carbon emissions associated with the process however sustainability policies at the construction, fit-out and operations level of these distribution and storage centers should also be factored into a comprehensive sustainability strategy - as we shall see, this can often require a degree of inter-company collaboration (see Prologis as an example of this).

environment in ESG in last mile logistics real estate

From a business model perspective, a real estate ESG strategy is essential to encourage sustainability throughout a last mile logistics enterprise. In addition, investors are often motivated when ESG is integrated into a company’s values and mission statement.

The environmental focus within a last mile logistics ESG strategy can include the storage and distribution centers as well as the transportation related environmental impacts.

Commonly, last mile delivery services make use of a hub and spoke model, referring to the warehouses and distribution centers as the hubs, and the last mile delivery as the spoke of this system.

Therefore, it essential to reduce resource use and emissions associated with the construction of these facilities upfront as well as the subsequent transportation process once operational.

Measurabl is a useful software tool that can help encourage data collection and organization within a company’s ESG strategy. 

social in esg last mile logistics real estate

Social goals tend to be more universal across industry sectors as they focus on employee wellness, inclusivity, diversity, and social impact.

Within last mile logistics in particular, factors such as working hours and the optimization of driving routes should be considered to align company goals of fast deliveries to respectful working hours and employee wellness.

Online software tools such as the Brightest Platform are helpful for outlining and monitoring social performance goals within an organization. 

governance in esg last mile logistics real estate

The governance element of an ESG strategy acts as the overarching management body for a company and focuses on increased transparency and integrity.

The documentation and reporting of ESG goals, associated company risks (including climate risks), data privacy, and codes of conduct will all be included in a governance plan.

To help with the organization and monitoring of governance related ESG goals, Workiva is a useful online tool. 

Building-Level Sustainability in Last Mile Logistics

Although transportation is an essential sustainability consideration in the last mile logistic system (see below), the distribution facilities themselves should be designed to optimize carbon footprint early on.

Strategies such as intentional location choices, energy efficiency, water and waste reduction, and sustainable material use are all essential factors in a building’s carbon footprint; we address each of these in turn below.

Location in Last Mile Logistics Real Estate

The location of a distribution facility is one of the most important building factors and is also directly linked to transportation emissions - in this sense, the hub and spoke model has sustainability baked into it from the beginning as ‘spoke’ locations close to city centres help decrease overall travel times and emissions.

Facility sites can also be shared across different companies to pool resources and therefore decrease resource use. In addition, due to the generally large size of distribution centers, it is important when possible, to choose pre-developed or brownfield sites to reduce land use change impacts (“Elements”).

Energy efficiency in Last Mile Logistics Real Estate

Energy efficiency measures in warehouse and storage facilities are largely similar to other building types.

Lighting efficiency can be improved through LED bulbs and the inclusion of sensor and dimming capabilities.

Facilities that require refrigeration for storage should implement more efficient cooling technologies or utilize renewables to power them to avoid excess energy demand.

In addition, efficient machinery and lifts should be incorporated as the transferring of products is common practice and can be a large source of energy use in these facilities. 

On the exterior, the building envelope could incorporate green or cool roof technologies to lower heating demands and energy loads.

Finally, renewables such as wind or solar energy should be used whenever possible to provide a source of green electricity.

Water efficiency in Last Mile Logistics Real Estate

Water efficiency measures should be considered in both interior and exterior aspects of last mile logistics distribution centers. 

In the interior, low-flow water fixtures should be used in all sinks, plumbing, and restroom fixtures to reduce overall use. In addition, features such as dual flush toilets can be used to reduce water demand.

On the exterior, any landscaping used should be regulated by using low-water irrigation strategies. An approach known as xeriscaping incorporates local flora to reduce the need for watering and maintenance.

In addition, in wetter climates, strategies such as rainwater harvesting or capture systems can be used to collect water and divert it to other non-potable water uses on site. 

Waste management in last mile logistics real estate

Waste should be considered in all phases of the last mile logistics building cycle, as ideally all materials that go into a project can be recycled and used again, closing the loop as part of a Circular Economy. Although a perfect closed loop is hard to achieve, the mindset should be used throughout all waste-related decisions.

Waste should be diverted from the landfill whenever possible, and for the case of last-mile logistic facilities, we will focus on the construction and operations phases. 

In the construction phase, there are massive waste reduction opportunities, as a plethora of material is being brought on site and erected each day.

It is essential to avoid the damaging of materials whenever possible to reduce redundancy, and clearly labeled recycle and disposal bins should be placed on site to track and sort waste when it is produced.

Going back even further, when designing distribution facilities, strategies such as modular construction should be employed to further reduce waste throughout the manufacturing and building processes. 

Once occupied, last mile logistic facilities can implement waste reduction strategies through operations and maintenance.

Efficient, sustainable packaging for products should be implemented, and recycling and organic waste bins should be placed throughout the site to encourage employees to divert waste from the landfills. 

Green & Healthy Materials in Last Mile Logistics Real Estate

Both the exterior shell and the interior fit-out materials should be carefully selected for distribution and storage centers.

To increase project sustainability, building materials should be chosen based on factors such as durability, organic content levels, recyclability, and origin location. 

Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) should be completed whenever possible to compare the sustainability traits of each material.

Characteristics such as bio-based materials or materials with high recycled content tend to have lower impacts throughout their life cycle. In addition, sourcing locally is a great way to reduce impacts as transportation emissions are greatly diminished. 

Durability and resiliency are equally as important, although their impacts may not be as apparent until later in a building’s life.

Replacement and repair costs are inevitable as a building ages, and choosing materials that last the test of time and are resilient to natural disasters eliminate emissions and costs associated with excessive repairs. 

Sustainable Transportation in Last Mile Logistics

Transportation is one of the most important, if not the most important factor within the last mile logistics system. Accounting for 27% of global greenhouse gas emissions, transportation is an essential aspect of reducing industry’s carbon emissions.

Within urban centers, delivery vehicles have been documented to account for over half of certain emissions, although they compromise a small fraction of total traffic vehicles. Including more eco-friendly last mile delivery strategies can improve both company sustainability and brand image (Lawton).

In addition, the rise in online shopping and the demand for delivery has skyrocketed from the start of the pandemic. Customers expecting and requesting rapid shipping times increases transportation emissions, making last mile deliveries even more detrimental to the environment.

A group of MIT researchers found that fast shipping increases carbon emissions by as much as 15% and bumps up costs as much as 68% (Lawton).

To combat transportation related emissions in last mile delivery schemes, strategies such as more efficient vehicles, routing, alternative pick-up locations, packaging, and loading can all be beneficial. The use of electric vehicles, or other means of transportation such as bicycles, drones, or even robots can be utilized to reduce emissions.

In addition, finding optimized routes for deliveries can increase efficiency and reduce miles driven, therefore lowering both costs and emissions. UPS Transport, for example, has implemented an “On-Road Integrated and Navigation” (ORION) program, that uses an algorithm to find the best route.

This technology has been found to save them around 10 million gallons of fuel and $400 million per year (Kaplan). Finally, the incorporation of centralized pick-up locations for clients can increase delivery efficiency and reduce emissions. 

Some of the often more overlooked upstream strategies related to transportation are equally important considerations for last mile logistic companies. Packaging goods more efficiently using smaller boxes in more functional shapes can allow for denser packing into trucks, and therefore decrease the number of trips needed (Lawton).

Finally, incorporating a streamlined schedule and timing for delivery vehicles to arrive at distribution sites can reduce idle time and therefore reduce excess emissions. 

Examples of sustainability in last mile logistics real estate

There are several companies connected to the last mile logistics space that have introduced sustainable strategies into their ESG business models and building sites.

Prologis, stands out from the crown as an ideal case study. This San Francisco based real estate investment trust invests in warehouses and has a strong sustainability focus, as explained in their 2020 Sustainability Report. 

They place a large emphasis on sustainable buildings and sustainable building certifications, notably using LEED as the goal for all new developed buildings.

Within their projects, as standard they implement strategies such as solar panels, cool roofs, LED lighting with motion-sensors to reduce power usage while capturing data on how the space is used, recycling collection areas, xeriscaping, and local material procurement. They also provide electric vehicle charging stations on site to encourage the use of electric vehicles.

Innovations in the pipeline at Prologis include low carbon building materials to reduce the embodied carbon footprints of carbon-intensive materials and circular building design to incorporate recycled / recyclable materials that can be disassembled at end-of-life and repurposed.

Their PARKlife concept goes even further by improving services and facilities for their staff via security, gaming areas, employee gyms, walking trails and greenery.

Green building and healthy building certifications for last mile logistics real estate

Prologis have a goal of 100% sustainably certified buildings across their global portfolio, as of year end 2020 they had 171 million sq ft of sustainably certified space with LEED, BREEAM, WELL, CASBEE, DGNB and HQE.

Their Datteln, Germany facility was the first logistics facility in Germany and the second in the EU to achieve WELL Building Standard certification.

Sources

“Elements of a Sustainable Warehouse.” Prologis, 13 July 2021, https://www.prologis.com/what-we-do/resources/elements-of-a-sustainable-warehouse. 

Kaplan, Deborah Abrams. “Ups and Amazon: A Tale of 2 Last-Mile Sustainability Strategies.” Supply Chain Dive, 15 Jan. 2019, https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/last-mile-sustainability-strategies-ups-amazon-disclosure/546005/. 

Lawton, George. “10 Strategies for More Sustainable Last-Mile Delivery.” SearchERP, TechTarget, 13 Aug. 2021, https://www.techtarget.com/searcherp/feature/10-strategies-for-more-sustainable-last-mile-delivery. 

Bamboo in sustainable buildings and interiors

sustainable building materials and interiors

the case for bamboo

Welcome to episode 51 of the Green and Healthy Places podcast, in which we explore the themes of wellbeing and sustainability in real estate and interiors today.

I'm your host, Matt Morley, founder of Biofilico healthy buildings and in this episode i’m talking to my good friend Manuel Diaz Cebrian about his role in creating a new bamboo industry in Mexico.

Manuel was previously a Director at the Mexican Tourism Board in London where he managed the country’s image throughout Europe, repositioning Mexico as a cultural and culinary destination to beat.

He is now Director of Special Projects for Marbella Design Week and is launching into the world of sustainable entrepreneurship by agitating for a Mexican bamboo industry to rival that of nearby Colombia.

We discuss bamboo’s sustainability credentials, it’s various applications in sustainable buildings and interiors, its social impact benefits for indigenous peoples in Mexico, the influence of Bali’s Green School on bamboo-friendly architecture and architecture collectives around the world, and mucho mas.

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Matt Morley

So you're doing really interesting work around sustainable bamboo. And it's one of those materials that has a wide understanding to some extent, but I think there's also a lot of confusion.

So why don't we start with that piece around the varieties of the bamboo as I know that it's basically a grass, but how many different varieties there are and which ones are most relevant for sustainable buildings and interiors in your opinion?

Bamboo as a sustainable building material

Manuel Diaz-Cebrian

Absolutely, I'd have to tell you, first of all, my introduction to bamboo was as a gardening ornamental plant. When I went to Bali for the first time, I was so impressed to see and stay in a hotel that was built completely of bamboo; I didn't know that sustainable bamboo had all this potential to support a structure such as a hotel building for example.

So then I came back to Europe, and especially in Mexico nobody knew that much about the potential of bamboo so I started to look at its business possibilities in Europe and North America where it is less well known.

Varieties of sustainable bamboo material

There are more than 1600 kinds of bamboo. You could imagine that the varieties will differ according to climate, to their kind of soil, altitude, etc. Every single kind of bamboo developed in different climates and characteristics of soil. But they're among these there are possibly seven used widely used in sustainable construction of buildings.

Its strength is how fast it grows, as you mentioned earlier, many people do not really understand its possibilities as a sustainable materials for interiors or buildings, OK maybe you as a healthy building consultant yes you know more than others but actually very few people know that bamboo is not a tree it is a grass.

It can grow one meter in height each week once it is 3-5 years old and it could grow up to 30 meters in height, with a width of 20cm-30cm.

Reducing the carbon footprint of buildings interiors

Matt Morley

So that brings us into the discussion around sustainability and bamboo being a fundamentally sustainable material for buildings and interiors. I know there's also some interesting information around its carbon footprint in particular, we're all I think now finally paying far more attention to the carbon footprint not just of our buildings, but also the interiors, in fact of the interior fit-out - or how much carbon are we embedding into the buildings and interiors that we're producing.

So, how does that work in terms of preventing deforestation, which I guess is to some extent explaining its advantage as a sustainable material right?

Manuel Diaz-Cebrian

So bamboo stores its own water, it’s moving up and down inside the tubes of bamboo basically, its roots are not very deep. Bamboo recovers the nutrients it needs from the soil, it is capturing carbon rather than releasing it into the atmosphere. The carbon can stay locked away for 30-40 years like that. It depends on how you use it and dispose of it.

Reducing deforestation via sustainable materials such as bamboo

Talking about deforestation, obviously no single species is a complete solution to the problem so bamboo can play a role with a multi-crop strategy to ensure biodiversity and regeneration of soil. It is less advisable to have entire jungles dedicated to bamboo alone as a mono-crop strategy.

Primarily, bamboo is going to give the soil the nutrients it needs for healthy development and regeneration. Bamboo is a tool to help us regenerate our forests in an intelligent way, it ha a role to play in that process.

I know we had to stop the forest in the forest state in our jungles and wood, but there's already a lot of plant that has been damaged. And bamboo comes as a resource to regenerate those areas that have been already destroyed.

Growing sustainable bamboo materials around the world

Matt Morley

Can bamboo only play that role in certain geographies and latitudes around the world? What are its limitations in terms of locations?

Manuel Diaz-Cebrian

It all depends on the altitude in the soil, from the climate on the humidity. Obviously the Chinese and the Asians developed it most aggressively and bamboo is a native plant from that area but it is also found in Latin America for example, as well as Indonesia of course.

In Japan, bamboo is considered a very fine material while in China it is less prestigious, almost a symbol of poverty because it was so readily available.

Now we know that sustainable bamboo can also be grown in Mexico, it’s just a matter of culture, learnign how to care for it, harvest it, treat it and turn it into sustainable building and interior products.

For example bamboo is often treated with borax to prevent bacteria killing the bamboo. It’s a successful treatment that may involve submerging the bamboo in borax for instance.

Examples of bamboo in sustainable interiors

The applications of bamboo are what we can do with it in real estate and interiors, so it can be a materials such as flooring and panels. It can be used as a tubular product for construction as in that format it has the highest capacity for being a load-bearing material in structures.

So, that gives the bamboo a certain strength, because actually in the industry of the construction or index industries, we produce them, they are the metal, tubular things because they the tubular form resist a lot of impact and way bamboo has this form and strain by nature.

And you can see this example in Bali and many in many pavilions of examples from Belize is this very well known Colombian architect, he's been actually building up pavilions and churches of bamboo in our in his natural form Joseph tubular that you will have seen and supported with engineering techniques.

uses of bamboo for architects and interior designers

Matt Morley

So you mentioned the the same tubular shape that provides inherent strength to the material. So when you in terms of those characteristics, when you're talking to architects, when you're talking to designers, what characteristics are of most relevance?

What are the things that that can ultimately make it so useful? And how is it applied in different ways not just in a tubular form but I know I've seen it come through and flooring into effectively tiles so you get into flooring tiles as an alternative to wood.

Manuel Diaz-Cebrian

The possibilities are endless! I'm gonna give you a lovely example - you could produce fabrics you could produce food, you could produce jewellery, even juices and food. So really you could use the whole thing in different ways. to produce fabric is very popular now in India, the number one country producing bamboo textiles.

Bamboo is has a great future because it's durability number one and number two the hardness and number three the rapid growth. Those three factors are the most important factors to consider all the time. It can be used in kitchens, in flooring both indoors and outdoors. Once you engineer bamboo you can create different textures, colors, and usages.

For example, there is a hotel in in the Netherlands in Amsterdam called Hotel Jakarta mainly made from bamboo combined with other woods.

Why is important for the architects or the people in the construction industry to use bamboo. Well, first of all, for the three characteristic as I mentioned earlier, there's durability, strength and agility and obviously the hardness but the other one is just to support the sustainability of this resource. The more demand, the more we can support a boom in bamboo.

What is preventing bamboo from becoming a more widely used sustainable material?

The problem we have is that people are still very non aware of the opportunity for bamboo. I’m involved in creating a network of growers of bamboo in Mexico, for example. Obviously, compared to Asia, in Latin America, the industry for bamboo is very small. But this is more because we didn't know the potential, or how amazingly profitable it could be.

Because obviously, we didn't know how to use it or what to do with it as a sustainable material. We want people to learn how to take advantage of the durability of the material and the demand for it in treated form. That is what' is missing at the moment in Mexico.

Matt Morley

So I think that's what I find so interesting about what you're working on here, this project of effectively creating or reinventing the bamboo industry for a country like Mexico. So as I see it, you've got effectively three levels, right you have the producers, you have the crops, you need the space, you need the fields, you need the farmers to produce it and look after it.

Then there's the processing / treatment piece in the middle. And then a final piece, which is around the sales and communication and the distribution of where it goes to the end consumers which we've just covered some that bit in the middle, between the growers, and those who purchase the refined product. What does that what does that look like?

Or what could that look like in Mexico who's doing that refinement of the raw material and turning it into a product? Or how could that look in a in a new industry in Mexico?

Manuel Diaz-Cebrian

Let me go back to something as important mentioned, John Hardy created the Green School, which is the School of Bamboo in Bali years ago. He fell in love with bamboo. And they discover all the boundaries of this material. And then through the years, they created the Green School of bamboo in order to educate people on its potential. So it started being a school for children, and then became a school for architects.

John's Hardy daughter is a famous architect now too, she's the one that came back to the roots of her father, now she's one of the most popular and famous architects focused on bamboo buildings construction. The Green School has educated a lot of architects worldwide.

Interestingly, these architects and their word of mouth has created a lot of small collaborative groups that are now dedicating their lives to work and teach people what to do with bamboo. why it was important to harvest to harvest it, why where you can do it, how you could go with the bamboo not necessarily being rich, but actually how do you use it.

There is a famous architect in Mexico, she is working on a program that is started in Thailand about how to build your own house using bamboo? How incredible is that - teaching people to grow bamboo and build their own house with the material they have grown.

Social impact and sustainable bamboo

One of the reasons I’m getting into the bamboo industry in Mexico is because obviously the countryside in Mexico, Latin America is kind of cool. So bamboo is certain areas that are tropical, have been achieved those, they the coffee industry, I know the industry has really damaged our jungles and on our land tremendously so integrating bamboo into the selection of natural resources that you could use in a particular habitat partially resolves that issue rather than damaging the soil further.

So the whole idea is for indigenous people get a benefit from harvesting the bamboo, make the main number more profitable. And also not only for the construction, or use it as well as decoration items, for chairs, for lamps, all the stuff in red to get the added value of the bamboo. Because not everything is used on the construction, some leftovers are thrown away. The whole idea is to teach people how to take the benefit from the whole bamboo stem.

Colombia is the most advanced country already in this industry as they started years ago but Mexico has great potential too!

How are you helping to create a sustainable bamboo industry in Mexico?

First of all, you got to create the union of producers of bamboo, because they're kind of separated at the moment, it’s all very disparate and spread out, nothing brings them together into an industry yetto unify a price point, control quality, how it is treated, promote this new sustainable building interior resource to local architects and interior designers, etc.

Matt Morley

Really appreciate how you've described that kind of playmaking role of putting it together piecing the different elements together so that you create what is hopefully going to be a long term project around a sustainable alternative to building with less and less sustainable building materials.

So I think it's got so much merit if if someone wants to read further into the subject if they want to explore the topic a bit deeper. Is there what's uh, is there a recommended resource? Or where would you say we could go to kind of learn a bit more?

Manuel Diaz-Cebrian

Well, I have to tell you actually, I've been researching bamboo, I mean, ideally, in a professional way for the last few years. Because as you know, I'm the director of special projects for Marbella Design.

We gave a talk two years ago to architects and designers in Marbella and we started educating our guests about bamboo there. Many did not know the roof of the airport terminal at Madrid Barajas is made of bamboo for example!

I'm going to Paris in two hours just to see a pavilion that Simon Velez has built made of bamboo. So it's more and more and more that you're seeing this.

Last year, I invited Dr. Pablo van der Lugt to speak at Marbella Design Week, author of the book called ‘Booming Bamboo’ that I recommend to architects and interior designers interested in sustainable interiors or building construction. This is something of a bible in fact. I give a copy to every single person I meet who wants to learn more about the wonders of bamboo!

Show notes:

https://www.greenschool.org/

https://hoteljakarta.com/

https://designweekmarbella.com/en/home/

https://boomingbamboo.com/

Embodied Carbon in sustainable Real Estate ESG

What is Embodied Carbon in Sustainable Real Estate Developments?

In the context of sustainable buildings and interiors, embodied carbon is essentially a question of materials.

Unlike ‘operational carbon’ or indeed ‘building energy efficiency’, embodied carbon accounts for the cumulative impact of building materials from extraction all the way through to construction; including transportation, manufacturing, and installation. 

The embodied carbon of a given material is therefore the amount of carbon emissions involved in first producing it and ultimately deploying it in a construction project.

Embodied carbon impacts from building and infrastructure projects have been estimated to account for 23% of global carbon emissions (McConnell, Mithun). 

In general terms, we can say that operational energy use has improved considerably as a result of sustainable green building principles, yet embodied carbon has lagged behind, remaining relatively constant over time despite the efforts of real estate sustainability consultants! 

Due to the negative impacts of embodied carbon, and its inherent relationship with sustainable material procurement policies, it is an area of particular interest for sustainable building and interior consultants, such as ourselves.

How to reduce embodied carbon in sustainable real estate development?

The bulk of the opportunities come in the early phases (pre-design and design) of a real estate development project as a small number of construction material choices will carry massive weight in the final embodied carbon status of the building. 

For this reason, project teams need to align behind sustainability objectives early on if they want to avoid playing catch-up.

Taking a step back further, developing a Sustainability Plan with objectives and priorities as early as possible, even doing so in broad principles for the development company as a whole in order to have an initial blueprint to apply as each new development deals comes online.

How to determine embodied carbon in building materials?

Completing Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) is the main strategy to determine embodied carbon for materials or projects. Embodied carbon can be reduced by limiting material use, choosing low-carbon solutions, decreasing transportation related emissions, and reusing and recycling materials whenever possible.

Reduce Material Use in Sustainable Real Estate Development

An important strategy to reduce a real estate development project’s embodied carbon is to optimize and reduce overall material use. Sounds simple, perhaps deceptively so.

One major way to do this is to identify opportunities to use or repurpose existing buildings rather than demolishing or developing Greenfield sites. 

Real estate projects designed with adaptive reuse in mind effectively plan ahead for this eventuality, baking in flexibility for future owners or developers to facilitate the process of repurposing old buildings or structures. 

Demolition and construction is by comparison extremely carbon intensive, as it requires both material disposal and the extraction of new resources.

In addition, looking for efficiencies in the volume of certain structural materials used in a redevelopment or construction project will also diminish embodied carbon. 

For example, research has shown that on average, the quantity of structural steel used in buildings can be up to two times the necessary amount from an engineering perspective, greatly increasing embodied carbon (Isaac). 

Ensuring that material use is optimized and using stronger, more efficient materials will mean less volume overall.

In addition, the use of more efficient building strategies such as modular construction reduces waste and increases the sustainability of the project. 

Other sustainable design decisions such as reducing the need for / specification of finish materials in favor of simply leaving certain elements of the building structure exposed also decreases overall material use, lowering a project’s embodied carbon and helping it achieve its sustainability objectives whilst also adding an appealing aesthetic dimension. 

Summary - Material Optimization and Reduction Strategies

• Use and repurpose existing buildings

• Optimize structural framing by volume and materiality

• Reduce material volume through efficient design choices

• Implement modular construction methodologies

Using Low-Carbon Materials in Sustainable Real Estate Development

In any sustainable development project, it is likely that there will need to be some integration of new materials. Materials should therefore be selected based on the lowest feasible embodied carbon impact, commonly determined through the completion of LCAs. 

LCAs consider the amount of carbon (and often other emissions) required to take a material through its entire lifecycle—from extraction all the way through to disposal. These analyses are invaluable to compare a project’s material options and the associated embodied carbon. 

Whenever possible, select sustainable materials that have been manufactured using comparatively less energy or using renewable energy. Options with high recycled content, those that are bio-based and rapidly renewable will also help achieve sustainability targets, especially if they can also be reused at their end of life (McConnell, Greenbuild). 

Healthy building materials such as cross-laminated timber (CLT), bamboo, cork, hemp, straw, sheep wool, and even mycelium are bio-based, carbon-sequestering options that can greatly reduce a project’s embodied carbon as part of a real estate sustainability strategy for example (“Whole Building”).

In addition, when choosing materials, it is important to consider their durability, specifically when calculated alongside local climate and weather patterns. It is essential to understand how different materials react to heat or moisture, for example, to make smart choices that will stand the test of time and not need replacing within a few years. 

The more durable the material in the specific climatic conditions of the project location the less materials will be needed in future for upkeep and replacement, therefore reducing the risk of provoking additional resource extraction later on (“Whole Building”).

Sustainable interiors and embodied carbon

Most embodied carbon reduction efforts have been focused on significant structural elements such as concrete or steel, which require energy intensive processes and are often used in large quantities. 

However, as substitutes such as CLT become more accessible, consideration for the embodied carbon of a sustainable interior also becomes more relevant. 

Common interior finish materials such as acoustic ceilings, gypsum wall boards, and nylon carpeting can have a considerable impact on a project’s embodied carbon if not assessed from a sustainability perspective as early on as possible in order to account for any budgetary adjustments they might require (McConnell, Mithun). 

Summary: Low-carbon sustainable building and interiors material strategies

• Reduce fossil fuel energy required for extraction and manufacturing

• Choose those that contain high recycled content

• Bio-based and carbon sequestering resources

• Prioritize rapidly renewable materials

• Consider climate-specific durability of materials

Reducing Transportation Emissions in Sustainable Buildings and Interiors

When considering a material’s embodied carbon and its life cycle, transportation emissions can also have a considerable impact meaning we need to look into material supply chains, aim to source locally or regionally, carefully plan construction material deliveries to limit wastage, and choose low-emission transport options whenever possible. 

Local sustainable materials 

Select materials that are produced from a low carbon system, both through their manufacturing and transportation. The use of local, sustainable materials will greatly reduce transportation distances and emissions, so it is important to understand what is available within an acceptable radius of your project (“Whole Building”).

Sustainable Transportation of materials

In addition, by reducing the number of site deliveries through close coordination of  manufacturing and construction timelines we avoid the delivery of materials at inefficient times that in turn can cause damage and unnecessary waste. 

Efficient alignment of transportation with project timelines in this way is an essential step to reduce the embodied carbon of a building project (Best Practice).

Finally, whenever possible choose transport options that create the lowest carbon emissions, such as train or barge, when available (“Whole Building”).

Low-Carbon Sustainable Building Transportation Strategies

• Choose materials with a low-carbon supply chain

• Source locally

• Coordinate transport with project timelines

• Utilize low-carbon transportation options

Reuse & Recycle Materials

The implementation of salvaged, reused, and recycled materials greatly reduces embodied carbon as it eliminates the need to extract and manufacture new resources. Salvaged materials only involve emissions related to transportation and refabrication, greatly cutting a sustainable building’s overall embodied carbon (“Salvaged Materials”). 

Hand-in-hand with the use of salvaged materials comes deconstruction, the process of carefully disassembling a building to save its materials rather than the more common demolition strategy. Examples of easily salvageable materials include brick and wood, as well as steel and precast concrete (“Salvaged Materials”).

If materials cannot be salvaged, choose options that contain high recycled content. Paper, plastic, and glass products are increasingly common in building materials and provide greener options for projects aiming to lower their embodied carbon. 

Sustainable Building Material Reuse Strategies

• Salvage materials from previous builds

• Implement deconstruction

• Utilize materials with high recycled content

Helpful Embodied Carbon Tools 

With all of these strategies, it is imperative to first set project carbon goals. As with all sustainable building projects, the use of benchmarking is essential to determine what has been done before and what is plausible for any given project. Within each development, stakeholders involved in the design and construction process will benefit of how their role can positive (or negatively) impact the embodied carbon of the project (“Whole Building”). 

Early on in the design process, various tools can be used by team members to determine the potential carbon outputs. For example, the programs Revit and Tally can work together to store information about material quantities and qualities to pre-form LCAs and determine the carbon impacts of building materials. Tally currently contains more structural, heavy material data but is moving towards containing more interior material information such as for furniture and casework. 

When considering which materials to utilize, look for those with Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) - effectively a way of communicating information on a material’s environmental impact. This information can be found online in places such as the EPD library. In addition, the Carbon Smart Materials Palette provides information on high and low impact materials over their life cycles. 

Finally, there are several free carbon calculators that can be used to compare material options. EC3 is one of the most common in the industry, allowing users to compare construction materials and review material EPDs.

Pathfinder meanwhile is a carbon calculator that focuses more on landscaping elements, even including estimates for natural features such as trees and greenery.  

How to Reach Embodied Carbon Goals for a sustainable building

• Set embodied carbon goals early on in the design timeline

• Ensure collaboration across project team, aligned behind sustainable building interior strategies

• Incorporate design and LCA tools (Revit and Tally) to track data on embodied carbon in materials

• Use online resources or consultants to identify low-carbon material solutions

• Use online carbon calculators for complete transparency

Sources

“ Best Practice Guide to Improving Waste Management on Construction Sites.” Resource Efficient Scotland, Scotland. 

Isaac, Philip, and Jonny Hawkshaw. Elsevier, 2020, Scaling Low-Carbon Construction Materials, thestructuralengineer.org. Accessed 5 May 2022. 

McConnell, Claire, et al. “A Year of Embodied Carbon.” Mithun, 5 Nov. 2021, https://mithun.com/2021/11/05/a-year-of-embodied-carbon/  

McConnell, Claire. “Greenbuild.” Greenbuild, Greenbuild International Conference & Expo, 22 Sept. 2021, https://informaconnect.com/greenbuild/agenda-2021/ Accessed 5 May 2022. 

“Salvaged Materials.” SE2050, SE 2050, https://se2050.org/resources-overview/strategies/salvaged-materials/  

“Whole Building Approaches to Emissions Reductions.” Carbon Smart Materials Palette, Architecture 2030 - Enfold WordPress , https://materialspalette.org/whole-building/

Waste Management in Green & Healthy Buildings & Interiors

Waste Management 

Around half of the world’s raw materials go into construction, and a third of the world’s waste is produced through the industry (Miller), making waste reduction and waste management a crucial contributor to reducing landfill and keeping materials in use (ref: the circular economy).

Due to the sheer scale of this impact, strategies of material use reduction, reuse, and recycling are key in all phases of a building project, from the design and pre-construction phase, into construction, in-use and operations phases, as well as the end-of-life phase.

In addition, considering the entire life cycle of raw material extraction, production, and waste is key for an Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) real estate strategy. 

The main goals in order of importance for each of these phases would first be to reduce the total amount of waste produced, then to reuse materials that would otherwise be considered waste, and finally to implement waste disposal management through strategies such as recycling, when necessary.

Various strategies can be implemented to reach these goals depending on the building’s phase of life. 

Design & Pre-construction Phase

The design phase is often overlooked when considering waste management, although it has great potential to affect the production of waste throughout the life cycle of the building.

The way a building is designed is the most important factor for how it will function and change in the future. Designing for adaptability, efficient material use, and including recycling opportunities are all key strategies that have the potential to reduce waste production further along the life cycle. 

When considering the life cycle of a building, one way to extend its useful life is to design for adaptability. This means that if the use of the building changes, the structure can be more easily shifted towards another use, therefore avoiding the demolition and reconstruction process, and reducing opportunities for waste production.

For example, a London construction for the 2012 Olympics was designed so that after the games, the used buildings were redesigned for affordable local homes, greatly reducing waste production (Miller). 

In addition, the amount and type of materials used should be considered in the design phase to avoid excess waste created at end of life. Attention to different construction possibilities and the recyclability of materials have the potential to reduce initial material use and increase opportunities for reuse.

This therefore reduces waste production throughout the life cycle of the building. Essentially, the design phase should be used for planning and accounting for all waste-producing activities throughout the building’s life cycle and include management strategies to reduce this waste. 

Construction Phase

In conjunction with the design phase, the construction phase has the potential to reduce large amounts of waste if properly managed. Construction projects should always aim to reduce waste production, and when that is not possible, find was to reuse materials on site and recycle any materials that cannot be used.

A site waste management plan should be employed to monitor all construction activities and optimize waste reductions and reuse opportunities (Best Practice).

Firstly, construction that occurs off-site such as modular construction can be employed, which removes a lot of potential waste problems. In a more controlled environment, modular construction allows for better management of waste, decreases material use, and increases disposal and recycling opportunities.

Off-site construction in general provides greater control, and avoidance of onsite disorganization or weather issues that can lead to material damage. 

On any construction site, the delivery of materials at improper times can cause excess waste. To reduce material deliveries and damages, it is beneficial to bring materials on site ‘just-in-time’ to better align with construction project stages.

This strategy avoids excess materials and opportunities for material damage, which will create unusable materials and therefore create additional waste. Planning the timing of material deliveries and spaces to store materials when not in use is very important in the construction phase of a building (Best Practice).

In addition, when on the construction site it is important to designate areas where waste should be collected when produced and to consider where to place recycling bins or other waste containers on site to make them easily accessible for workers so that waste is properly collected and sorted.

Towards the end of the construction phase, as green building consultants we aim to ensure the proper segregation of materials and designate those that can be reused or recycled in other projects. In addition, to ensure optimized waste management, the training of workers and staff on the construction site is essential. (Best Practice).

In Use / Operations Phase

The in-use phase of the building is an equally important phase for monitoring and reducing waste production. After encouraging building occupants and those operating within a space to reduce waste sent to the landfill, it is essential that there is ample space to provide the segregation and storage of waste when it is accumulated within the building.

Equally, we advise the tracking of waste produced within the building and compare it to benchmarks to ensure that appropriate amounts are diverted from landfills.

To encourage building occupants to produce less waste, strategies such as using signage and providing products that create minimal to no waste are beneficial. Clear signage that encourages the segregation of waste in bins will encourage occupants to participate in recycling practices.

If, for example, the building contains a cafeteria or dining space, food and drink should be made available with minimal or recyclable materials, to reduce waste after use. 

Storage for recycling should be easily accessible to building occupants and include options for paper, glass, plastics, and metals. In addition, composting opportunities should be provided as well as disposal locations for waste such as batteries and other electronics (LEED).

These locations should be easily visible and clearly marked to encourage building occupant use. Once collected on site, it is essential that there are processes in place that bring the segregated waste off site to facilities if not available on site (BREEAM). 

In the design phase, it is important to consider the potential volume of waste produced within the building based on project type and traffic.

The number of bins available should equate to predicted daily and weekly waste production amounts. In the use phase, it is important to monitor and report the amount of waste produced regularly, to ensure the appropriate amount of storage and collection containers (BREEAM).

Also, with waste production and benchmarking information, decisions about the amount of management needed for collecting, storing, and transporting waste off-site can be clarified.

Overall, the goal of waste management in the use phase of a building is to divert as much waste as possible from the landfill.

This is first done through the encouragement of behavioral change to reduce waste production from the occupant side, and then provide locations to sort and recycle waste when produced. When the waste is collected and stored by trained staff, it should be measured to optimize building waste organization and to analyze for further reduction opportunities. 

End of Life Phase

Closely connected to the design and construction phases of the building, the end-of-life phase has the potential to greatly reduce the amount of waste produced from the construction industry. If the building was constructed with adaptability in the design phase, then at end of life, the demolition process is not completely necessary. Also, what is taken apart at end of life should be recycled, reused, or salvaged for another use whenever possible to reduce waste in landfills.

Ideally, the life of the building is extended as much as possible and there is not a need to demolish a structure once it's built. When possible, the building should be refurbished for an alternative use or extended horizontally or vertically if needed, to avoid the need of starting over (BREEAM). If the building can be renovated instead of torn down, the waste produced is immensely reduced.

When demolition is the outcome, salvaging and recycling any material possible is essential to optimize waste reduction. Ideally a closed loop recycling process is utilized, meaning that materials used within the building can be recycled and remanufactured into the same or similar product for another building or project.

In some cases, materials can even be reused on site for a new application in the new construction when applicable. Finally, there are options to return materials to the original supplier to recycle, reuse, and recover the materials.

In the demolition process a term known as deconstruction can be utilized to further salvage materials from the building site and significantly reduce waste production.

Deconstruction involves the process of carefully dismantling a building rather than demolishing it without care, which greatly increases the potential for material reuse and reduces waste from landfills (Sustainable).

Management / ESG Compilation Phase

From an ESG perspective, waste management and reduction are an essential part of a building’s useful life. When considering the whole life cycle of a building, there are numerous opportunities to create large impacts on waste reductions, and therefore the environmental impacts of a project.

It is essential to consider waste in every phase of a project and include plans and management goals from the initiation of a build.

From the environmental side of the real estate ESG strategy, aka the “E” part of ESG, waste cannot be overlooked. Ideally a building or project contributes to the concept of a circular economy through the lens of waste.

Although a fully closed loop is difficult to achieve with any man-made building or system, considering ways to close the material loop and therefore eliminate waste is a key mindset. 

The reduction of raw material extraction and waste production through strategies such as thoughtful design, smart construction strategies, proper management of waste in the in-use phase, as well as reducing waste at the end of a building’s life are essential.

A project’s waste management plan and ESG strategy go hand in hand – both essential to reducing the environmental impact of the built environment, a duty of those of us operating within the building industry. 

Effective waste management is crucial in the construction industry. Around half of the world’s raw materials go into construction projects, and the industry produces a third of the world’s waste (Miller). This highlights the importance of waste reduction and management in minimizing landfill use and maintaining material circulation within the circular economy. Inefficient waste management can have significant financial and environmental implications.

The Role of Construction Companies

Construction companies play a vital role in waste management by:

• Engaging resource management companies

• Obtaining quotations for construction waste

• Collaborating with waste management stakeholders to promote sustainable waste disposal practices

On-Site Waste Management

Proper construction waste management on construction sites involves:

• Designating areas for waste collection and recycling

• Implementing strategies for reducing, reusing, and recycling materials

• Minimizing hazardous waste generation

Lifecycle Waste Management Strategies

Strategies for material use reduction, reuse, and recycling are key in all phases of a building project:

1. Design and Pre-Construction Phase

2. Construction Phase

3. In-Use and Operations Phase

4. End-of-Life Phase

Implementing these strategies effectively helps significantly reduce waste throughout the lifecycle of a building.

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Considerations

Considering the entire lifecycle of raw material extraction, production, and waste is essential for an ESG real estate strategy. Managing organic waste is also crucial as it impacts green building concepts and helps mitigate environmental issues like methane generation.

Waste Management Goals and Priorities

The main goals in order of importance for each phase of a building’s lifecycle are:

1. Reduce the total amount of waste produced

2. Reuse materials that would otherwise be considered waste

3. Recycle materials when necessary

Sustainable Building Practices

Various strategies can be implemented depending on the building’s phase of life. Emphasizing resource efficiency and the use of sustainable materials in green building projects is critical. Sustainable building practices ensure environmentally responsible and resource-efficient processes throughout the building’s lifecycle.

Importance of Reducing Energy Consumption

Reducing energy consumption is also a vital part of holistic and sustainable waste management practices. This includes using energy-efficient processes and materials to minimize the environmental impact of construction projects.

Modular Construction and Material Reuse

Adopting modular construction can significantly reduce waste and improve efficiency. This approach, along with reusing materials, supports sustainable building practices and reduces the negative impacts of traditional construction methods.

Effective waste management in the construction industry is essential for promoting sustainability and reducing environmental impact. By implementing strategies for waste reduction, reuse, and recycling, construction companies can contribute to healthier interior designs and greener building practices.

Sources

“ Best Practice Guide to Improving Waste Management on Construction Sites.” Resource Efficient Scotland, Scotland. 

Miller, Norman. “The Industry Creating a Third of the World's Waste.” BBC Future, BBC, https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20211215-the-buildings-made-from-rubbish. 

“Sustainable Management of Construction and Demolition Materials.” EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, https://www.epa.gov/smm/sustainable-management-construction-and-demolition-materials. 

BREEAM Certification System

LEED Certification System

a guide to real estate ESG management software

Real estate Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) reporting is becoming the norm for real estate developers and funds as societal pressure combines with investor pressure from above to nudge the industry towards a Triple Bottom Line position.

As real estate ESG consultants annual reporting is an obligatory piece of the puzzle, although it should be seen as a way to summarize and review the work done, rather than it becoming the focus of the work - a subtle but important difference!

Much of ESG is now about producing quality data and management of that data is fundamental, no longer can a spreadsheet do this job for us effectively, especially not for real estate portfolios with multiple, fully operational buildings. By setting up the necessary software early on in the ESG journey, a real estate developer sets themselves up for success in properly capturing, managing, and eventually disclosing ESG data.

ESG software helps us to track, visualize and monitor progress in real time throughout the year and then to transparently communicate to customers and investors the sustainability work delivered at the end of the year too. This process of collecting and analyzing data on an ongoing basis ensures alignment with the appropriate policies and ESG frameworks.

Depending on a real estate developer’s specific requirements, it can be difficult to find one single piece of ESG software that does everything we need, so here is a review of the major players right now.

Greenstone - ESG

Greenstone is a sustainability reporting software that enables organizations to more easily manage their ESG data and ESG reports. It’s primarily about data collection and data management, allowing the ESG team or external ESG Consultants to focus more on reporting, analysis and decision-making. Greenstone’s software and support services include modules concerning the environment, frameworks, and health and safety.

The Greenstone Environment module helps process environmental data, track consumption and carbon emissions, and manage and communicate this data.

The Greenstone Frameworks module ensures that clients meet the requirements of various reporting frameworks such as CDP, SASB, GRI Standards, TCFD, UNGC, and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

The Greenstone Health and Safety module helps organizations to collect and analyze  incident data and manage reporting (Greenstone). 

https://www.greenstoneplus.com/

Sustain.Life – Environment

Sustain.Life focuses specifically on ways to track, reduce, and manage carbon emissions and footprint. Additionally, the platform aligns this process with current certifications and standards to prepare for third-party assessments. The software aims to simplify the collection and management of data in one place, facilitating collaboration in the process.

Sustain.Life first aids in the measurement of greenhouse gas emissions, then provides step-by-step guides for emission reduction strategies, and finally provides ways to offset unavoidable emissions. The carbon footprint is calculated through Sustain.Life’s carbon calculator using scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions, meaning it considers all levels of a business’s emission behaviors.

Once the footprint is calculated, the software provides a sustainability plan based on the organizations budget, time, and climate impact. Finally, there are offset opportunities provided on the platform, allowing users to offset emissions from building users on an automatic monthly basis (“Sustainability”). 

https://www.sustain.life/

Brightest - Social 

Brightest, another big player in ESG, Social Impact and Sustainability software, aims to increase efficiency in collecting, managing, and reporting data. Its particular USP however is around the social impact component, at least for now.

Brightest helps organizations collect data on environmental accounting assets, supply chain, energy and resources, and employees, teams and departments through stakeholder surveys, utility and invoice analyses, and life cycle analyses.

Once collected, data can be transferred to the Brightest ESG and sustainability dashboard. There, emission targets are tracked, carbon accounting is regulated, social impact and community characteristics are noted, and action plans are recommended based on the available data. As data accumulates the software can then start to aid further with reporting and disclosure.

https://www.brightest.io/

Workiva - Governance

Workiva’s platform enables a simpler ESG reporting process through data management, the provision of reporting templates, and a single location for policy management. This software helps answer the ESG reporting questions of: who needs to be involved, what data should be included, and how can it be consolidated efficiently?

Workiva provides a platform to store data, create custom data sets and calculations, and format that data for reporting. Much of this process is automated. In addition, the platform allows for easier collaboration through simplified task management and progress tracking.

A master index of policies makes it easy to track and manage content for policies, standards, and other ESG guidelines. This allows ESG teams to keep all relevant ESG policies and documents in a single location.

https://www.workiva.com/solutions/esg-reporting

Measurabl – Real Estate ESG

Measurabl is arguably the most widely recognized ESG data management software in commercial real estate right now. The tool was designed specifically for real estate and is entirely data driven. It automates and consolidates much of the ESG processes, including ways to set targets, track performance, use benchmarks, and create reports. 

This platform helps measure data such as electricity, water, fuel, and waste usage as well as tracking sustainability targets. In addition, it helps users manage social and governance documents, and keep track of green building certifications and annual reporting frameworks.

https://www.measurabl.com/

Sources

Brightest. “Simplify Social Impact, Sustainability and ESG.” Brightest, https://www.brightest.io/  

“ESG Reporting.” Workiva, https://www.workiva.com/solutions/esg-reporting  

Greenstone. “Sustainability, Supply Chain and ESG Software Solutions.” Greenstone, https://www.greenstoneplus.com/

“Real Estate ESG.” Measurabl, 12 Apr. 2022, https://www.measurabl.com/

“Sustainability Management Software.” Sustain.Life – Sustainability Management Software, https://www.sustain.life/  

https://gresb.com/nl-en/

Operating Smart, green & Healthy Buildings

air quality / water metering / energy metering / waste management / cleaning / biophilia / thermal comfort

As the shift towards green and healthy buildings continues and sign-ups for building certifications such as LEED and WELL rises, it is equally important for real estate developers with an eye on ESG to dive deeper into building performance during the operations phase. For those holding onto and managing an asset in the medium to long-term, the journey does not stop once construction and fit-out are complete, quite the opposite.

As there is often a considerable gap between intended building performance and actual, ongoing building performance, a ‘commissioning process’ upon completion followed by an enhanced healthy buildings facilities management plan are the solution.

Smart building monitoring, which includes strategies such as air quality management, energy and water metering, and thermal comfort monitoring is a key factor in facilities management of a healthy building or a healthy co-working office for example.

With the latest real time sensors (e.g. Kaiterra and Awair) providing high quality, 24/7 quantitative data for analysis in the cloud combined with qualitative occupant feedback through regular surveys and pattern analysis of registered complaints, building efficiency and occupant comfort can increase. 

In addition, signage and educational prompts (a.k.a ‘healthy nudges’), enhanced green cleaning protocols, landscaping and greenery maintenance, as well as wellness programs for building occupants covering both physical activity and mental wellbeing are important factors to maintain in a smart, healthy building. This article explores the above in more detail so let’s jump in!

Air Quality Management in healthy buildings

Enhanced indoor air quality is vital to optimal occupant health, and an air quality plan needs to be implemented in both the pre-occupancy and occupancy phases of the building. Subsequently, as both indoor and outdoor air quality can fluctuate, live monitoring and tracking is necessary to ensure healthy indoor air quality levels and catch any issues as and when they arise. 

In the construction phase, an excess of dust and particles have the potential to accumulate indoors and compromise air quality in the later occupancy phase if not properly managed. It is essential to have an air quality management plan for the construction phase such as sealing air ducts, storing absorptive interior materials separate from the construction area, using temporary barriers to isolate working environments, and replacing filters before occupancy. 

In the occupancy phase, when the building is complete and occupants are using the interior spaces, air quality management combine with real time sensor monitoring becomes essential for occupant comfort.

Sensors should be placed strategically around the building at approximately head height to measure temperature, humidity, CO, CO2, PM2.5, PM10 and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). For more detail on. this see the RESET AIR standard in particular. For more on this see our article on RESET AIR here.

In addition, hazards such as mold and indoor smoking have to be tightly controlled to avoid additional negative influences on air quality. 

Water Metering in Smart, Green & Healthy Buildings

Both energy and water use should be tracked to ensure that the building is operating at the optimal level. Monitoring green building water use can not only provide information about how much water is being used in a green building but also guide improvements or highlight potential problems. 

Water monitoring should include both regulating and tracking the amount used, as well as maintaining proper drinking water quality to ensure building occupant health.

Permanent water meters should be installed to measure total water use and should be available in monthly and annual blocks to provide more specific information and monitor efficiency. In addition, leak detection systems should be installed and regularly checked to avoid potential problems and water overuse.

Finally, water should be regularly checked for contaminants, and drinking water quality factors such as pH, turbidity, and chlorine levels should be regulated to ensure safe consumption for occupants. 

Energy Metering in Smart, Green & Healthy Buildings

Green building energy efficiency should also be tracked within the building, a very important operational building factor that can vary greatly if not monitored.

Sub-meters should be installed to track energy on both the building level and system levels to identify opportunities for energy savings. For the most effective data, the systems should report hourly, daily, monthly, and annual energy use separated by energy type and source. In addition, the information should be readily available to facilities management teams so that changes can be made if needed, and any abnormal activity can be quickly detected. 

Building Energy Management Systems (BEMS) and Automatic Reading Systems (AMR) are examples of common energy monitoring and management systems. With the incorporation of energy tracking systems, the data can be used to make improvements in the future and provide insight into building performance. 

waste management in healthy buildings

In line with US Green Building Council LEED Operations + Maintenance guidelines, we recommend integrating into a workplace floor plan upfront a storage location for recyclable materials such as mixed paper, glass, plastics and metals, with safe storage areas for batteries.

Monitoring for Thermal Comfort in Healthy Buildings

Thermal comfort tends to be the factor with the highest number of complaints from building occupants as it is an immediate, visceral and in many ways subjective matter.

Numerous studies have proven correlation between building temperature and employee wellness and comfort, making thermal comfort a vital building characteristic to monitor, not least because of enduring sexism in how building temperatures are set - men in suits and ties and always going to have a different opinion on indoor temperature than any female not in a full trouser suit.

The way forward in smart building terms is, eventually, to offer greater autonomy over thermal controls within the building to its occupants. Factors such as outdoor temperature, ventilation rates, and indoor occupancy density all have the potential to affect perceived thermal comfort. 

As with other smart building systems, sensors should be placed intentionally to regulate indoor air temperatures and gauge if any unexpected deviations occur. These sensors can provide feedback to building managers and inform changes when necessary. 

The sensors provide little insight on their own however, only when coupled with occupant preferences and surveys, the power of information and data can be applied to provide optimal thermal comfort. On this basis, facilities management teams need to see complaints not as problems but as valuable data!

Currently, standards designate that 80% of building occupants should be considered comfortable to achieve acceptable thermal comfort levels (WELL). In order to reach and maintain this goal, building occupants should be regularly surveyed to gauge comfort levels. 

With information collected through post-occupancy surveys, perceived occupant comfort can be utilized with temperature data to inform the most effective next steps. As with air quality, temperature can be variable and should be regularly monitored to ensure optimal conditions and increase occupant wellness and comfort. 

Signage in Healthy Buildings

As healthy building consultants we advise on signage systems, wayfinding and their role in creating a healthy building. Signage can be used to promote a variety of health and efficiency-related concepts, with the potential to improve occupant wellness and building performance. 

Signage can be used to improve health through physical activity encouragement for example. Motivational point-of-decision wayfinding signs next to lift doors can promote greater stair use and increase physical activity levels, the WELL and FITWEL certifications encourage this policy.

Especially if stairs are not clearly visible, signs and wayfinding prompts can encourage use—both increasing physical activity and decreasing elevator energy use. 

In addition, building entrance signage can publicize a tobacco-free zone - a requirement of most green building certifications. There is no acceptable exposure level to cigarette smoke, so signage must be implemented clearly to indicate the ban.

Signage can also be used to indicate the health impacts and hazards of smoking, hopefully further discouraging tobacco use and encouraging healthier habits for building occupants. 

Educational signage is also very impactful. Promoting hand-washing has never been more important, a simple visual reminder that helps prevent the spread of infection in the new Covid-19 era. In addition, nutritional messaging can be used in and around dining areas to encourage healthy eating habits. 

On the other end, signage can be used to encourage people to adopt sustainable habits such as reminders to turn off task lights when leaving in the evening, (again) using the stairs instead of the elevator, and turning water faucets off when not in use - just a few obvious reminders that can encourage occupants to reduce energy and water use.

Building signage can on occasion be given to the architects or interior designers, at least the more visually exposed elements such as the reception / entrance lobby but much of the above mentioned signs are just as likely to land on the desk of facilities management.

Enhanced Cleaning Protocols in Green Healthy Buildings

Without proper cleaning protocols, health factors such as interior air quality, pollutant levels and surface cleanliness can be compromised. The cleaning products themselves should not contain any harmful ingredients, and surfaces should be cleaned regularly to avoid excess accumulation of dust or other unhealthy substances.

Many cleaning products contain hazardous ingredients that when applied to surfaces can emit ingredients that degrade indoor air quality, and therefore impact human health. Products should be selected carefully to eliminate any potential hazards and reduce detrimental health effects.

There are several third-party certification systems, such as an ISO 14024-compliant (Type 1) Ecolabel, which designates green cleaning products and can be used to guide healthy selections.

In addition to smart selection of the products themselves, a plan should be created that designates the extent and frequency of cleaning, where to access cleaning products, and the roles of cleaning staff and building occupants, when applicable, to the cleaning process.

Surfaces encounter countless microorganisms throughout the day, and can host pathogens from sick individuals, which if not properly cleaned can spread to other building occupants. Especially in the COVID-19 era, frequent and thorough cleaning practices should be embedded in building operations.

Dust and dirt from the outdoors readily accumulate in building interiors through windows, entrances, and other indoor-outdoor building connections. In fact, studies have shown that 65% of inhalation of outdoor air particles occurs indoors.

Entrance walk-off mats are used to reduce this transfer of dirt and other pollutants from the outdoors, and their maintenance and cleanliness is essential to keep up this role. Building entryways should be regularly wet cleaned and vacuumed to minimize the amount of outdoor pollutants entering interior spaces. 

Cleaning processes and habits are entirely reliant on cleaning staff and building occupants. Because of this, proper training and easily accessible green cleaning supplies should be implemented to ensure the promotion of healthy interiors.

Biophilia landscaping maintenance

Green and healthy buildings often contain vegetation in around buildings, providing countless human and environmental health benefits. However, they also require maintenance. Proper landscaping and greenery upkeep will not only benefit the health of the plants themselves, but also the building occupants and surrounding environment. 

In building interiors, features such as living walls must be maintained and watered properly to ensure their health. Living walls enhance biophilia, filter air pollutants, and provide cooling capabilities, making their health essential for promoting additional building operation benefits. 

On the exterior, landscaping maintenance encourage plant health and biodiversity. A landscape management plan implemented by the grounds maintenance staff protects the flora and fauna while minimizing wildlife disturbance. Petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides should be avoided whenever possible, and efficient irrigation techniques such as xeriscaping prioritized.

Workplace Wellness Programs 

Mental health and wellness programs are an important part of a healthy office workplace that places employee health at its centre. Provisions such as stress management and mental health support groups and programs, educational programs, childcare and family leave support, as well as fitness and nutrition services are all beneficial to workplace wellness.

Studies have shown that when employees are less stressed and anxious, they perform better an are more productive, making workplace wellness programs a smart business decision in addition to the clear occupant health benefits. 

Through the use of strategies such as mindfulness programs and restorative spaces, employee stress levels can be reduced. Mindfulness programs can be achieved through in person meetings and exercises, or through employer-designated digital applications, such as Headspace, for example.

Restorative spaces in healthy buildings

Restorative spaces should be maintained, and employees should be encouraged to take breaks when needed and use them to relax and reset throughout the workday. 

It is important that the resources are available, but more importantly that occupants are made aware that they exist. Educational materials should be readily accessible to inform employees of the resources, encourage their use, and reduce any stigmas against mental health and wellness issues. 

In addition to mental health wellness programs, physical health is equally as important, including both nutrition and fitness services. Nutrition or cooking classes, healthy recipe sharing, and nutritious snack offerings in the office are examples beneficial nutrition programs.

Gyms, exercise and mental wellbeing in healthy buildings

Access to fitness rooms, gyms and fitness equipment can all be complemented by programs such as exercise classes, running clubs, or a bike-to-work week or contest are all potential implementations to encourage active travel and health. 

If occupant participation is consistently low, additional incentives may nee to be implemented to encourage resource use and highlight the importance of wellness in the workplace.

Often, it is helpful to have a designated employee as a ‘wellbeing champion’ who promotes health programs within a company, and this person or group can host health promotion meetings and communicate digitally with employees to further encourage participation. 

Smart buildings for improved air quality, energy saving, carbon capture - Sally R

air quality / smart buildings / healthy buildings / energy efficiency / green building / hvac / indoor farming

Welcome to episode 45 of the Green & Healthy Places podcast in which we discuss the themes of wellbeing and sustainability in real estate today.

In this episode I’m in Sweden talking to Fredrik Tunberg, CEO of Sally R, a cloud-based intelligent ventilation solution that uses algorithms to optimize indoor air quality while reducing overall energy consumption related to the HVAC system.

We discuss how buildings have traditionally had to make guesstimates about how much ventilation they will need, and then applies a blanket approach throughout the day, throughout the building, whereas the latest technology, sensors and IOT enabled software completely changes the game, opening up opportunities for far more tailored, efficient and cost effective solutions. Which is essentially what Sally R do.

As Fredrik points out, high quality indoor air does not need to cost more, quite the opposite in fact, once you can see the air in a building and map that against usage data, and feedback from a network of air quality monitors, it’s a complete game changer that also saves on energy use in the process.

Finally, they are also getting into Carbon capture in indoor farms, but I’ll Fredrik explain that part. 

• Sally R website

• Sally R indoor farming

• Sally R on LinkedIn

Talking indoor air quality in healthy buildings and energy efficient green buildings with Fredrik Tunberg of SALLY R

Let's start with the basics. So, when you're describing SALLY R, what's the problem that you're solving here around HVAC and mechanical ventilation system optimization in healthy buildings?

Fredrik Tunberg

As part of the increasing energy prices, of course, across Europe across the world, as well as the pandemic, that we're hopefully seeing the end of. I believe that real estate and especially commercial real estate and public buildings starting to open up will create some very important questions for the real estate owners, as well as sales managers, and how to tackle these two issues - energy efficiency and indoor air quality. That's where Sally R can really make a difference.

Matt Morley

So there's two pieces that you mentioned, effectively, the building energy cost, the energy implications of running a mechanical ventilation system in a building, and also how that mechanical ventilation system relates to airborne diseases, such as COVID. So let's look at the first one. So the energy costs I get, how do you how to get involved or integrate into that, start measuring it and make improvements?

Indoor air quality and energy efficiency

Fredrik Tunberg

Yeah, and in our case, those two different pieces are very intertwined into each other. So overall, we're trying to really prove to people that well, an increase, and more secure indoor air quality, actually doesn't mean that you have to spend that the consumer energy is rather the opposite. 

“It’s a contradiction that clean air costs more, it’s actually the other way around. So an optimized indoor air quality in a healthy building will actually provide you with substantial green building energy savings. ”

— fredrik tunberg

smart buildings and hvac systems

“You have to bear in mind that the traditional way of controlling HVAC has been the same for many years. With the help of technology breakthroughs, such as big data, connectivity, and wireless sensors, we can manage that data to control very complex systems within buildings. ”

— fredrik tunberg, ceo , sally r

Matt Morley

So for someone who's perhaps not familiar with traditional building management systems, or facilities management, you said it's a bit of a dinosaur, and it hasn't really upgraded. So what does that look like for someone who's not familiar with it, obviously, you know, natural ventilation is where we came from. And then at some point, we started creating pressurized, mechanically ventilated buildings with HVAC air conditioning systems. And over the last, say, 20 years or so, or more, how has that? What's that look like?

building management systems in healthy buildings

Fredrik Tunberg

Yeah, this is different, depending on what kind of building you're talking about. And obviously, also what kind of country you're in, from our experience from, from Sweden, Scandinavia, and Europe, is that evolved buildings, once they were built, they were are the someone from the BMS system provider or their partners, they were in the building and programming a unique solution for that building. And that was obviously based on a lot of assumptions. And these assumptions goes hand in hand with what like the building would be intended, intended views, and all different kinds of things.

So one practical example would be one, one building that we implemented our solution and very recently, where they 2025 years ago, when the when the building was built, the HR system was programmed. And it was programmed based on the assumption like, Alright, let's do 40% return here. And it was just an assumption that that would work out and that that was a good level. It is not based on any kind of facts and figures, because and to be honest, like 25 years ago, you couldn't do that. And what we can do now is that we can, we can allow the building to choose his own level of returner, depending on how it is being used. What is happening on the outside of the building, and, and taking into a lot of different factors concerning the indoor air quality into account in order to calculate optimal performance for the system.

Matt Morley

So then that links in with the idea of the big data, right? Because you're then using global benchmarks to understand how it should be done comparing that with what's actually happening and trying to find gaps discrepancies between the two and then making the adjustments to how the air ventilation system is operating. Is that right? Yeah,

energy efficiency in a smart building

Fredrik Tunberg

Absolutely, absolutely. So that's one way to look at it. And then there's other other types of buildings like we're optimizing a large shopping mall in Stockholm, it's the largest one is going to need for more mall of Scandinavia. So it's, it has a good name. And that building was built in a was I believe it was finished, like in 2015, or 2016. So it's very, it's very new, it was a huge investment, obviously, for the real estate company. And so it's very sophisticated, everything that is within the building. And still, we managed to save around 40-42% of the energy being used with HVAC system, simply because we were more reactive to whatever was going on. And this was especially so during the pandemic, of course, when the building had a lot lower people occupants passing through. And again, was based on assumptions on how how it would be used the building. And, yeah, so there's a lot to be done.

automated hvac in a smart building

Matt Morley

So if I can create an analogy, would it be basically like someone going in to a building, turning on all the lights at a certain point on the dinner and saying, Well, that's it. That's how we operate the light system between nine o'clock and five o'clock? And you're saying, well, actually, you might need certain different intensities during the day. And you might need perhaps a little bit on a on a weekend, or you might need some later in the evening? Because that's actually how the building's being used. Would that be a fair analogy to draw, you're trying to connect the the usage by the occupants in the building with the amount of air ventilation and circulation that they need is that, yeah, absolutely

Fredrik Tunberg

That's definitely a huge part of it. And then we also have different ways of like, analyzing the building, as well. So we are measuring and we're constantly calculating the loads within the building and not not just the heating load, but are also like the load concerning co2, we can calculate any kind of boat, we can calculate and monitor VOC load process. And by doing it that way, we can predict what will happen a lot better than then what would normally be the case, as well. So there's a lot of different things, but those definitely a good analogy as well.

Matt Morley

“VOCs, volatile organic compounds, basically, the nasty chemicals that are off gassing from things like adhesives, glues, carpets, furniture in an office. ”

— matt morley

So for the listeners who perhaps aren't aware that toxic chemicals can be found in office furniture, the reality is they often can, especially in fabrics, textiles, foams, paints, and cheap ceiling panels and what have you. So the importance of what you've just described, is, is really, I think, critical for for improved indoor air quality.

So if we look at the hardware and the software involved in making that happen, like what's, what's going on in terms of bringing pieces of kit into the building? Or is it a completely software based solution? Like how do you integrate into the building management system into the BMS?

Fredrik Tunberg

Yeah, there's, different ways to do that, of course, and we do a lot of different types of integration and implementations. But Sally R is in essence a software company. So we don't have our own hardware concerning this particular service. Rather, we would prefer to collaborate with with a partner and primarily, that would be the BMS company and the BMS provider, but it can also obviously be an IOT platform, for instance, or it can be a sensor, sensor company, providing sensors.

But we have also done integrations and implementations where we made use of a kind of a simple kind of each unit each gateway, but that is simply just because we want to cut corners. And this is primarily we do that primarily for older systems, older buildings, where they sometimes they don't even have an internet. It's not connected to the internet.

Matt Morley

So it strikes me as an example of smart building systems, right, but we're trying to connect the bill Seeing via your software with the daily realities of what's happening inside the building. So it's reactive rather than being passive. Do you? Do you just make a distinction between the air purification that's going on in the building and the air quality?

So like, is the software looking at purification rates that are happening? Do we need to consider that there's not enough purification beyond just the ventilation rates in the building, do you normally recommend that there is a complimentary strategy in terms of improving the indoor air quality beyond just ventilation or is that typically enough to remove the VOCs? Remove the co2?

indoor air quality and sally r software

Fredrik Tunberg

Yeah, and obviously, definitely depends on where in the world you are, and what kind of room but we will obviously like we, we see a lot of data we can see. And we can analyze that for the customer. But then it's obviously up to the customer to take actions based on that data. But it's not that uncommon, obviously, that we get questions like how do we how can we improve this further?

How, what measures do we need to take it apart from the software, and stuff like that, and then we like to be really, really frank about, we're not a consultancy in that way, there are others who are way much better than than us that providing advice on that. But any way we can to help is, obviously a bit.

“we are not actually in this to to save energy, it might sound strange, but our standpoint is we want to secure indoor air quality, the energy saving is an extra benefit!”

— Fredrik Tunberg, CEO, SaLLY R

Matt Morley

So then you'd imagine there being say, a network of head height air quality monitors throughout the building that there's the building management team are getting one source of data coming in, you then got what Sally are producing in terms of data, and you can start to see how the management team is building up a picture, right? of exactly what's what's going on. So how does that how does that take place?

For someone who's not familiar with that process? Yeah, so like you said that there, you're creating the data. And you're is it is the is the software making decisions on behalf of the building management team or the building management team having to take to sort of interpret the data that you're creating, and then manually create, implement changes, or is it automatically linked, now is

Fredrik Tunberg

“Our software automates improvements in indoor air quality 100% based on whatever parameters, you as the building owner, or manager, want to achieve in the building in terms of indoor air quality.”

— fredrik tunberg, ceo , sally r

And usually, there is a minimum value and a maximum value, and never to exceed the maximum value of course. And then the system the software would optimize within that can range and it will do that automatically. But it would also obviously pick up on any like discrepancies in in that performance as well. And for instance, we can easily analyze a abnormal high energy consumption within any kind of like fans or anything like that, that we can track back to, for instance, that filter change being needed.

So we can optimize that and we can we can optimize for other types of filters as well. So you can introduce more filtration, for instance, concerning knowledge, but then who are starting to talk more and more about TM one for instance. So we can we can definitely there's definitely room to improve more on the filtration side with an optimization.

Particulate Matter in indoor air quality

Matt Morley

So PM1 - we typically talk about PM10, which would be dust level particles, then PM 2.5, which is much smaller. Things like mold, VOCs and tiny little things, but PM1 would be airborne disease level?

Fredrik Tunberg

Yeah, exactly. I mean, noncredit to me, according to the WHO.

indoor farms and carbon capture

Matt Morley

Yeah. Okay. And and so you then have this other piece, right, you have this other element, which I think is a really interesting complement to, to what we've just been talking about around the the HVAC Building Management and this carbon capture and indoor farms. So where did that come from? What's that product about?

Fredrik Tunberg

Yeah, absolutely. So we will need to go back five or six years basically, because Sally R - our name to begin with is a tribute to Sally Right, the first female astronaut, US astronaut. So we basically turned to space in the beginning to find solutions to how our buildings can rely less on the outside air. Because we see problems with the outside air becoming more and more polluted. And a lot of energy consumption comes from the process of changing outside air into heated or cooled indoor air.

So when starting to look at ISS, and how they're solving the indoor air quality on the space station, we came across some some very like crucial, crucial things that need to solve. And one of them obviously, being the optimization of the whole service. And that's, that's our software today. Another part of it is being able to capture co2 from an HR system or from an indoor environment. So for the last three or four years, we've basically been digging into that and evaluating different technologies out there, and then coming up with our own technology in order to capture carbon efficiently from indoor environments. And then, obviously, like looking looking for for different solutions in how to offset that carbon.

But once you want to calculate what what would you do with the co2. And we saw this, this kind of new industry, it's not new, but it's, it's definitely on most people's radar these times. And it's concerning vertical farming and locally grown verbs that urban farming and container farming, there's a lot of buzz going on there. And one crucial part of sustainable indoor farming is being able to enrich the farming area with co2. And the the only solution that we've seen so far is to bring in like shoo, some tanks with co2 that quite often comes from natural gas. And that's not very sustainable. So we see a possibility here to kind of make one industry more sustainable by giving them the co2 and one industry, the real estate industry, both safe, safer and more energy efficient by capturing. So yeah, that was a long explanation, a monologue.

Matt Morley

So if that was say, just to understand, because I know some images on your website, they depict maybe like a rooftop indoor farm that could be on a could be on a an office building, for example, where they decided to go into that with a kind of, like a Yeah, a bubble, right? So you create this this glass house area where it's a protected environment? Would it have to work would only work in those that context? Or could it be, say, a vertical farm set up in the reception of a big building, for example? Or do you need an enclosed space? How is it? What are the applications? Like what do you need from your side?

Fredrik Tunberg

Well, we need an enclosed space in some way, in order to really have an effect on the co2 levels. So the so that you actually get an increase in yield on the crops. So they grow more and more co2 have a certain extent, of course. So that that is what you need. But we're also looking into different applications preferring more like traditional indoor farming, like traditional greenhouses, and particular than commercial greenhouses. And then we would actually capture the carbon from from ambient air instead, that would be more like direct air capture for it for a specific purpose. That's another another kind of application.

Circular Economy and green healthy buildings

Matt Morley

So you sort of have this circular economy concept, right? Where you're, we're trying to keep everything in the loop rather than and in this case, the co2 is kind of like the waste product that we want to keep in the loop to reuse to get more value from it.

Fredrik Tunberg

Absolutely. That is what we really want to achieve and we also want to kind of like waste from the general awareness but you can actually do this if faced with co2, and co2 is natural, it's in our air, he says that we have a bit too much of it these days. So we need to like we need to make something useful with it. And why not actually do or try to increase the production of healthy food, and especially locally grown healthy food? Because there's loads and loads of benefits with vertical farming, indoor farming, and being really, we can help one.

Matt Morley

So where do you go from here? In terms of building the business? bringing in new clients developing new products and services? Like how do you see this evolving over the next three to five years?

Fredrik Tunberg

Yeah, no, it's very exciting time here - the plan for this year is internationalization where we are at scaling up business as we're getting to new markets. obviously started out in Sweden and Scandinavia, but we're looking to expand into UK and further into Canada as well this year, concerning the carbon capture where we are now way more like a pre mature stage, but we're commercializing right now. We're getting our first first couple of clients, and we will continue to evaluate the performance on that technology. And so yeah, it will be a little bit divided. But we're, we'll have different places that we have our hands full.

Healthy buildings integrating Sally R software

Matt Morley

So let's take a potential building in central London. And there are certain parameters within which you can work or are there certain requirements in terms of going in? Does it need to be a certain genre or type of building or something that's built after a certain year in terms of its HVAC? Like, are there? Are there areas where you can't help? Are there areas where you can have more impact and more more positive results?

Fredrik Tunberg

Yeah, essentially, we don't, our software works for any kind of building anywhere. Basically, as long as you have mechanical ventilation, we can optimize that. But it's more of a matter of where we put our focus, as of today. So we focused deliberately on offices and retail primarily, but also on on more sensitive buildings, like schools and hospitals, elevate the health health sector. But we make the most difference in obviously, large buildings, obviously, less complex buildings. So open spaces, versus open spaces. And we can really make a difference where you have a lot of people coming in and changing the the occupancy, because then we can be casting a huge difference on the interview.

What is the cost of healthy building software?

Matt Morley

So it's a question that I'm nearly always asked when I'm proposing these kind of concepts and services to clients that I work with. So I'll map Okay, but what are the cost implications? And how much more is this gonna cost me? And often, my responses will look, there might be a little bit more upfront in terms of your capex, but then how long will it take you to pay that off in terms of operating costs once you open the building, and actually, it can often be within a space of two to three years.

But then the owner, if they're holding the property for that long, if they're redeveloping or constructing, building and then selling, then it's slightly different story I find, but when they're holding the building for at least a few years, there's often a discussion around well, what are your management and operational costs over the next three years? And how much can we save you on those? Is it a similar argument in terms of selling in a salary or service to a developer or landlord?

Fredrik Tunberg

Yeah, no, absolutely. And obviously, with the twist that we sell our service as a service, so So you would basically pay a monthly fee that is way lower than your energy savings. So I mean, from our perspective, there's actually no investments that basically like saving money or making money from day one, basically. But obviously, like in the in the startup phase, there can be certain investments that we need to do. And that could be relating, like investing in more sensors, for instance.

But the way that we figure is that well, you want sensors anyway, even if you're not going with that those are not selling your specific sensors. So whether or not whether or not you like it or not, you need the sensors. And then you can subscribe to our service and start saving entity as well as be comfortable with that it's actually locked in with security and oil quality, no matter what happens in the building or outside.

Matt Morley

So sensors you mean ventilation rates as in in inside the HVAC system or in terms of the air that's circulating in the occupied spaces?

Fredrik Tunberg

90% I would say that the sensors inside the HV system that is already in place, is a very rarely that we need to compliment those sensors. But what we want, it all depends on what type of building obviously, but in an in an office building, with a more traditional office building, with a lot of different roofs and stuff like that, we would need some more reference, measuring measurements in in the different groups so that we can securely control the indoor air quality. But as sensor costs, as the cost for sensors comes down even more, it's not a huge investment and maintain away. I would say, yeah, it's minimal compared to what other types of investment can do for themselves.

Matt Morley

That's a much easier sell than than solar panels on a roof. I can tell you from experience. Very good. So how can people learn more? How can they connect? How can they reach out and follow what you're doing?

Fredrik Tunberg

Yeah, w obviously have a website, which is fairly good. It's, it's getting more and more content on it. But we're also trying to stay as active as we possibly can on primarily LinkedIn. That's our channel of choice. And you're always happy to schedule a meeting with me or one of my colleagues to learn more as well. So we're always always eager to

Energy efficiency in green buildings to reduce energy waste

what is energy efficient architecture? Read on to discover these green building approaches examples

Energy consumption in green buildings and energy solutions to reduce energy consumption

Improve energy performance for a more sustainable future

Buildings and the real estate industry in general contribute around 30% of total global energy consumption, making them a vital consideration in the push for a green energy transition away from fossil fuel dependency.

Energy efficient buildings are, like electric and eventually hydrogen-powered cars, a necessary step for the future of our planet, not least due to the ongoing process of urbanization which will see an estimated 70% of the world’s population living in cities by 2050 (Bratman). 

Green buildings new construction

Key factors to consider in building energy efficiency include building orientation and its footprint but there we step into the realm of site planning and selection, architecture and engineering. Beyond new construction then, how can we as green building consultants help in the refurbishment of our existing buildings - a fundamentally more energy efficient and sustainable approach? 

Green buildings refurbishment

Overarching strategies in a refurb project include reducing energy demand, increasing source efficiency, and tracking the live energy use of the building. Together these provide the building blocks of energy efficient refurbished buildings. The ideal goal of course being net zero or net positive buildings.

Specifically, demand can be reduced through strategies such as passive design and green roofs. Energy source efficiency can involve implementing energy efficient lighting, efficient HVAC (air con ventilation) and elevator systems, as well as renewable energy production on site via solar panels on the roof, for example. 

energy efficient building solutions

With the incorporation of some or all of these energy reducing green building strategies, there is then a requirement for ongoing tracking and monitoring of progress in energy efficiency so that facilities management have a real time picture of the energy consumption patterns in the building.

Demand Reduction in green buildings

Demand reduction in sustainable green buildings involves strategies that reduce the upfront energy needs, lowering the amount of energy consumed and paving the way towards greater energy efficiency overall. Passive design as well as the implementation of green and cool roofs are several strategies to reduce energy demand. 

Passive Design in sustainable buildings - energy saving in construction

Passive design is a concept in which the sustainable building design works with local climate conditions to reduce the need for energy use.  Passive design includes strategies such as daylighting, natural ventilation, and passive heating, which all can reduce energy demand. This is all done in the building modeling phase of a new construction project.

The use of daylighting through windows, skylights and other openings can reduce the need for electrical lights. In addition, in hotter months, the use of daylighting can reduce cooling loads, as on average it produces less heat per unit of illumination than electric lights.

Natural ventilation utilizes outdoor air and winds to bring fresh air into a building. This can help regulate indoor air quality and appease the need for mechanical ventilation, as well as increasing thermal comfort through passive cooling. Most commonly, natural ventilation can be incorporated through the installation of operable windows. This strategy is dependent on the quality of the outdoor air available in the site in question, a factor that can vary by hour, day and season.

energy efficient buildings examples

In addition, solar energy can be used to reduce the need of heating, for example, direct solar gain - which provides places where the sun can enter a space directly - can help to heat a living area.

If paired with thermal mass structures, the sun can heat a mass such as a wall throughout the day and release this heat throughout the evening - a common strategy in traditional buildings in the Middle-East for example.

Green Roofs & Cool Roofs in Sustainable Buildings

Roofs are often an untapped resource in buildings, when in reality they have a lot of potential for energy demand reduction. Roofs are subject to the highest amount of solar irradiance across the entire building envelope (Costanzo).

Cool roofs utilize highly reflective coating such as white paint to increase reflectivity, while green roofs use vegetation as a cover to increase cooling capabilities of a building (Costanzo). 

Although there are pros and cons to green roofs and cool roofs, both reduce building cooling demand (Costanzo). Cool roofs have been found to lower the temperatures of roofs more than green roofs, but green roofs provide some insulation in cooler seasons. 

Green roofs provide additional benefits such as air purification and biophilia benefits if made accessible to building occupants. However, due to the maintenance factor of greenery, cool roofs are an easier practice to implement in terms of initial investment. 

Energy Efficiency Lighting  in Sustainable Buildings

A low hanging fruit of energy efficiency is to incorporate energy efficient lights such as LED bulbs. Generally, this is a very cheap intervention that can provide considerable energy savings. 

Such bulbs consume more than three times less than the energy used by fluorescents and less than a seventh of the energy used by incandescent bulbs. In addition, LEDs provide a higher lumen output, which increases safety and sight, they also have a much longer life span (Taddonio)

In addition to lighting replacements, other strategies such as motion sensors, dimmers and timers can be used to reduce energy and maintenance costs. Hallway lighting can be adjusted based on the time of day and natural light presence.

Desk and office lighting can be adjusted based on hours worked in office and dimmed or turned off when not necessary (“Managing”). These strategies can be very effective at reducing energy consumption, especially when combined.  

Efficient Machinery

Once demand reduction strategies have been implemented, the next step is to make sure that the appliances and machinery that are functioning within the building are as efficient as possible and are consuming less energy. For example, the HVAC systems, elevators, and other machinery within the building. 

HVAC systems generally run on a clock depending on the building use type. For example, an apartment building may need to be run on a 24-hour cycle, while an office building HVAC system can be shut off at night when no one is in the workplace to avoid excess energy use.

energy efficiency solutions

In addition, the systems themselves should be chosen based on those that are designed to consume less energy when in use. Various space types align better with different HVAC systems, so proper planning is required to make the most informed decisions. 

In addition to HVAC systems, other machinery such as elevators tend to be large energy consumers in buildings. It is important to install energy efficient lifts and elevators to avoid excess energy use. 

To aid with the decision-making process, there are various standards and resources. For example, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star Program designates energy-efficient appliances that contain more high performing systems (“The Science”).

Renewable Energy Production in Green Buildings

In addition to incorporating energy efficient appliances and fixtures, the use of renewable energy and the potential to produce it onsite is a very effective green building strategy. Solar is the most common and easily applied renewable energy source on a building site. 

Panels are commonly placed on roofs and should be angled to best receive the sun, which varies depending on location and building orientation. However, newer technologies are providing ways that solar technology can be incorporated into facades, for example. 

When making sustainable solar energy decisions, it is important to consider location and feasibility of potential solar gain, as well as if there is enough area to install enough panels to provide an ample energy source - at the very least, a green building project team should consider wiring in the cables for future installation of solar panels on the roof during the refurb or construction process, even if funds are not immediately available to purchase them. 

Benchmarking, Tracking and Monitoring green building energy

Once a green building energy efficiency plan has been implemented, there is a need for building energy use monitors to track ongoing performance. Several third-party organizations such as ASHRAE, ANSI, and IESNA provide baselines; for example, ASHRAE 90.1-2010 is the energy efficiency standard. 

After a baseline is set and goals are made, a process known as commissioning is implemented. This process, as described in the LEED green building standard is the “process of verifying and documenting that a building/all of its systems are planned, designed, operated and maintained to meet the owners project requirements” (LEED).

This concept encourages projects to continue to operate according to the initial goals and monitor energy consumption to maintain desired efficiency levels.

The installation of sub-meters and automated building controls allow building operation managers to track energy costs and usage by area, as well as aiding the control of building wide energy use.

Building Energy Management Systems (BEMS) are common systems that are used for monitoring and controlling building energy use.

Net + Energy in Green Buildings as a way to go beyond merely saving energy

The ultimate goal for us as sustainability consultants in real estate is to create Net Positive Energy buildings, meaning that more energy is created on site from renewable sources than is consumed by the building—therefore giving back rather than taking from energy sources.

In other words, going further than efforts to merely save energy or improve energy efficiency and reduce energy consumption in residential buildings, for example. Here we look to go much further than that.

Net Zero Energy buildings, a relatively more attainable yet nonetheless challenging goal, produce the same amount of energy on site as they consume, avoiding energy resource depletion with energy efficient equipment and so on.

To achieve that requires systems thinking, looking at a building in a joined-up manner, exploring how distinct elements of the system can work together to make a more efficient whole.

Sustainable Building, energy conservation and carbon emissions Sources used in this article

Bratman, Gregory, and Gretchen Daily. The Benefits of Nature Experience: Improved Affect and Cognition. Tech. Vol. 138. Stanford: n.p., 2015. Landscape and Urban Planning. Stanford University Libraries. Web. 24 Oct. 2016. 

“Building Energy Management Systems Bems.” Building Energy Management Systems BEMS - Designing Buildings, 27 Oct. 2021, https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Building_energy_management_systems_BEMS. 

Costanzo, V., et al. “Energy Savings in Buildings or UHI Mitigation? Comparison between Green Roofs and Cool Roofs.” Energy and Buildings, Elsevier, 12 May 2015, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378778815003527. 

 “Managing Energy Costs in Hospitals.” 2010.

O’Malley, Christopher, et al. “Urban Heat Island (UHI) Mitigating Strategies: A Case- Based Comparative Analysis.” Sustainable Cities and Society, Elsevier, 14 June 2015, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2210670715000657. 

Taddonio, Kristen. “Energy-Efficient Hospital Lighting Strategies Pay Off Quickly.” BUILDING TECHNOLOGIES PROGRAM, July 2011, commercialbuildings.energy.gov/hospital. 

“THE SCIENCE BEHIND HEALTHY HOMES: 25 FACTORS THAT IMPACT YOUR HOME.” Delos, 2020. 

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Further Reading

• The Secrets Of A Healthy Building

• Sustainable Green Building Water Use

• The Best New Green & Healthy Office Buildings In Barcelona, Spain

• The Role Of Rooftops In Healthy Sustainable Building Designs

• Sustainable Office Space - Make Your Office More Eco-Friendly

• Organic Building Materials And Their Benefits

• Introducing The World Green Building Council Health & Wellbeing Framework

• the secrets of a healthy building: ‍9 essential principles for optimal wellness and sustainability

• What Is Circular Economy In Regenerative Real Estate?

• Top Five Real Estate Developers Using Biophilia For Sustainability & Wellbeing