What is Indoor Air Quality (IAq) in a healthy building?

indoor air quality / air purification / air ventilation / well building standard / healthy building / wellness interior / air quality monitors (kaiterra)

Image shows a Kaiterra indoor air quality monitor

Why does indoor air quality matter for our health?

A simple question but one worth asking upfront. As many of us now spend the majority of our lives indoors, somewhere between home, the office, gym, restaurants, school and so on, the quality of the indoor air we breathe in those places matters because indoor air pollutants can cause headaches, sore throat, a loss in productivity / concentration levels, itchy eyes or asthma attacks in the short-term.

In more serious instances, there is a tangible risk of long-term health concerns such as cancer and respiratory issues. All that is before we introduce the theme of viruses.

common indoor air pollutants

Indoor air pollutants we watch out for include CO2, carbon monoxide, radon, tobacco smoke, mold and chemical off-gases known as Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). Particulate Matter PM2.5 and PM10 are made up of dust and synthetic materials decomposing around us from furniture, fabrics and so on. PM1 are extremely fine particles and include air-borne diseases such as COVID-19.

sources of indoor air contaminants

The primary sources of these contaminants include toxic building materials, paints, finishes, adhesives, chemical-based cleaning products, fire retardant furniture and fabrics, even our shoes can drag in dust and dirt particles from outside, while nail varnish, aerosols and certain low grade perfumes also negatively impact the indoor air quality in a building.

How does outside air affect indoor air quality in a building?

There is an increasing amount of data available now on the real time quality of our outdoor air in many major cities, with a little research online it’s possible to track down extremely detailed air quality maps of your home city, available both on desktop and mobile app formats.

In London for example, there is an impressive network of outdoor air quality monitors set up by one of the universities there. It operates under the London Air moniker:

https://www.londonair.org.uk/LondonAir/Default.aspx

What you'll often find is that there are very different air quality readings according to the seasons, weather conditions, day of the week, even time of day, depending on commuter numbers, industrial activity in the vicinity and so on, versus the relative respite of a Sunday morning outdoor air quality reading for example.

Equally, low cloud cover can compress and hold down smog closer to street level rather than allowing it to dissipate upwards as on a clear day.

Natural ventilation strategies and indoor air quality

According to the type of windows installed in a commercial building, on a day when the outdoor air quality is suitably. high, there may be the option of using natural ventilation rather than an energy-intensive air conditioning system to ventilate an indoor space. If the outdoor air quality is particularly poor, this solution only serves to make matters worse indoors, clearly.

smart apps for indoor air quality management

A new generation of smart apps that can recommend when to open windows and allow outdoor air in are increasingly popular in India and China, a response to the critical air quality situation in some of the major cities there - easily the worst offenders at a global scale.

We expect this technology to trickle down to newly launched smart buildings in European and North American capitals over coming months and years.

Kaiterra air quality monitor

Indoor Air Quality monitors in a healthy building

We have written extensively about the role of indoor air quality monitors in healthy buildings, not least via our conversation with Liam Bates, CEO of Kaiterra, for episode 040 of the Green & Healthy Places podcast.

Essentially the indoor air quality monitor plan (covering quantity and location) as well as the grade of monitor need to be carefully analyzed in advance of the installation, with them finding a home between 1.2m -1.8m from the floor with hourly data readings covering particle. count, carbon dioxide, VOCs, temperature and humidity.

See also our article on the RESET AIR Standard, from our perspective as RESET Accredited Professionals.

Healthy Building Standards and Indoor Air Quality

There is some degree of negotiation that needs to happen when we're evaluating the impact of People and Planet as an air conditioning HVAC system in a new build is much less damaging to the environment than it would have been 20 years ago when there were harmful hydrocarbons and chemicals involved.

Older buildings, especially those originally built on a low budget, still carry the scars of those mistakes today however, a real problem but one slowly being phased out.

In light of Covid-19, we should view mechanical ventilation systems as our friend, albeit one we’d rather ran on green electricity rather fossil fuels, clearly.

The key to an HVAC, from a healthy building perspective at least, are its filters and ventilation rates. That is where the magic happens, these can be UV light, or a physical filter that's catching dust particles, removing bacteria and harmful VOCs (chemical off-gasses) from the air.

This is in addition clearly to thermal regulation to ensure occupants are comfortable, according to the type of activity they are engaged in - be that working, sleeping or working out!

In terms of energy consumption, the issue is that these systems can, if not monitored and programmed smartly with something like a Kaiterra system, be left on all day and night, even when not strictly needed.

The ideal healthy building for indoor air

The absolute apex of all this is a passive or Net Zero building that has been designed to deliberately make use of natural wind patterns, daylight and sunshine to minimize energy expenditure. To some extent we’re waiting for the green energy revolution to catch up but examples of these smart, future-proof buildings have started to emerge, many of them having followed the International Living Future Institute’s Living Building Challenge.

Well Building Standard on Indoor Air Quality

WELL’s chapter on air quality is a comprehensive review of the subject (see here) whilst their guidelines on Particulate Matter and VOC levels are included below for reference:

https://standard.wellcertified.com/air/air-quality-standards

Standards for Volatile Substances

Formaldehyde levels less than 27 ppb and Total volatile organic compounds less than 500 μg/m³.

Standards for Particulate Matter and Inorganic Gases

Carbon monoxide less than 9 ppm.

PM₂.₅ less than 15 μg/m³.

PM₁₀ less than 50 μg/m³.

Ozone less than 51 ppb.

Standard for Radon

Radon less than 0.148 Bq/L [4 pCi/L] in the lowest occupied level of the project.

acoustical comfort in healthy buildings & interiors

acoustical comfort / acoustics in interior design / healthy buildings / wellness interiors / sound mapping / acoustic materials / acoustic finishes / well building standard

What is acoustical comfort?

When due attention is given to interior acoustics as part of the design and fit-out process, unwanted sound simply should not be an issue for building occupants, meaning there are no distracting echos or noise levels beyond those that align with the primary activity taking place in that area - this can differ greatly between a buzzy restaurant for example, and a library or office.

Due to the subtleties of this zone by zone approach, ‘acoustic comfort’ is a largely qualitative concept evaluated primarily by occupant satisfaction surveys - using questions such as “is the sound level right for what you are doing?” and so on.

We also have the possible addition of quantitative data via more scientific measurements around decibel levels and a lot of planning takes place in advance of a refurbishment or fit-out to anticipate potential acoustical comfort issues before they become reality.

As we explore below, a wellness interior designer has a number of tools at his or her disposal to integrate materials that absorb sound into the space, no matter whether it be office, residential, retail or restaurant.

What are the main causes of poor acoustics in buildings and interiors?

Building issues such as loud HVAC equipment, improperly insulated spaces, or an excess of hard interior surfaces in areas with regularly high densities of occupants (and their conversations), can all contribute to poor acoustics and occupant discomfort. 

Airborne noise such as the air con / HVAC system and other mechanical appliances is all too common, especially in older buildings. Then there are of course the sounds of other occupants in or outside a building, primarily via speech but also footfall, opening or closing doors and so on, all of which can cumulatively become a recurring distraction and reduce concentration.

Impact noise, for example from a gym or children playing, is an even more acute version of the same problem. Imagine operating a spa or retail space on the ground floor of a building with a first floor CrossFit gym above (without proper sound insulating flooring to absorb the sound of loaded barbells being repeatedly dropped).

Then there is the problem of a lack of acoustical privacy between enclosed spaces and equally within open-plan spaces, with noise traveling from one of the space to another, bouncing around from wall to wall constantly.

Finally, there is the external noise source of passing transportation such as cars, buses, trains or planes, which can become intensely distracting both during the work day and at night.

What are the health risks of interiors with poor acoustics?

Human exposure to unfavorable noises and improperly regulated acoustics has a tangible impact on mental wellbeing, concentration and focus. It’s not going to send you to an early grave perhaps but it can create a consistent, low-level anxiety and stress that accumulates over time.

In other words, in the world of healthy buildings and wellbeing interiors, as consultants and advisors, we want to implement a strategy upfront in order to minimize acoustic discomfort, likely in collaboration with the Mechanical Engineer and Architects for new build construction or refurbishment projects, or solo as wellness interior designers if it’s an interior fit-out.

Consider how a lack of acoustical privacy, speech intelligibility, and general distractions can all impact our comfort in an open-plan office space for example - whether the noise source is from inside that workplace, elsewhere on the same floor or outside the building.

Typical mental wellbeing issues we encounter in such situations are a reduction in attention span, memory retention, and (in a residential context) lower quality sleep at night.

Designing with good acoustics in mind is therefore a fundamental part of any healthy building concept and wellbeing interior design strategy, so let’s look at the tools available to us.

How can a wellbeing interior design consultant improve an acoustics issue?

To combat these issues, strategies such as planned and isolated HVAC systems, reinforced facades, plenty of sound absorptive materials in the interior specifications and the introduction of consistent background noise / white noise can all be useful.

A range of solutions we might choose to deploy as part of a wellness interior design consultancy assignment would include the following:

• Planning of isolated/balanced HVAC mechanical equipment sound levels (provides baseline/anticipated noise levels) in line with WELL recommendations of between 25 maximum noise criteria (NC) for enclosed offices and 40 maximum noise criteria for open-plan office spaces (Ref. WELL Building Standard)

• Fortification of facades (affects exterior noise intrusion) but will require engineers and architects involvement (more suitable for full refurbishment projects rather than interiors only)

• Replacing hard surfaces with sound reducing, sound absorbing surfaces, wall panels, ceiling baffles and surface finishes (ref. Noise Reduction Coefficient - NRC - an average value reflecting its acoustical sound absorbing properties - see WELL Building Standard for more)

• Introducing consistent background noise levels (sound masking) for added acoustic privacy

• Using non-hollow core door ways with gaskets or sweeps to block noise traveling from one side of a door way to the other

• Interior partition walls with high acoustic absorption qualities, e.g. Sound Transmission Class (STC) of minimum 45 (ref WELL Building Standard)

• Interior walls designed for acoustic performance with minimal air gaps and sound transmission, ‘vertical surfaces in an open workspace should have a minimum NRC of 0.8 on at least 25% of the surface area of the surrounding walls' (ref. WELL Building Standard)

• Exterior windows with high acoustic absorption qualities, e.g. a Sound Transmission Class (STC) of minimum 35 (ref WELL Building Standard)

• Imposing limits on music played in a space to limit distractions, e.g. “7 decibels (dBA) above the ambient sound pressure level when measured at a minimum distance of 4.5 m [15 ft] outside of the entrance to the space” (ref. WELL Building Standard)

• Ceiling surfaces should have a minimum NRC of 0.9 for the entire surface area of the ceiling (excluding lights, skylights, diffusers, beams, joists and grilles) (ref. WELL Building Standard)

What does the WELL Building Standard advise on sound and acoustics?

The WELL Building Standard / Sound section aims to confront potential acoustic problems and provides various strategies to diminish negative health impacts. While it is up to the architects and wellness interior design consultants to interpret these objectives creatively through the lens of design, aligning their decisions with the desired wellbeing outcomes. In this way, health can and should become a central part of the design process from the very start of a healthy building design project.

WELL Building Standard SOUND / S01: Sound Mapping

Goal: create site zoning/acoustical plan that identifies potential noise sources that could affect a specific space. This equates to designating ‘loud’, ‘quiet’, and ‘mixed’ spaces according to zone or the programming of each space making up the floor plan or ‘sound map’.

So for example, within an office floor plate, we would create area for ‘deep work’ and solo concentration, as well as more collaborative areas for small groups and private meetings rooms, perhaps integrate some Skype cubicles for 1-2 people while on a call, and so on.

WELL Building Standard SOUND / S02: Max Noise Levels

Goal: Establish background noise levels for interior spaces to determine HVAC and façade design techniques in order to avoid speech intelligibility problems.

WELL Building Standard SOUND / S03: Sound Barriers

Goal: Increase speech privacy, highlight design constraints that may hinder acoustical comfort while including sound absorbing partitions (especially in open floor plans) as physical privacy is often mentally linked to acoustic privacy.

WELL Building Standard SOUND / S04: Sound Absorption

Goal: Design spaces that support speech intelligibility and increase focus paying particular attention to the hazards of hard surfaces that have the potential to reflect more sound and cause acoustic discomfort. By using sound insulating materials interior designers can control the sound absorption levels in any given space, for example via acoustic ceiling panels, flooring and/or wall panels, where appropriate.

WELL Building Standard SOUND / S05: Sound Masking

Goal: Increase acoustical privacy through noise suppression, where sound masking involves deliberately layering in an even noise level, for example of ‘white noise’ or nature sounds.

WELL Building Standard SOUND / S06: Impact Noise Management

Goal: Manage background noise levels between building floors, conscious that lightweight floor construction (CLT, wood truss, steel frame) emits more noise than resilient floor-ceiling construction (thick concrete slab, suspended ceiling).

Healthy Materials Lab at Parsons

This week we’re in New York talking to Jonsara Ruth, Co-Founder & Design Director of the Healthy Materials Lab and Associate Professor at Parsons School of Design.

Jonsara received a Masters of Architecture from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BFA in Industrial Design from Rhode Island School of Design, she also has her own healthy materials design collective called Salty Labs.

The Healthy Materials Lab is all about placing health at the center of real estate architecture and design. They aim to raise awareness about toxics in building products and create educational online resources for designers and architects that further that cause.

I recently completed their 4-part Online Certification Program to become a Healthy Materials Advocate and cannot recommend the course enough, whether you work in this industry or are simply curious to understand more about buildings and the materials that go into them, both good and bad.

It’s far easier not to look under the hood, right? To trust that developers, architects and contractors have our best interests at heart… I hate to burst your bubble but that just ain’t so, nowhere is this more acute than in our homes, offices and Jonsara explains, the worst offender of all, the affordable housing sector.

Jonsara speaks with the precision of a Professor and the conviction of someone with a very clear mission in life, so listen up people, this is a good one.

If you enjoy this episode, hit like or subscribe for next week’s release.

See our 9-point guide to healthy buildings here.

CONVERSATION HIGHLIGHTS

• Our central objective really is to remove harmful chemicals from the built environment that are prohibiting people from living healthy lives.

• Just a few thousand years back People were building shelter exclusively out of what was around them - natural materials like wood from trees, clay, stone or water.

• It turns out the building products that we primarily build with now contain chemicals that are often very toxic to human bodies. They can now be found in almost every building product in a conventionally built building.

• I know this all sounds like a horror movie but of course a lot of this is invisible and that's why it's really important for us to know more, especially as designers and architects - to know enough to not include these materials that contain chemicals in the buildings that we're designing.

• Climate change, environmental health and people's health are completely interrelated. There's no way to separate them.

• I see more and more people being inspired to make change and taking on the challenge of what that means.

GUEST / JONSARA RUTH / HEALTHY MATERIALS LAB

• https://healthymaterialslab.org/

• https://healthymaterialslab.org/learning-hub/e-learning-online-certificate-program

• https://healthymaterialslab.org/learning-hub/the-affordable-housing-guide-program

• https://www.linkedin.com/company/healthy-materials-lab/

• https://www.facebook.com/healthymaterialslab/

• https://www.instagram.com/healthymaterialslab/

• https://www.saltylabs.us/

• The New Coal - Plastics & Climate Change, by Beyond Plastics

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FULL TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS COURTESY OF OTTER.AI (excuse any typos)

MM

Jonsara, many thanks so much for joining us on the show today. Could we start with a quick description of the Healthy Materials Lab at Parsons and its main objectives are?

JR

Yeah, sure. It's great to be here, Matt. Thanks for inviting us. I'm happy to represent our fantastic team of collaborators at the Healthy Materials Lab at Parsons.

You know, our central objective really is to remove harmful chemicals from the built environment that are prohibiting people from living healthy lives. That's the big, big picture.

We believe that if we can, as designers, architects and building professionals, put people in the center of our minds, when we make every design decision, then that changes the way we think about design, and it also puts people's health and environmental health at the forefront.

It changes the way we think about building products and the environment and changes the way we think about the whole process of designing our specific focuses on affordable housing, and people living in affordable housing.

The way that we do that is by providing education to designers, architects and building professionals and even faculty who are teaching the next generation of designers and architects so that they can understand how to design healthier buildings and homes as well.

We do that with courses, short courses, and programs that allow professionals to use these programs as their continuing education credits, so that they can build this right into their practice.

We have two robust online programs. One is specifically about affordable housing. And the other one is more generally, for anyone who is interested in the built environment and making it healthy. We also provide resources and tools and examples for designers and architects to make it simpler to build healthier.

A lot of the work that we're doing is to translate information from examples and from disciplines other than design into actionable knowledge within the building industry. So there's a lot of work being done about the Toxics included in building products. And a lot of that work is happening in science, or in public health, or in material research, or in environmental justice, advocacy.

We are constantly calling upon all of these different perspectives, and interpreting that into useful knowledge for designers and architects, and then putting it into, hopefully, really easily accessible formats through our website, live events and recorded education programs. Our goal is to really make make radical change in the building industry so that everyone can live healthier lives.

MM

It really can be like opening Pandora's Box, once one starts to get into this topic of healthy buildings and healthy materials, there's so much to get one’s head around and so much to research, having trusted sources of expertise becomes fundamental to accessing the right information and for us as designers and real estate professionals to get to the best possible answer as quickly as possible.

If we take a step back, just for perhaps those who are less aware of the risks and dangers of toxic chemicals in our built environment in the buildings around us, what are the main sources of those chemicals? How are they released into the air? What are the risks at stake in these unhealthy buildings and interiors?

JR

Yeah, the sources can be anything in the built environment. We live in a physical world that is made up of materials. I like to think about it historically.

Just a few thousand years back People were building shelter exclusively out of what was around them - natural materials like wood from trees, clay, stone or water. They were mixing these things together to make shelter.

Healthy materials vs unhealthy building products

In the Industrial Revolution there's this huge surge in manmade synthetic products that are primarily based in the fossil fuel industry. There was all this discovery going on about how to take to make synthetic products act a little bit more like natural products, and they were doing it quickly, without much regulation.

Sources of chemicals in indoor environments

Well it turns out the building products that we primarily build with now contain chemicals that are often very toxic to human bodies. They can now be found in almost every building product in a conventionally built building.

That can range from flooring materials, to wall materials, insulation materials, even to the paint on our walls, much of which is synthetic, acrylic, which is plastic. It’s almost like we're living in a plastic bag.

Almost every single material that's used in the built environment is a ‘product’ with a list of ingredients, like you might find in packaged food products.

Negative health impacts of unhealthy building materials

There's been research in the last 25 years to look at the ingredients that are in building products and identify their link to human disease. And it turns out that a lot of these chemicals are linked to human diseases as common as asthma, or diabetes, obesity, or even nerve disorders, autism, attention disorder in children and so on. Then there are the carcinogens and hormone disruptors as well.

So there's a long list of effects that these chemicals in building products can have on human bodies, and the especially vulnerable or children, because their organs are still growing, then their whole bodily system is affected, or older people who are have immune compromised systems are overly affected or pregnant women are, you know, gestating fetuses who could be affected.

Harmful chemicals released into the atmosphere

They can be released through VOCs / volatile organic compounds, or SVOCs, which are gaseous, so they can be emitted, they're invisible gases that release into the indoor environment and then we breathe them in. That's probably one of the most common ways that we can be affected through through inhalation.

Building materials also decompose over time. And as they decompose, they have like microscopic particles that move into the air and and cling on to dust and that dust can also be inhaled. Or it actually can even be ingested.

If we're eating, our mouths are open. We're sitting on a sofa, there's a little bit of dust on the sofa that gets onto our pizza, we put the pizza in our mouth, or some some kinds of chemicals actually can be absorbed through the skin.

So Bisphenol A, for example, has been found on cash register receipts, there's Bisphenol A there so the people working in a grocery store are more vulnerable than all of us, because they touch them every minute, but if we also touch that cash register receipt, we can absorb that Bisphenol A through our skin, which then acts as an endocrine receptor, a hormone disruptor in our body.

I know it all sounds like a horror movie but of course a lot of this is invisible and that's why it's really important for us to know more, especially as designers and architects - to know enough to not include these materials that contain chemicals in the buildings that we're designing.

MM

So this is where we start to build up the argument for how one can can improve the health credentials of our buildings, to do better than has been done in the past. But first we must, I think, define one element you mentioned around people and environmental health or rather how our health as humans, and the health of the environment and the planet around us are interconnected. Can one draw a line between the two? Is there in fact, no clear distinction between them?

Life Cycle Assessments of materials and building products

JR

You know, Matt, I think it's all related, it's impossible to separate the two. The way we think about this is through the full lifecycle of a material.

Take luxury vinyl tile (“LVT”) if we look at the origins of that material, or rather product made up of many different materials, unlike real wood for instance.

If you have LVT, it's made up of many different materials. And there's some great research, which traced all those different materials, so we're looking at vinyl and where all those ingredients come from, and tracing them back to their origins, we find that just in the mining of chloride, and in the manufacturing of vinyl it is extremely harmful to the environment, and to anyone living near those facilities.

So if we think about where plastics or petroleum, fossil fuels are refined, there are communities who unfortunately do not have much choice about where they live, and their housing is located right next to these refineries. And so those people are exposed to the plastics refinery on a daily basis, 24 hours a day.

It’s just one example where there's a link between the environmental pollution affecting the land, our soil and water systems, it's emitting huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the air, which we know is a major emitter of greenhouse gases, which then go on to cause climate change.

Then there's the people who are living right there, next to that factory, who are affected by that same air pollution. And then if that LVT makes it into their homes, then they're affected by the chemicals that make LVT pliable, soft, so now they're in their homes.

It’s really just following our imagination, asking “how is something made?” “Where is it made?” “What does it affect?” You can see how climate change, environmental health and people's health are completely interrelated. There's no way to separate them.

There's this great report that just came out in October called The New Coal - Plastics & Climate Change, by Beyond Plastics.

The summary of their findings show that plastics production might be even more negative impact on the climate than burning of coal. And the plastics production is a lot about building materials. It's a lot about making the places that we live, which then go on to negatively affect our human health, like we talked about before they can be, they can disrupt our hormone systems, as well as disrupt the climate, the atmosphere.

Biophilia

MM

We're using this People or Planet distinction as if they were somehow two separate concepts. But in fact nature is a bridge between them - it’s a false dichotomy. I often think of biophilia as being the bridge between those two. Once you accept that, once you see the bigger picture of us being at one with the natural world, then there is no distinction to make.

Healthy interior consultants in the design process

If we then look at how the practical realities of integrating some of these concerns into the design process, when we're talking about real estate developers, architects and designers, who are then giving health, both human and environmental health, a seat at the table, so that it becomes part of the design process of building or refurbishing, what does that look like in practical terms? Is it just about having a healthy interiors consultant on the team?

JR

What we're doing at Parsons is to develop a curriculum and courses to help educate the next generation of architects and designers to understand their choices better. So that's beginning, but in terms of professionals who are building buildings, now, there's more education necessary. We're involved in that effort to educate professionals to know better, but we also know that the process of building a building and the day to day demands upon an architect or designer are so extreme that often consultants are needed, yes.

the road to healthier buildings

You know, it takes time and resources to examine our choices more carefully. If we think about using healthier building products, and making healthier buildings, we actually do have to examine our past experience in our past choices, and we need to examine it pretty closely. That is where I think consultants come in.

I think we're also seeing that larger architecture and design firms are beginning to hire in, in house experts in material health, a lot of our students, our graduate students, and our researchers who have worked with us at the Lab, then move on to work in architecture and design firms, and they become the resident expert.

Healthy building standards

There are credentials to achieve, you know, you there are BREEAM in Europe, there's LEED, there's all these different certifying bodies which help people navigate the system. But some of those criteria would maybe not be aggressive enough. And so it's really important for folks to have genuine knowledge, not just to follow guidelines.

MM

I think that's one of the things I took from your four part online certification course - was that you didn't shy away from just showing how complex and thorny, this whole process is, really exposing that and being completely transparent about it, rather than trying to write the textbook and assume that’s the end of the debate.

So with that course, who's your main audience?

JR

Yeah. I mean it's really directed, primarily directed at designers and architects, and, but also at anyone in the building industry. Because we know that contractors, for instance, and developers, and owners of buildings, even maintenance workers, have a huge impact on the way that building is built, and the way that building is maintained.

So anyone involved in making choices for the building products or materials used in buildings, are the potential students of this course. That’s the big objective is, is just like you said, for people to understand that it's not straightforward, that it takes real thought to do it right, we have to weigh our choices, we have to make compromises always and make priorities about buildings. And so what we're trying to do is educate a way of thinking we call it material health thinking.

Architects and design professionals have been taking our course, and we're seeing, at least locally in the US, that we were watching practices actually shift to healthier ways of building, which is phenomenal.

Our next frontier is really to educate, to provide education that's appealing to building contractors. Because at the contractor level, that's where a lot of substitutions happen, you know, the architect and designer can write in a specification for a healthier building product, but then there might not be the money. And then the owner might say, Well, we, you know, we can't spend that much. And then the contractor will say, well, we'll just substitute it for this. And all of a sudden, you've lost your healthier building. Or at least you've lost strides on that. So that's our next frontier is to really to recruit more, more contractors and more maintenance folks in buildings to take these courses and even developers to take the courses.

MM

What is it about affordable housing that makes it such an acute problem in terms of the health or poor health credentials of these buildings?

JR

One of maybe the most obvious reasons is because affordable housing is generally built with cheap materials. And those cheap materials are generally the most unhealthy. Most of the cheap materials that are available today. are synthetics based in plastics, so based on the refinement of fossil fuels, which then are made into materials that are then made into the building products.

If you can find something that's $1 a square foot, well, let's use it for the poor people in affordable housing, and that's the thinking process and we're trying to change that. And to say, actually, we need to use healthier materials for people who don't have a choice about where they live.

Their homes might be located hated near factories or near toxic waste dumps or near highways where there's just a lot of exterior pollution. And then they go inside and their flooring is polluting their house too, they're being polluted in their external life and in their interior spaces.

And then often also people who are living in affordable housing are working in factories, and they're working on construction sites, and they're working in places where they're exposed all day long to harmful chemicals.

And then some of those chemicals are on their, their clothing, and then they bring that clothing home, and then the children in that household are exposed, doubly or triply.

So that that's the reason we've focused because we focus on affordable housing, because people who are living in affordable housing, our have all kinds of more risks and hazards of being exposed to harmful chemicals than than others.

So it's really important that at least we build homes, for low income people that are healthier, you know, let's start there. And, you know, try to give everyone a chance to live a thriving healthy life.

MM

It was a real eye opener for me, I'll be very honest, I think probably been guilty of falling into what is, in retrospect, a fairly white middle class privilege perspective on what I do, which is, trying to help in my own way to create healthier interiors. And it's far easier to have those conversations on premium new build or high end refurbishment projects in central London, with big pension funds behind us and plenty of cash.

There's still topics of discussion and debate around budgets but the numbers are on a completely different scale. And that section of your course really brought it home to me in a lightbulb moment, I just thought, oh, wow, there's this whole other side to this debate, which is, okay, how do we make all this happen when there aren't these big budgets available? How do you how do you crack that?

JR

That's a really great question. And that's where we dig into the details. I mean, that's where we really have to dig into the strategy for the financing of a building. We might redirect funds to materials, you know, adding a little bit of material and adding a little bit of budget to material cost. And what we're finding is that actually, material costs is less of an issue than labor costs anyway.

If this knowledge is brought to the table, then there are other ways to think about those budgets. So it really becomes more of an economic issue with folks in the other white collar folks in the office is like rethinking how they're, they're aligning their budget.

So for instance, if there's a developer who's building housing in five different cities, and there's an architect or designer who's specifying the materials in those cities, if they specify a particular flooring material, for instance, in each of those five buildings over 1000 units, rather than maybe 100 units, then the price differential goes way down. And then you can work it out with the manufacturer, who will often lower the cost. And so then it becomes much more cost competitive.

MM

When you look, say 10 years down the line from where you're at today. And considering where we've got to, what has been done and what has yet to be done. Are you optimistic for the future of healthy buildings and materials?

JR

We're suffering through such hard times right now, our workplace closed again today, like we did in 2020. And there's so much hardship, really, and, you know, we think about the climate crisis and the challenges that we need to overcome in order to slow the temperature rise. And so there's so much to say that we shouldn't be optimistic. But I can't afford not to be optimistic. I'm an optimist. Otherwise, I think I couldn't do this work. I do believe that we can make the shift.

More people who've taken the course or who understand the issues are inspired to make change, they're not discouraged, I see the opposite, I see more and more people being inspired to make change and taking on the challenge of what that means.

I think there's also been more and more economic arguments for the same - political and economic arguments often drive change. And so I think there's more and more legislation also, but we really as designers, and architects can make these changes that can make have mass, mass impact in the in the most positive way.

MM

Thank you for your time, we will link to the course in the show notes. How do you typically recommend people to engage website? Obviously your main? Yeah, weigh in? Do you do LinkedIn, Instagram, what are your channels,

JR

So www.healthymaterialslab.org is our website and on the Learning Hub, you can find the courses and register.

The registration is through the New School, which is where Parsons School of Design and where Healthy Materials Lab is houses. We're also on LinkedIn, and on Instagram and on Facebook. Our handle is at healthy materials lab. S

I hope more folks, join us there, come to our website, you'll find in addition to our courses, you'll find examples of healthier materials that you can specify. You can find tools and resources that will help you get there faster, and ultimately, a four course program which will give you all this knowledge that Matt is mentioning, after having taken the course.

So actually registration is open now through the end of January for the course and then it will close and not open again until the summer. So if you're listening, I encourage you to to Register now for the for the course at healthymaterialslab.org.

Healthy workplace wellness nutritional strategies

How can nature-inspired nutrition help us perform in the workplace?

What lessons can nature teach us about what to eat and drink during our work day in order to boost performance, creativity and concentration levels as part of a healthy building plan?

This is going to come with some caveats because, no matter what anyone tells you, there simply is no one size fits all solution, just as there is no one diet that will be equally suited for everyone on the planet. What we can establish however are some fundamental principles, largely inspired by our evolutionary history.

Opt for a real food diet

There's a general acceptance now that processed foods and refined carbohydrates with long ingredient lists have no place in a healthy, high-performance diet. That includes most cereals, industrially produced bread and biscuits - all of which can feature prominently in Western diet breakfast routines.

Instead, for performance in the workplace we’d do better to shift to what is called a whole food or real food diet, aiming to consume a wide variety of vegetables, fruits and nuts each day as the foundations of our food consumption pyramid.

People and planet considerations in nutrition

If possible, buy locally sourced, in season and non-GMO / organic in origin. That means maximum nutritional benefit for you and minimal impact on the planet. This simple purchasing strategy equates to a healthier gut microbiome and less food miles.

It may also add 20% onto your weekly shopping bill but you’ll notice that it is meat, fish, dairy and alcohol that really pushes the cost up.

Reduce your consumption of those food groups to focus on eating less but of higher quality and the numbers are likely to balance out each week.

Nutritional experimentation to find your energy sweet spot

When we reconsider what fuel our body and mind really need to perform optimally, a little experimentation can go a really long way. First though, you’ll need to drop your preconceptions of ‘fuel’ equating to frequent consumption of carbohydrate sources, be that wheat, oats, potatoes or rice. Those days are gone for those of lucky enough to allow ourselves the luxury of choice.

Upping your intake of nutrient dense fresh vegetables, grains and legumes in a rainbow of colours with modest (i.e. 1-2) portions of low-sugar fruits each day should be ‘ground zero’ for each day’s meal plan, no matter how loosely you interpret the term. To win at your own personal workplace wellness nutrition, this is our basic building block.

From there, we can look to consume foods high in healthy fats such as nuts, seeds , coconut, avocado and whole fat yoghurt as additional ‘substance’ to bulk up the meals.

Those eating meat, fish and cheese can integrate them into the baseline meal plan as well, leaving a relatively modest allocation for complex carbs such as sweet potato, a slice of sourdough bread from time to time, and so on.

Intermittent fasting for cognitive performance

For some, success with intermittent fasting can be a game-changer in productivity terms at work. It’s a remarkably simple nutrition strategy with impressive benefits for both mind and body, plus it is a time-saver - an especially appealing benefit for the perennially ‘busy’ and overworked!

A 16 hours OFF / 8 hours ON (a.k.a “16/8”) approach equates to consuming all of your daily food quota in an eight-hour “eating window”. For example, breakfast, lunch and a snack mid-afternoon before fasting until the following morning. Or lunch, snack and dinner followed by a fast until lunchtime the next day.

Once that becomes easy enough, and you have begun a genuine conversation with yourself about the quantity and timing of food that is actually needed to feel comfortable, you can push it to 18/6, 20/4, 22/2 and eventually a full 24hr fast.

The net results of this are a tangible sense of enhanced mental clarity, a certain lightness in the stomach that proves strangely liberating, and the realisation that three meals a day are optional, so skipping an airport dinner while travelling home one evening really isn’t much of a hardship at all.

When we look back through evolutionary time, having three regular meals a day is a novelty, our genes can handle eating less, in fact we are likely over-eating on occasions, which in turn can result in decreased performance and feelings of tiredness during the work day.

Healthy drinks for wellness nutrition in the workplace or healthy co-working office

If plain filtered water is just not your thing, try fruit-infused water and of course herbal teas while avoiding fruit juices and soft drinks that are high in sugar and low in fiber.

All they do is cause your sugar levels to spike in the short-term, which results in a clash. If you don’t notice that effect in yourself, it likely means you are consuming excessive amounts of sugar! Cut out sugar sources for 10-14 days to take yourself back to neutral then try again.

When you're consuming whole fruit juices, you want the whole fruit, literally, rather than a filtered version of the fruit. If making smoothies or juices at home, always aim to balance fruit with vegetables.

Coffee consumption in the healthy office

Coffee drinkers can take some comfort in knowing that an espresso contains far lower caffeine than filter due to the water-ground beans contact time. As espresso has a shorter contact time of around 25-seconds the beans it’s actually better to drink a number of shots, rather than filter during the day. Strange but true.

Look for recently roasted, fresh beans, ideally with a single origin of the Arabica bean rather than the inferior Robusta bean. Consider that some coffee blends sold in packs in your supermarket could be. 6-12 months old by the time it makes it into your cup whereas buying from a specialist local roaster reduces that timeline to a matter of weeks.

Green Tea & Matcha for mental wellness

The gold standard in workplace health drinks remains, without doubt, lightly brewed green tea, the Chinese and Japanese are well on to the benefits, both short term and long-term. It's a powerhouse for its amino acid profiles and polyphenols, meaning it's good for your brain, and it's cleansing for your gut biome as well.

Researchers believe ROS and oxidative stress play a significant role in Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, contributing to neuronal damage in other words. Antioxidant catechins may help to protect against these diseases, a theory supported by preliminary animal studies of EGCG.[4]

Research studies also show that a polyphenol rich diet can have a positive impact on preventing memory impairment associated with age-related disease such as Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. Our daily regime includes blueberries and a green tea supplement for their combined polyphenol power, for this very reason. [4]

For more on green tea see our article here on the Biofit website.

Biohacking in the workplace

If your energy, productivity and focus are not where you want them to be the first thing is to look at how your sleep, diet and exercise are dialled in, with sleep being arguably the most important of all!

Natural nootropics are a way for you to perhaps enhance your cognitive performance or work just a little bit more effectively thanks to their mental focus benefits. They're all about boosting feelings of positivity and wellbeing while reducing anxiety levels.

Look for Gingko Biloba, Ginseng, Ashwagandha, Bacopa Monnieri… all easy to find in a health food store or shop around online. You've got L-theanine which is an extraction from that wonderful green tea again, it serves to reduce the jitters of consuming caffeine as an interesting side-effect!

Medicinal mushrooms such as Reishi, Lion's Mane and Cordyceps are all worthy additions to a ‘stack’ of daily nootropics with a workplace wellness orientation.

It's all entirely natural a little experimentation can really go a long way when it comes to playing with how nature can can help you in your workplace performance.

For more information on the nourishment section of the WELL Building Standard, the healthy building reference, see here.

Sustainable Urban Rooftops with UrbanStrong

Green Roofs for green buildings

Welcome to episode 041 of the Green & Healthy Places podcast in which we discuss wellbeing and sustainability in real estate and interiors. This week I'm back in Brooklyn, New York talking to the Principal of UrbanStrong Alan Burchell.

Alan trained as a mechanical engineer, with a background in HVAC and plumbing systems then slowly migrated across into renewable energy and eventually to vegetative rooftops so he has a very technical, hands-on take on the practicalities of urban greenery solutions.

Green Rooftop for wellbeing

We discuss trends in rooftop gardens in New York in the wake of Covid lockdowns, the wellbeing benefits of connecting with nature on a rooftop, as well as the economic and environmental benefits of a green roof from a range of different stakeholder perspectives - occupants, developers and city government.

We look at green roofs and stormwater management, new legislation pushing for green and solar rooftops on new build projects in NY, the opportunities in rooftop food production and green roofs in the context of the healthy buildings concept.

Vegetative Roof Benefits

Arguably my main takeaway from this convo is the interconnectedness of benefits once one brings nature back into the city via the rooftops, they deliver multiple functions at once, even if the building owner is not actually interested in half of them! It’s a valuable insight and Alan has a positive message to spread, so enjoy the episode and hit subscribe to receive next week’s download too.

:

Conversation highlights

It doesn’t feel right that with we have so little opportunity to connect with nature here given the huge percentage of our lives we spend in dense urban centers.

Green roofs clean and cool the air, sequester carbon and provide rooftop habitats for birds, bees, bats, butterflies, and much more. 

Farm-to-table is great but roof-to-table is even better

Green roofs perform multiple functions with societal, environmental, building operations, and mental health benefits, all simultaneously. 

Building owners should be thinking of their rooftops as buckets instead of lids, because there's money falling out of the sky.

Solar panels lose operating efficiency when the ambient air around them gets too hot but Plants cool the air around them through through evapotranspiration so when you install solar panels directly on top of green roofing, the plants cool the air underneath the solar panels and help them to produce more electricity

GUEST / ALAN BURCHELL / PRINCIPAL, URBANSTRONG

• https://urbanstrong.com/

• LinkedIn

• Insta

• Facebook

• Book reference: Nature's Best Hope

• Brooklyn Grange Farm

HOST / MATT MORLEY / WELLBEING CHAMPION

• https://biofit.io/

• https://www.mattmorley.net/

FULL TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS COURTESY OF OTTER.AI (excuse typos)

MM

Alan tell us about your background in sustainability and how you came to be the principal at UrbanStrong

AB

Sure thing. First of all, Matt, thanks for having me. It's a real honor to be on the show. So formally, I trained in undergrad as a mechanical engineer, and a lot of mechanical engineers who don't know what they want to do coming out of school University wind up getting sucked into working for consulting firms, specifically engineering consulting firms.

So I worked at a mechanical electrical consulting firm who did all kinds of work for different building types. And I specifically was designing HVAC systems, plumbing and piping and fire suppression systems for banks, condos, restaurants, you name it, that was a little bit dry. I was a little bit young, that was kind of living for the weekends. And I realized I needed a change. And I didn't know this term at the time. But what I was looking for was a career path with a vein of some sort of social responsibility going through it. 

So I went back to school, I did a business degree and found the world of renewable energies. And within the world of renewable energies, wind energy was most appealing to me. It had the dynamic nature of wind turbines that appealed to the mechanical engineer in me, but then the renewable green energy component that appealed to the the outdoorsman and the environmentalist

 I worked in that industry for a Spanish wind turbine manufacturer at their North American corporate headquarters just outside of Philadelphia. 

Eventually, then, I wanted to get further entrenched in the world of sustainability. I started studying up on the space and I found the world of green vegetated rooftops and that really checked a lot of boxes for me because I'm a big city as much as I love the outdoors. I really like big cities, I've had the blessed opportunity to live in several around the world. Toronto, Barcelona, London, Shanghai, Philadelphia, now New York, and it never sat well with me the idea that in order to connect with nature, someone had to get out of the city, like go up to a cabin or cottage lake house go to the beach. 

It doesn’t feel right that with we have so little opportunity to connect with nature here given the huge percentage of our lives we spend in dense urban centers. 

 I had a side interest in architecture, interior design, and every cubicle or office I've ever had has always been chock full of plants.

I realized that green roof systems are multifaceted in their benefits, and that they offer to building owners, people battling climate change, municipalities looking to mitigate issues that plague modern day dense urban centers… they checked all these boxes. 

So I went into the world of green rooftops, I first naively thought, Great, I'll start my own Green Roof Company. And then I realized very quickly that there are already several people doing this design build firms in New York City doing exactly this. So I couldn't really go from never having heard of green roofs to being competitive in the New York City Market in a short span of time.

Instead, I decided to insert myself in the market in with the only tools that I had with me, other than enthusiasm for green roofs, and that was engineering system sales. And so from my previous career, I started basically offering third party, freelance business development or a really dirty word for it would be brokerage of green roof sale. 

I would go out and beat the streets and look for clients and building owners, sell them on the idea of green roofs, and then connect them with green roof design, build firms, collect a bit of a commission, and then move on from there. 

That evolved very quickly into offering the same for rooftop solar, living walled gardens. And then over the years, it's grown and grown in line with the sustainable buildings concept!

I offer them a range of sustainable green roof and green building consulting services from design, build or long term maintenance for green roofs, living walls, rooftop solar, advanced stormwater systems for rooftops, and all of the above.

MM  

In the end you are offering a kind of vertically integrated service / product offer which makes complete sense because once someone jumps into bed with you, it's natural that they should want a complete service from one trusted sustainable green roofs supplier. 

You mentioned New York, we can hear background noise from New York, which sounds brilliant, but like tell me what's happening at the moment there. What's the scene looking like? How have you seen a change over the last few years? And where do you see it going? Like what's what's happening there specifically in your location, your city, your hometown?

AB

Look, COVID cannot be ignored. It probably finds its way into every episode of your podcast in one way or another right?

How I've seen it specifically impact our industry, our multifamily residential, Co Op, condo buildings and whatnot. Those folks who perhaps had declined to move forward with a rooftop amenity space or green rooftop amenity space in the past, found themselves calling us back up during COVID saying, ‘Okay, we get it now, we really see the value in having a private rooftop garden space exclusive for residents in the building where they can access without having to go out into public.’

And we used to sell it as ‘Hey, wouldn't it be nice to take a mug of tea up to your own green roof rather than having to go out to a city park and people really understood that during COVID. 

So, demand for outdoor terrace spaces and for green space has really increased from that perspective. Similarly with everyone quarantining and working from home more so than ever, people are critically evaluating their indoor surroundings and asking whether how this space contributes or maybe negatively affects their mental health. 

And so people are now starting to click into realizing that plants are a great prescription for the quarantined and so people were looking for ways to bring greenery into their home, whether that's on a terrace in the form of a little green roof on the rooftop, a lush green roof or indoors as living walls. 

Because you can only fit so many potted plants on your windowsill or on your bookshelf and then you run out of space and if you want to go heavy with the greenery you've only got so much floor space but a lot of people have excess wall space so you could build a living garden wall really lush out green out your indoor space but not consumed that valuable footprint real estate.

MM  

That talks to the ‘mental wellbeing’ and healthy buildings side, the human aspect to it, I think we can all connect with that at a very primal level but there are economic and environmental benefits, too. How do you see those two factors playing into a decision making process around installing one of these green roofs in a sustainable building, whether or not they are pursuing a green building certification? 

AB 

Sure, it really depends on which stakeholder we're talking about Because the New York City government are motivated for people to build green roofs for a host of reasons. Private property owners and building owners are motivated to build green roofs for a very different set of reasons. 

The thing I like before we get into those reasons about that situation, though, is with green roofs, regardless of which set of benefits you're most interested in, and what's motivating you to buy the green roof, you get the other benefits as part of the package. 

It's like if you and I buy the same swiss army knife, you may be buying it for the Phillips screwdriver and maybe I want it for the tweezers and the scissors. But we get each other's tools when we because we're buying the same swiss army knife. 

most green roofs being built in New York City, if we're being perfectly honest, are by wealthy people who are building these lush green oases, you know, terraces or rooftops because they want a calm, green natural space on top of the city where they can drink rose wine spritzes with their friends and relax. 

As the environmentalist I like green roofs because they're managing stormwater, sequestering carbon, providing habitat and food for migratory and local species and whatnot. 

But whether the clients care about that stuff or are aware of that stuff or not. Either way they are providing the city or the general public all of those benefits when they build their swanky rooftop garden oasis, as far as direct benefits, and this is how I've definitely seen things change in New York dramatically. 

speaking from the city perspective, many of the older, larger North American cities are battling a stormwater management crisis. And that's because our sewer systems were designed 150 years ago, when there was only a fraction of the pavement space and everything was, you know, the island of Manhattan was mostly farmer's fields above the absolute downtown. 

So rain didn't really go into the sewer, it all landed on the open green space. And 150 years ago, there was only a fraction of the toilets now, you know, population a 9 million that's a lot more toilets in the world 150 years ago, so there's nowhere for the rainwater to go except hitting pavement going into storm drains or hitting rooftops and going down the scuppers into the sewer drain. And there's way more wastewater being generated, and then going being sent through indoor plumbing directly down into the sewer. 

We in in several North American larger cities on the east coast, the older ones at least like Toronto, New York, DC, Philly Chicago, we have what's called a combined sewer system. That basically means there's it's a single pipe system, so rainwater and toilet water all goes down into the same pipe on a dry day where you can still manage to process all of it at the wastewater treatment facility. 

But in New York City, for example, it only takes 1/20 of an inch of rain that's about between one and two millimeters of rain is all that's required to max out the city's wastewater pipe going down to the wastewater treatment facility. And so the excess rather than having it pushed back up and through people's toilets, and flood their homes, or push back up through the roof through the storm drains in the streets and flood the streets, the excess is just allowed to flow over through what are called combined sewer overflow points. And there's 460 of these combined sewer overflow points lining the New York City Harbor. And people put really, really gnarly stuff down the toilet, way worse for our health than feces and urine. 

We're talking like, you know, illicit drugs, expired birth control medication, cancer medication, broken glass batteries, I mean, people are animals, and they put awful stuff down the toilet in the privacy of their own home. And all of that is flushing out into our local waterways here in New York and the local waterways of all the other cities I just mentioned to you, whenever there's more than two millimeters of rain in the city or you know, 1/20 of an inch. 

So, that is a major problem that cities are being fined at the federal level to clean jp. And so now the options are, you know, tear up the sewer system and put a new one in which is preposterous that could never possibly happen to New York, or you know, put down more parkland. But you know, every inch of New York City's developed you can't tear up a city block and put a new park but nothing says these Park parks have to be at grade level and nothing says these parks have to be continuous they can be distributed parks cut up into tiny places and put up on top of the rooftops where the rainwater lands. And so basically green roofs, these many little rooftop parks act as sponges, they absorb the rainwater right where it lands on the roof. 

Half the water never makes it off the roof because it's just used for photosynthesis and Evapo transpired by the plants up into the atmosphere. And the rest of the water takes its time to percolate through the system. 

Green roofs clean and cool the air, sequester carbon and provide rooftop habitats for birds, bees, bats, butterflies, and much more. 

So there's a whole host of environmental reasons why cities like green roofs, they also like rooftop solar here in New York City for reasons that should be obvious by now. 

So a big change that I've seen recently was as part of New York City's Green New Deal or the climate mobilization act, I and a few other people testified at City Hall back in January 2019. In support of a few key pieces of legislation, they were all unanimously passed, but a big one that's going to have a major impact on the skyline of New York City, specifically, its rooftops is something called local law 9294. And this basically mandates that all new construction and certain retrofit projects must install either a green roof or a rooftop solar, there are certain exclusions if it's too sloped, or if you don't have the structural capacity or if it's too shady, or whatnot. But nonetheless, this is going to have a massive impact in in driving change to the greening of New York City's rooftop. 

So this is a big change, it only really came into effect about a year ago. And so this is for all new building permits. And as buildings start to go up, you're going to see the number of green roofs and solar installations in New York City, honestly skyrocket. So that's an exciting, exciting change here.

MM  

That's the city in a way laying out his vision for the future in terms of how roofs need to play a functional role in protecting the city itself and the urban landscape from from climate change from the negative impact that we're bringing, just by building cities of this.

AB

Absolutely. I mean rooftops are the front line, whether you're talking about the photons from sunlight or the raindrops from clouds, one of the first things they're both hitting is the rooftops in the city. So that's a frontline defense to capture these photons and use them to generate electricity. 

I may also add that as you capture these photons on solar panels, that means they're not hitting the roof membrane and not heating up the membrane and not sending all that latent heat baking down And driving up air conditioning bills in the summertime. 

Green roofs do the same thing. The leaves of plants are actually the plant solar panels because that's their food energy, if you will, from the photons and use it to photosynthesize, and grow plant more plant matter. But again, they're intercepting those photons or preventing them from hitting the roof membrane - plants can act as the first line of defense yet in New York City, less than 0.01% of rooftops are greened in any way and it's a very much out of sight is out of mind situation.

New York City is like a lot of other really expensive urban centers around the globe. It's absolutely obsessed with real estate, the cost of real estate, the cost per square foot to buy or own or rent or whatnot. And yet no one does anything with the rooftops they max out every square centimeter of their apartment yet building rooftops are completely undeveloped - I find that odd but that's changing as the city realizes it's a massive wasted opportunity to solve many problems that plague urban centers around the world.

MM  

I sometimes see a rooftop used for an element of food production, whether that food is then consumed by those living in the building or whether it's distributed or handed out to those in need in the local area, whatever it may be.

Do you see that as an exception rather than The rule when it comes to how to utilize a rooftop, or are there real benefits in terms of making a more resilient city so that there's more local kilometer zero production happening on site around NYC around Manhattan?

AB

It's a bit of everything - all of the reasons that I've mentioned above that why city municipalities, city governments like green roofs, it doesn't matter whether the plants, at the very top layer of the green roof are ornamental amenity space plants that are there just for aesthetics, or if they're there as food crops, they're still performing all of the critical functions and offering the same benefits as every type of green roof does in terms of stormwater management, sequestering carbon, insulating buildings, providing habitat for species and whatnot.

I think urban food production on rooftops is a massive opportunity for cities around the world - we encourage all of our green roof clients to dedicate at least some portion of their green roof to a little urban agriculture culture plot 

As I'm looking out the window right now, my neighbors are Brooklyn Grange - one of the largest rooftop farms in the world, here in New York. So that's a fully commercial operating farm on top of a commercial building. But there's plenty of green roofs in a city where maybe it's an amenity space on a multi a private, you know, residential building, and maybe the residents will ask us to dedicate, you know, a few square meters off to one corner, for like a little tomato plant growing a little plot there or something like that. 

Yeah, there's plenty of opportunities to create sustainable green local jobs, and then produce food that's either used if it's in a commercial entity, like for the the building tenants themselves, or can be sold or distributed or donated to the local community. And it definitely speaks to improving the resiliency of the city.

Most cities are importing their food from other cities or other countries. And the more that you can grow locally, the less reliant you are on other cities for your food production. So you're certainly becoming more self sufficient in that regard even before considering the transmission emissions, I mean, if we're trucking, you know, fresh fruit in from California, it's got to come all the way across, it's not quite as fresh by the time it gets here, it's also expensive to truck it in, and there's certain carbon emissions related to all that transportation to ship it over. So all of that is eliminated, when you can be growing right off the roof.

farm to table is great but roof to table is even better

Matt Morley  

So the key point I'm picking up there is that it's not one or the other, the way these natural roofs work is that they can do multiple things at the same time. So you're not neglecting for example, improved biodiversity by adding an agricultural component to your green roof. In fact, it's multiple layers of benefits rather than one to the exclusion of anything else.

AB

green roofs perform multiple functions with societal, environmental, building operations, and mental health benefits, all simultaneously. 

And, and passively, you know, whether we like it to or not, again, the people who are if a wealthy couple just wants to build a fancy rooftop garden amenity space just for their own family, let's say those plants are still sequestering carbon cleaning and cooling the air you know, thermally insulating the space which reduce improves their energy efficiency and probably reduces their reliance on fossil fuel power plants. 

And again, maybe they don't care about all of that maybe they're not aware of it, maybe they don't care for a lot of our clients, we will if in in lieu of any input from them around plant species selection, we are going to lean heavily towards favoring native and adaptive plant species so as to you know, improve conditions for local and migratory species

If anyone wants to deeper dive on this topic, there's a book called nature's best hope. And it's by Douglas Tallamy, he speaks extensively on the topic of the urgent need for people when they're doing landscaping, in their homes, around their buildings, whether it's on the rooftop or at grade, using native plants that are native to the area or adaptive rather than bringing in these plants that are not native to the region and maybe are going to require quite a lot of resources in order to keep them alive and whatever your respective microclimate is. 

And then also they could be potentially, you know, we, the concrete jungles are creating these like these, these these blot out of blue down at a loss for words here, these these scorched earth kind of patches all around the globe where nature can't really thrive, or birds, who maybe after, you know, hundreds of generations are of programming are used to flying that migratory path when they're used to touching down there to rest, or seek food or, or, or or procreate, they can't do that now, because it's all some urban sprawl is created a concrete spread. 

And so anything that we can do to recreate what they're used to having there as far as greenery that houses the bugs that they want to eat, or provides habitat for them to build nests, or rest, anything we can do to help with that will reduce the impact that our urban centers and urban sprawl are having on the local ecology.

Matt Morley  

So when you zero in on solar panels, for example, where you're really integrating a technical component, perhaps more of an engineering angle, there, the benefits presumably reduce and focus more on the environmental impact the economic play rather than nature. So when you're proposing those, what are the conditions under which you would typically propose solar panels to be in the mix or to be the dominant force on any given rooftop?

AB

I'll give you the highlight reel, but it's actually such an involved answer sometimes. And it's, it really needs to be determined on a case by case basis that, you know, years ago, we actually, we realized we were giving away so much upfront free consulting for buildings, because they would call up and say, Hey, we've got a roof Should we go green roof for solar, we see that you offer both. And there would just be such an involved process to determine which is best for them and their goals and their budget - we now offer it as a branched off consulting service, in advance of either building them a green roof or a solar, you know, we're sort of It's a discovery process, if you will, or a service. 

On a really high level, there's a few things you know, we can either go process of elimination, like a lot of time, people will call up saying they want a green roof and I started asking them questions, and one decision or another or one element or another could kill the green roof project and green roofs, they get killed, they die on the vine all the time. And then that leaves them with what they feel is a useless rooftop.

 I say, well hang on, there's always solar, you know, when it comes to solar money is falling out of the sky and solar panels are buckets. So your your roof is far from useless, it can be a great source of passive income for your building, especially now that it turns out that you can't build the green roof that you wanted for whatever reason. 

So for example, solar panels are quite are quite lightweight, they're really only about five pounds per square foot. I'll let you translate that into kilos and put that on the show notes compared to say solar sorry, compared to say green roofs, which at their lightest are going to be say 15 pounds per square foot and but they get heavy very quickly. 

As a little rule of thumb green roofs tend to weigh six and a half pounds per inch of depth per square foot. And a minimum at the minimum, you're the average green roof is three to four inches. So we're talking at least 18 to 25 pounds per square foot compared to solar that's five or six. 

Now that to be clear, that's when the green roof is fully saturated or holding the most amount of stormwater that it's it's designed to from an engineering perspective. But that's not including. If it's meant to be a public amenity space and or just amended in official amenity space listed on the building certificate of occupancy basically, are you officially decreeing to the city that this is an amenity area for the building? 

Because the moment you do that, in New York City, for example, you have to show that you have structural capacity at 100 pounds per square foot if people are going to be walking around up there. 

So if you have a deck, and people are going to be congregating there with any regularity, and then you have greenery around it, and that's your green roof, you're going to need at least 100 pounds per square foot in the areas where the people congregate. And so a lot of buildings don't have that. 

And so that's an a lot of building owners will say, well hang on, if we can't use it as an amenity space, we don't we don't want it as a green roof. And then that that's that's frequently what kills a lot of greener projects in New York City. So then you're left with solar?

MM  

I'm sure it's a question you're asked often by clients, no doubt far earlier in the process than you might like. But inevitably, the economics of all this has to come into play at some point. There are some big numbers involved. I know. But why don't we just have a quick overview if we can have the financial side, and what we're looking at in terms of these green roofs, and how perhaps different sizes, if it's shapes or densities or planting strategies can all affect exactly how much the overall budget equates to.

AB

So that really ranges. I mean, it just depends on so many different factors. It's hard to speak absolutely about this, because it changes even within New York City, the exact same green roof technology, because beneath the plants was a wide array of technologies, the exact same green roof technology, in the exact same neighborhood of New York City on two very different buildings could cost $17 A square foot or it could cost $60 per square foot.

I'd say the two big the two biggest factors are economies of scale is massive for green roofs, because what a lot of construction projects make mobilization is a big one. 

So to make an extreme example, if you're mobilizing a crew, maybe you're getting a crane permit, you put design hours and just to make an extreme absurd example, if you're doing all of that for one square meter or a one square foot green roof now just to make an example, right, the all those costs per square meter per square foot would be outrageous. 

But if the exact same designer, same crane permit, same crew mobilization same design, ours is allocated over 500 square meters or 100 square meters or 500 square feet 1000 square feet, you can obviously see that that cost per square foot is going to drop like a stone. 

Similarly with solar panels, oh that so but sticking with green roofs, the other thing that can really drive it would be access. So I mentioned there a second cranes, I mean, if we can crane the material up that's one efficient way to get a lot of material up to the roof very quickly. 

However, depending on what part of New York City that you're in, that crane can cost anywhere from $5,000 a day to $40,000 a day. Depending on the permitting do you have to block off the road you have to build these protective sidewalk sheds so that people can still walk along the sidewalk underneath. So the crane costs cranes can either save you a lot of money with efficiency or kill the project with additional costs. 

But at the other extreme, you know, sometimes for like a brownstone, like the classic brownstone roof. Sometimes the only way to get material there is for the installers to carry it on their back up a ladder through a hatch in the ceiling. And that's obviously that's not as efficient as a crane. 

A good in between would be they have these things called blower trucks. And so basically a big almost like a dump truck but full of growing media or let's call it soil for now for the green roof that pulls up out front of the building. And there's a giant hose that can go up like six storeys tall, and it blows the dirt like a reverse vacuum from the truck up six storeys, and they just spray it like a garden hose, but it's dirt. 

So that's a great way to convey materials up. And yeah, I'm kind of going all over the place here. But access and economy of scale as far as the square area of the project can greatly affect the cost per square foot of a green roof. 

I'd say similarly, there's there's different types of green roofs, right? I mean, we have there's very gorgeous like alarmingly beautiful English Garden meadow looking things that you may see if a five star hotel is building a rooftop amenity space, they're going to want the highest end landscaping green roof up there possible and they're going to want it to look that nice and green and well kept for as many months of the year before the winter kicks in. 

Contrast that so that's going to be very expensive on a per square foot basis. You know, you'd have like top of the top of the line automated irrigation to act as an insurance policy. In case there's not enough precipitation, you're going to want to have nice lighting and benches, paver stones, walkways a wide range of herbaceous and woody species and you know blue different you know, you're going to want to sink a lot of time and energy and money into the design of that, you know, you're going to want a Professionally licensed landscape architect attacking that problem to really make sure that it's looking absolutely banging for as many months of the year. 

Contrast that with, say, a sprawling, single storey warehouse in an industrial park, who may be they never plan on going up there, they never plan on seeing it, they only want it because it's going to protect the roof membrane from UV degradation. 

So they don't need to replace the roof membrane every 20 years. Instead, they replace it every 50 or 60 years. And all that green matter up there, as I mentioned earlier, is going to intercept the sun's energy, the photons and soak up that otherwise, he energy that's going to hit the roof membrane and beatdown for a lot of these single storey warehouses, their air conditioning bills are absolutely astronomical in the summertime. 

And it's just to keep the plants sorry, the warehouse warehouse plants are operating at a comfortable condition either for the goods that are being stored inside, or for the workers that are in there. And if you just have a black tar bitumen roof, and the sun is baking down on that, and you're a single storey building, your AC bills can be astronomical, but a thin, basic crummy looking, you know, low hanging fruit bargain basement, green roof, that's only one or two inches deep. 

And you have systems which are sort of in the cactus family, they're like drought tolerant, they're not the best looking, but they're the workhorse plant species and green roofs, if you just build the most basic green roof possible, and you could do that for you know, depending on the size of the roof, maybe, you know, 15 or $18 per square foot, that's before any tax breaks that are available, you could slash your air conditioning bills in that building by anywhere from 60 to 80%. 

So that just from the air conditioning bills alone, you pay off that green roof in no time. And, and then again, you could just frankly, let it go to help you don't care what it looks like, you know, because it's not an amenity space, you don't really need to spend a lot of money upfront on expensive looking plant species. And you don't need to spend a lot of time maintaining it, you can just kind of let nature take it over and let it turn into a real nature roof so to speak.

MM  

Okay, so then the flip side of that, surely is is the benefits and the return on the investment or just the outgoings at the front end. But what the owner developer landlord is getting back over the medium to long term.

AB

Yeah, from an accounting perspective, building owners see the rooftop as a cost center. No one thinks about their building rooftop making money from they just think, Oh, God, this damn thing is going to leak again. And the only think about is how much money they're going to need to reinvest to put another layer of patchwork and new waterproofing on top. And they don't realize and instead of being a source of headache and stress and a cost center, it can be a revenue generator and a source of joy. 

You can catch money falling out of the sky, whether that's photons from sunlight or stormwater if you're in DC, it can be your piggy bank on top of your roof. 

Building owners should be thinking of their rooftops as buckets instead of lids, because there's money falling out of the sky.

Matt Morley  

I love that! You mentioned stormwater there. 

I wanted to pick up on that topic because it's a big one in terms of sustainability and environmental impact. And there's clearly a lot of potential there. 

So how do you typically talk about the stormwater angle on a green roof when you are discussing options with a client? And what are the overall benefits and opportunities there from your perspective?

AB

Okay, so they have a program in Washington DC, where they're basically stormwater. It's such a major issue in Washington DC, that they're basically those buildings who manage more than what building code requires them to in terms of the amount of rainwater that they can hold on the rooftop are awarded credits. 

And those buildings who cannot manage enough rainwater on their property on their rooftop are fined exorbitant amounts of money. And then they basically then need to buy their way out of these fines by buying the credits from those people who have them for doing a better than basic building code level of managing stormwater. 

And there's a there's a stormwater credit trading program in Washington DC around this topic. And I expect this as because the cities are falling like dominoes here in North America who aren't mandating green roofs for any number of the reasons I mentioned earlier. 

And as you're going to see that stormwater becomes a bigger and bigger problem and as fresh quality water and cleaner waterways are becoming more prioritized, you're going to see stormwater credit trading programs like that implemented, and I and so what's happening is people are then realizing that they're, they are then motivated, especially at the beginning of design to turn their buildings into bathtubs that can hold as much water up on On the rooftop as possible, because the more that they can go about building code, that's just free money for that they basically get awarded these credits, which have real value. 

And so green roofs can do that we have these called Blue roofs and blue green roof, you could basically have a system that looks like a milk crate, these plastic cells that can be, you know, anywhere from 10 to 60 centimeters deep, filling the rooftop and then on top of that, you put paver stones so that people can walk around and they just think it's a regular amenity space, but really below them could be half a meter of empty void space where rainwater is stored instead of cisterns in the parking lots are underneath the building. 

And they are awarded annually, not an insignificant sum of money for doing so. Then the other thing we didn't talk about was green roofs when integrated with solar panels. 

Solar panels lose operating efficiency when the ambient air around them gets too hot but Plants cool the air around them through through evapo transpiration So when you install solar panels directly on top of green roofing, the plants cool the air underneath the solar panels and help them to produce more electricity. 

So even if you can squeak out half a percent improvement in the efficiency of a solar power plant a CFO of that company loves it. But if you can actually tell him, Hey, I'm going to reduce your efficiency loss by six to 8%. I mean, that's in the summer months, that is a massive amount of money. And so plus you didn't get so basically you have you have all the benefits of the green roof on the system, you have all the benefits sorry, the greener system, you have all the benefits of the solar system, and you get more electricity from the solar. So solar integrated, green roofs are big. 

And then if you want to combine all of them that below that you could have the 40-60cm of rainwater retention and the blue roof hidden beneath immediately beneath that green solar green roof area. So there's so much going on and rooftops and so much is going to happen in the next five years that people are going to realize rooftops are a vastly underutilized resource to either make bank or or solve climate change issues or improve mental health. You know, you name it.

What is active travel as a healthy building strategy?

Image courtesy of Active Score case study / Castlemead

Healthy buildings and active travel

The active travel concept is now well established within the healthy buildings movement. Essentially it’s about supporting micro-mobility, and the facilities that such forms of transport to and from a building require from a landlord or developer.

Micro-mobility includes jogging, cycling (be it on a standard, folding, or baby carrier bike) and e-scooters.

Supporting this active travel concept as a sustainability minded real estate developer equates to increasing the quality and range of on-site facilities available for active commuters as a way to encourage them away from private vehicle use or public transport.

All of this feeds neatly into additional green building and healthy building certifications but may require additional expertise beyond that offered by an architectural studio in order to truly future-proof a building in anticipation of further growth in active commuting - that is where ActiveScore and their community of ActiveScore Accredited Professionals can help.

See our 9-point guide to healthy buildings here.

how does active travel relate to real estate ‘esg’?

Environmental, Social & Governance strategies for a real estate asset are now a fundamental part of any forward thinking developer’s plans. By promoting active travel to/from a building, there are tangible reductions in CO2 emissions as less people rely on their own vehicles or public transport to travel to and from work.

By taking action to deliberately foster a community of active commuters, opportunities are created for social bonding and interaction, especially important in an era when working from home has become a viable alternative option to office life.

The health and wellbeing benefits, both physical and mental, are obvious - getting to work on foot, by bike or even on an e-scooter is simply a more positive experience in many ways than taking a busy tube or bus, even sitting in rush hour traffic.

Finally, the Governance piece involves a landlord / building management team taking responsibility for communicating the services and facilities they have available to all occupants, both new and existing, by leveraging a smart building app for example.

What is Active Score for Active Travel?

Based on the principle that a building’s health and wellbeing facilities are a strong driver of desirability for a potential tenant, and their workforce, the Active Score Certification offers a set of standards that help landlords, leasing agents and indeed prospective tenants know what a specific building offers by way of active travel facilities.

The certification is broken down by 70% infrastructure, 20% occupier engagement services and 10% future proofing. Benchmarks are taken against the WELL Building Standard, BREEAM and a local borough’s planning guidance.

In the first instance, a lack of basic facilities such as showers, parking and lockers can prevent cyclists, runners or those with an e-scooter from making their own way to work, thereby placing extra pressure on the roads, specifically in the form of public transport and car usage.

The impact of Covid has in fact meant a boom in the use of such micro-mobility options, so this is a particularly interesting time for commercial real estate developers to be dialling up on their active travel facilities in an office or mixed-use building, for example.

Occupier engagement services meanwhile can include bike repair on-site, cycle training, creating a cycling club and so on.

What is Active Travel Score?

Active Travel Score was set up by James Nash in the UK, we interviewed him for our Green & Healthy Places podcast here. He’s a serial entrepreneur in the cycling sector and the man driving the company today. A number of different ‘scores’ are on offer, from the basic 'Certified to Silver, Gold, Platinum and Platinum 100.

In 2021 they certified 85 buildings in eight countries. Amongst them was 100 Bishopsgate, a 181m high building in central London developed by Brookfield Properties. It received a perfect Platinum 100 score thanks to its dedicated Active Commuter Park (ACP) and extensive occupant facilities making it arguably THE reference point for healthy buildings and active travel in the UK today.

Adopting ActiveScore equates to engaging with them in one of three ways. Firstly, a basic level building certification for a minimum period of two years. This includes recommendations on how to improve the assets’ overall active travel friendliness, including infrastructure and soft measures, to ultimately make it a more healthy building

A second option includes all of the above with the addition of a consultation with an ActiveScore surveyor - including advice on the building’s existing plans and product specification.

Finally, the team can take a more proactive, design-lead approach by providing detailed drawings of active travel facilities, active travel product specification and advice on look and feel of the active travel area. In other words, they do the leg work for you, whilst also ensuring the building is maximized for wellbeing credits in WELL, BREEAM, etc. in the relevant active travel credit categories.

What is an ActiveScore Accredited Professional?

We recently completed the process of becoming an ActiveScore Accredited Professional and found it to build very much on such green building and healthy building certification standards as WELL and FITWEL, as well as LEED and BREEAM, so having prior knowledge of some or all of these is a considerable advantage. You will hit the ground running in other words, rather than coming at this subject completely fresh.

As an ActiveScore AP one is responsible for marking a project for its active mobility credentials, topics include the number and variety of bike and e-scooter parking spaces, security measures in place to protect them, the extent of the shower facilities and related services, community building efforts around active commuting amongst building occupants, the look and feel of such parking areas as well as their location, ease of access, and so on.

Indoor Air Quality with Kaiterra CEO Liam

Talking Healthy Buildings and Indoor Air Quality with Liam Bates, CEO of Kaiterra

Welcome to episode 40 of the Green & Healthy Places podcast in which we discuss wellbeing and sustainability in real estate and hospitality. I’m your host, Matt Morley, Founder of Biofilico healthy buildings / wellbeing interiors.

This week I’m in Beijing with Liam Bates, CEO of Kaiterra, a company creating indoor air quality monitors combined with a software component that evaluates that data to drive improvements in indoor environmental quality and ultimately reduce energy expenditure.

We discuss outdoor air quality’s impact on the air we breathe indoors, what uncomfortably high CO2 levels in enclosed meeting rooms mean for our mental performance, the importance of continuous 24/7 365 data monitoring of indoor air, how efforts to create more sustainable buildings in the past may have inadvertently created less healthy buildings, the levers available to us to improve poor quality indoor air and how buildings, landlords and employers need to up their game like never before to encourage workers back into the office.

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GUEST / LIAM BATES / CEO OF KAITERRA

• www.kaiterra.com/

• Kaiterra Air Academy (blog)

• www.linkedin.com/company/kaiterra/

HOST / MATT MORLEY / WELLBEING CHAMPION

• LinkedIn

• www.mattmorley.net/

• https://biofit.io/

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Conversation Highlights

• Most of the buildings in which we spend our time weren't created with the health and wellbeing of the occupants in mind.

• As we moved towards putting an emphasis on a building’s energy efficiency, it often came at a cost to the ventilation, and as a result the quality of air inside a building.

• Thanks to IOT products and the cloud we now have the potential to monitor indoor air throughout an entire building 24/7 and 365.

• Making the buildings in which you live and work slightly more energy efficient is going to bring far larger returns in terms of impact on the planet than driving an electric car, or becoming vegan.

• It's not like you can see air - without a sensor, you really have no idea what's going on. But once you can see it, suddenly there are changes available that have a rapid impact on both occupant wellbeing and the building’s sustainability.

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FULL TRANSCRIPT COURTESY OF OTTER.AI (EXCUSE TYPOS)

Liam Bates

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So, in a nutshell, what we do at Kaiterra is create solutions to help people, companies and buildings understand, measure and ultimately improve their indoor environment, while also reducing their carbon footprint. So low carbon healthy buildings.

As human beings, we spend around 90% of our time indoors. And the reality is that most of the buildings in which we spend our time weren't created with the health and wellbeing of the occupants in mind.

Sometimes it's an afterthought. But in the vast majority of cases, it's not even a thought at all. It's never really been a consideration. And given the massive impact that the environment has on how we feel and how productive and how happy we are. we think it's really important that there's

So more concretely, what we're doing is we're making hardware, physical products to measure environmental quality, specifically air quality. And then we have a layer of software on top that helps sift through that data, helps people understand it, visualize it, analyze it, and ultimately helping people to make more data driven decisions to improve their indoor environment.

Matt Morley

So if we start big picture, it's always worthwhile on these discussions to establish upfront what the negatives are, what the risks are. If we look at what the health risks risks are of poor quality indoor air, I think there's a general acceptance of outdoor air pollution. But when we look at indoor air in cities, what's going on there?

Liam Bates

You brought up a really interesting point there which is outdoor air quality, we often think that there's air pollution only outside, maybe in Beijing or in New Delhi but of course it's an issue almost everywhere in the world, the vast majority of the planet does have issues with outdoor air quality as well.

Indoor air quality is driven by what's going on outdoors. Some of the obvious examples are- if there's a wildfire burning, as we've seen happen more and more on the West Coast, or the US bushfires across Australia.

You see the same thing in Singapore. So if the outdoor air is polluted, the air indoors is usually not very much better. So that's one factor. The other is essentially poor air quality that is created from within the building. And there are a few different parameters here.

Some that most people might be familiar with would be CO2 levels. We've all we've all been in that meeting room where there's too many people, not enough ventilation and you start to feel claustrophobic, hot, even, sleepy, you think somebody needs to open a window… that’s due to an increased level of carbon dioxide in the room.

But there's also other important parameters to indoor air quality - Volatile Organic Compounds, VOCs, these are chemicals that are given off by furniture in the room, paint on the walls, sometimes even the people in the rooms as well.

Particulate Matter (PM) is the third main parameter that is of concern for indoor air quality - that can come from the outdoors, smog, it can also come from indoors. And let's say the poor ventilation between the kitchen and the office, or even someone vacuuming the carpets in the morning, and kicking up dust into the air. Anyone with asthma will know exactly what I'm talking about.

There's a lot of research that shows both short term health impacts and productivity impacts as well as long term health impacts of indoor air quality.

Matt Morley

A lot of the guidance and advocacy for a greater integration of indoor air quality monitors in new buildings, and in refurbishments, particularly in big cities like London, here in Barcelona, is being led by the healthy building, the sustainable green building movement. How does that connect with your work? Specifically the certification systems for healthy buildings for example.

Liam Bates

There's definitely a massive trend in in that around healthy buildings in general, and around the importance of monitoring, and specifically continuous monitoring within those. So I think maybe a few a few steps back into history.

There's been a focus on sustainability for longer than there has been healthy buildings. And we've known that energy efficiency is important.

Unfortunately, often the indoor environment came at the cost, I'd say a degradation of the indoor environmental quality.

So an interesting example that I sort of always like to use, which is a little bit extreme, is that if you wanted to make the perfect sustainable building, what you would do is you probably build a concrete block with no windows, no doors, thick concrete, and no ventilation system, and you’d leave the lights turned off all the time. And then your building wouldn't be using any energy.

And it would be incredibly sustainable. But it'd be terrible for anybody that was inside that building. And that's obviously an extreme example. But historically, as we moved towards putting an emphasis on a building’s energy efficiency, it often came at a cost to the ventilation, and the quality of air inside the building.

What’s driven a lot of the new certifications would be the WELL building standard, as well as RESET.

WELL has a strong focus on healthy buildings in general, with a focus on air but also water, nutrition and light while RESET is more closely focused on on air quality specifically. And what's interesting with both of these, is that they've really been leading the charge when it comes to continuous monitoring.

That is making a shift from historically how we took measurements in buildings, which is having someone come around maybe once a year, with a large laboratory grade instrument, putting it in a room, taking a reading, sometimes even writing it down on a notebook, and then coming back one year later to see if things were better or worse. And so it's really just a one point in time measurement.

Whereas what we're seeing now, which is really enabled by the shift in IOT products, connected products, more integrations with building management systems, but also with the cloud, is that now we the potential to monitor indoor air throughout an entire building 24/7 and 365.

These building certifications are now allowing, more points or more paths to certification through the utilization of this data. And I think that's a great thing. Because it's really providing a true picture of what's going on inside the building, as opposed to what was it like this one day when someone happened to come in, which is kind of like rolling the dice.

If, if it happened to be polluted outside, it would look like your building was performing badly. If somebody happened to just clean the carpets that morning, and there were chemicals in the building, it might look like your air quality is terrible, or vice versa. And that's really not how we should be making decisions for where we spend 90% of our time as human beings, especially in the 21st century, with all the access to data that we have, uh, you know, I really believe that we should be making data driven decisions.

Matt Morley

It's a fundamental shift in how we think about monitoring our air, I think it's important that we give that historical perspective. If you do that at the beginning of a flush out, or post construction, you typically leave it there for any any number of weeks, depending on how it was built, right?

And you might take a recording at the beginning of that flush out another one at the end of the flush out and then and then that was it. But really, then you've no idea you are flying blind for every consecutive day after that until the next air quality monitor reading, right.

I think this is it's really empowering system to be able to say that the building management, and therefore, you know, if the transparency and the communication around it can be as simple as a digital screen at the entrance and reception lobby, right, just saying, look, here's what's happening today, here's where we're at in terms of where the outdoor air quality vs your indoor air quality.

What are the levers available to improve indoor air quality?

Liam Bates

It’s a complicated answer, we have a lot of work to do, because air quality, when you think about it holistically is not as simple as, let's say temperature.

If you're in a room, and you feel cold, you know that there's one simple solution, which is to increase the temperature. And when you increase it to a certain amount you will feel comfortable, at least from the thermal comfort perspective. And you can also you know exactly what the building needs to make it happen.

And you can also work out what the energy consumption is, it's a relatively simple equation to translate how somebody is feeling into what should be done, what the impact is of making those decisions.

Overall air quality is a lot more complicated. At the most basic level, how much outdoor air are we bringing into the building. If you have high levels of carbon dioxide, that means that you need to bring in more outdoor air - adjusting the ventilation rate is a way that you can impact that.

Natural ventilation vs outdoor air pollution

Of course, you can also do that by opening the windows. These things come at a cost potentially however, because what happens if I open the windows and there is for example, ozone, present outside is, you know, relatively common in many parts of the world, or what if there's particulate matter because next to a highway.

So, this is where it gets a little bit more complicated and where a lot of our our development and engineering work goes as a company is, is understanding the relationship between these different parameters and how they interact so that ultimately, an intelligent decision can be made.

filtration rates of indoor air

Then you have of course, the filtration rate in an HVAC filter. So what is the grade of the filter in the air handling unit. Again, that comes at a cost, the higher the grade of the filter, the more particles that will filter out, the cleaner your air will be but there will also be less air coming to the building.

Green and healthy building priorities

And so it's all a balancing equation between these different parameters, and also bouncing between sustainability, or carbon footprint, and the health and wellbeing of the occupants.

chemicals used in Cleaning & building operations

Changing the hours in which cleaning takes place, this is one of the highest potential highest ROI things that you can do. A lot of companies had cleaning schedules that were in the morning, and especially with everything COVID related, those cleanings became very thorough, deep cleaning even, which is of course, a great thing, except that a lot of the chemicals that are used in the cleaning process are not necessarily very good for the people that breathe them in.

The reality is that we are quite often using these toxic cleaning materials on on tables or floors and then they're off-gassing chemicals into our air, so we're breathing those toxic gases in throughout the rest of the day.

So without having continuous monitoring, where you can see this 24 hour trend, you wouldn't necessarily see that you have by cleaning at 6am in the morning created an enormous spike in chemicals at 8am when everyone comes into the office.

A very simple change, clean at 6pm instead of 6am. It's outside of working hours, but that spike happens when there's nobody in the building. And then it drops throughout the rest of the night. And as long as you turn on, maybe there's still some residual chemicals in the air at, let's say 6am.

But as long as the ventilation system comes on at 7am, one hour before anybody enters the building, they're walking into a clean, healthy environment rather than one that is potentially quite contaminated.

Matt Morley

Therefore we have what happens before the occupants enter the building. So that might be construction and interior fit out phase. And then what's going on during the operation and building management phase. So you sort of think of it in two major blocks.

You've mentioned the low carbon footprint and energy efficiency piece. I just wanted to dig into that a little bit if we could just to establish the connection between your indoor air quality monitors and energy efficiency - how do you join the dots between those two?

Energy efficiency and indoor air quality monitoring

Liam Bates

So maybe some background data, first of all on the just the impact on the planet of buildings, our mission is very human driven, but it's also very much driven by wanting to have a positive impact on the planet. And so some of the you know, some some of the facts here that really shocked me when I first learned were, number one, just the impact that the the impact the planet that buildings have on our planet.

The operation of buildings, so building operations account for approximately 28% of all co2 emissions, which is an enormous number.

It's just running buildings is a huge contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. And that number is not really going down because we're building more and more buildings. We build a brand new New York City in terms of buildings every single month.

So over the next 30 years, we are going to be adding a huge number of buildings to this planet, and all those buildings have operations going on. So there's, there's this this huge impact on the planet. And when it comes to building operations, the single largest contributor to energy consumption.

We spend so much of the world's energy, just moving air around a building and heating it up and cooling it down. So enter in any, any optimizations that we can have on that front will have a huge impact on the planet.

But the reality is that making the buildings in which you live and work slightly more energy efficient is going to bring far larger returns in terms of impact on the planet than driving an electric car, or or becoming vegan.

In the same way that when people are in a space, we want to make sure that the air is optimized, and their health is prioritized. And so that can mean things like having low levels of pollutants, when people are not in a space, we don't need to spend that, that same amount of energy, ventilating or filtering that space.

The question is, how can we utilize this data to make more intelligent decisions run and essentially optimize how we run the space to save on energy. And so the simple way to look at it is, if if somebody is in a space and the air quality is poor, then we should be taking actions to improve that air quality. And quite often that, that that's by increasing ventilation rates, for example.

Well, just like we would do that if if the air quality in a space is already optimal, or if there is nobody in the space, then we don't need to continue filtering more air and bringing in more fresh air from the outside. So it's really just about understanding what is at the most basic level, essentially demand control ventilation. That's sort of the most basic example here, which is that if a space is already great, let's not waste energy, trying to make it even better.

So an example would be if you're recently on the West Coast of the US, for example, we've seen a lot of examples around where there were there's pollution coming in from the outdoors from wildfires. And it's actually quite a complex process to work out what is the the best thing to do from a building perspective, when that's going on? Should you bring in more air from the outside and try to filter it should you re circulate more air internally, should you have some combination of the two of these.

If you simply have a very basic kind of control algorithm going on, you might be essentially noticing that the air is bad and just pumping more and more and more air from outdoors inside to try to clean it. But at the end of the day, just bring in more smoke. So it's really about having optimizing the logic in the system to not trying to clean when that doesn't essentially not try to ventilate more when it doesn't make sense.

That wasn't a great example, let me share another another one from a concrete example from a project that I was just looking at a couple of days ago, where the the ventilator ventilation system was essentially being turned on and run at levels that were unnecessary about 27% of the time. And this was often tied to parts of the building not being occupied, or people and not having a clear idea in real time of which parts of the building were actually being utilized in which way but by looking at the changes in indoor pollution, and that could be a combination of co2 and VOCs, you actually start to identify this part of the building, that building is being used more than other parts.

The second floor right now, even though it was planned to be used has three people in it and it's being ventilated for 100 people. And so it's just about shifting, where some of that that load is going maybe from one air handling unit to another and the result is that you get better overall air quality and lower overall energy consumption.

I think that does clarify and particularly within the context have the sort of extreme example that you gave of this sort of perfect closed building with with no ventilation at all. And in many ways, sometimes I think some of these other buildings that are just not smart in any way, are effectively managed in that same way. And there's just no visibility, there's no transparency around what's going on inside that space.

And it's, in a sense about taking responsibility from the building management side, right to say, Well, look, there are things we can do to make this a healthier space for the occupants. But there's also things we can do to reduce the, the carbon footprint of just keeping this building alive and keeping it going as an occupied space. And, you know, stepping up and getting a handle on what's going on in terms of indoor air quality is is both good for the people and for the planet. I think that's, that's the message that I'm that I'm getting and that we want to try and communicate out there.

Indoor Air Quality monitor installation

Matt Morley

So if we kind of go a level deeper, and we actually think about this whole process of how Kaiterra get involved, how they monitors are planned installed, and where the value is delivered over the sort of short to medium term, it took us through like how typically, who's bringing you in? Like, who's your contact person within the building project or real estate management team? And what are the steps that you then go through in terms of installing your, your hardware and software?

Liam Bates

This actually ties quite nicely to your question, but also the last point that you were making.

A really interesting example. So okay, so I guess, to answer that question directly, we work with a few different groups, typically, this initiatives around the indoor environment, could be coming from sort of a sustainable sustainability perspective.

So often, that would be we'd be working with the, let's say, the director of sustainability. It could be coming from facilities management, who are receiving a lot of complaints. People are complaining, either people are either complaining because they they, they just feel bad in the space.

Or it's simply that they they're concerned. And there's no transparency. And that's that's definitely a major issue this year, especially as with all the news that's that's been around around the transmission of viruses. What is my facility doing to prevent this? And what is the quality of air because there is a well known correlation between these two things.

And the third direction that we often get brought in is is from a call it sort of an employee experience, perspective. And so that might be driven by HR head of people. It depends on the firm, but really trying to say what can we do to make sure that our occupants are happy and healthy and productive, and they feel great coming to work. And I think this is really being this is becoming more and more important in the future, because a lot of companies still want to have their people come into the office, at least a few days a week.

Indoor air quality post Covid

But it's not, it's you know, it's not like things were before and things have changed, the world has changed. And if you're, you know, if you're asking me to come to the office, or you want me to actually come to the office, because I want to it hopefully, you know, it needs to be a pretty good office, it needs to be better than my home, right? I have to want to go into the office and of course, have human interactions, but also be in a physically comfortable, mentally stimulating environments that maybe I don't get in my living room.

And so that's also a big piece of what what is driving sort of initial reach out with us. And often we come in sort of interact with these, these different groups together. A really funny example was a project in, in the US in the Bay Area that we were working on recently. And we were analyzing some of the data and working with the customer and looking at it and saying, Well, you know, we can see that your, you have excellent air quality when when the space is occupied, and the air quality isn't great overnight. But that's fine, because there's nobody there.

They said they're saving energy and the air is great when people need to be there. However, on the weekends, from the data, it looks like the HVAC system is still running. And you have great air quality throughout the weekend when there's nobody there. And this is a really interesting sort of discussion that takes place between facility management and the sustainability people and the employee experience people were nobody had realized that they had set this facility management had set a timer to try and optimize for occupant experience and energy efficiency to turn on the ventilation system at specific hours.

The building was most occupied. But no one had bothered to turn it off on Saturday and Sunday. So this building was running, you know, full power for two days a week when there was nobody there. And that is just such low hanging fruit.

That, you know, just kind of observing this conversation is really interesting, because you've got the sustainability person that's going wait, we're doing what, why there was a, I don't know, just set up this way.

Our solutions were were installed in the project, we work with multiple different stakeholders. And within a very short period of time, I've been able to find some some really obvious problems that you wouldn't otherwise see.

Obviously air is invisible. It's not like you can't see it without a sensor, you really have no idea what's going on. But once you see it, suddenly your eyes are opened, and there are changes that you can make that have very rapid impact on again, both people and sustainability.

Matt Morley

I think it's a crucial point to get across - buildings are not necessarily healthy places to be, especially if the installation, the furniture, the paint, etc, haven't been chosen for low toxins or toxic qualities, etc. So I think that's one thing.

The other thing is that the game has changed Post COVID. The world is not going back to how it was. Employees are just asking a lot more questions. HR teams are rightly asking more from the buildings they inhabit.

You reference the connection between the transmission of airborne diseases, ie COVID, amongst others, and indoor air quality. So let's try and quell any doubts, how do you stand on that position says there's a lot of confusion out there around this. What do we need to know about airborne diseases in indoor air quality?

Airborne diseases and indoor air quality

Liam Bates

I mean, there's a reason that we put, you know, you put a mask over over your mouth, because there are particles that are coming out when you breathe, and they spread throughout a building.

If you have, if you have an HVAC system that is recirculating air, that's obviously not great. So it's really important to take the right strategies, when it comes to how you handle air quality and how you handle your air because viruses are in the air, they latch on to particles, if if there are physical things floating around in your air, which there always are.

Air is not just molecules of oxygen and nitrogen floating around. It's also all these particles, and a lot of things stick to those particles.

So in summary, I think there's absolutely no doubt that air quality and the air is tied to the transmission of viruses. There's plenty of evidence that shows this, both when you look at the particles in the air, but also the importance of having the correct levels of humidity, relative humidity, and so on. All of these things have an impact. And there's, there's there's really no doubt anymore at this point.

Matt Morley

I really encourage everyone to get a handle on this. Because if we're out there in the world of interiors and real estate, you kind of need to be up to date with what's happening.

Healthy Materials Advocate - Parsons School of Design

We recently completed the Parsons School of Design certificate in Healthier Materials & Sustainable Building. So how is the Parsons Healthy Materials Lab ‘making buildings better’?

What is a healthy building material?

The basic premise behind the Healthy Materials Lab is that building materials can negatively impact occupant health by a number of routes, primarily:

• ‘volatilization’ of chemicals in those building materials (a.k.a off-gassing of Volatile Organic Compounds) most commonly in wet-applied materials and composite wood products

• chemical degradation of materials due to exposure to water or sunlight, thereby releasing chemicals from the material into the indoor air'

• abrasion can do much the same thing as materials are scuffed or rubbed while in use, releasing chemicals into the air

• oxidation of materials such as burning or rusting, a process that can release harmful substances into the indoor environment

• leaching, as materials dissolve into liquid such as water, for example as occurs in lead pipes

• climate change has a negative impact on outdoor air quality, that in turn finds its way into our buildings, especially when inadequate ventilation system filters are in use

These chemicals can then get into the body via a number of routes, such as:

• inhalation

• ingestion

• hand-to-mouth ingestion (having touched a dirty surface)

• absorption through the skin or hair follicles

• breastfeeding

• placental transfer meaning babies can be exposed to chemicals even before they are born

In terms of the impacts on our health, there are are number of main risks to be aware of, including:

• asthmagens - asthma

• carcinogens - cancer

• endocrine disruptors - infertility

• preterm birth via exposure to VOCs, formaldehyde, benzene and particulate matter (PM)

• autism via exposure to environmental factors such as air pollutants and mercury

• obesity via exposure to PFC (perfluorinated chemicals), flame retardants and phtalates

To counter balance what can seem a disturbingly long list of health risks, as wellness interior designers and healthy building consultants we can and indeed should demand ever greater transparency from material manufacturers.

If we don’t know what’s inside a product, or even worse, if a manufacturer doesn’t know everything that’s in their own product, based on the Precautionary Principle it has to be classified as a risk for the health of the interiors or entire building in question.

In practical terms, this means giving health a seat at the design table, right up there alongside form and function.

We are, in short, talking about a fundamental shift towards healthy design strategies, whilst maintaining the aesthetics, quality and durability of traditional design.

It is not one or the other, but rather an expanded interpretation of what good design means. Human and planetary health need to be part of that process.

What work is the Healthy Materials Lab doing?

Fundamentally the lab is there is ‘make buildings better’ as their tagline states succinctly. Their aim is to raise awareness about toxic chemicals in building products while providing a range of resources for designers and architects, like us, to educate themselves on how to create healthier indoor environments, be they offices, homes, gyms, education or healthcare facilities.

These include both online and in-person classes at Parsons on healthy materials for buildings and interiors, educational events, content creation and dissemination of digital information via their media communications channels, such as the Tools & Guides to ‘help designers architects, homeowners and developers make more informed choices about building materials and health’.

https://healthymaterialslab.org/tool-guides

The Lab also has a particular angle on affordable housing as many of the worst examples of sick buildings are found in poorer neighborhoods, the team therefore looks to empower communities living in poverty to remove toxic substances from their built environments.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED FOR ANYONE WITH A PROFESSIONAL INTEREST IN THIS URGENT TOPIC

Healthy Materials Course / Program Description:

Developed by education experts at Parsons’ Healthy Materials Lab, this online certificate program has been created to provide designers, architects, developers, contractors, management companies and facilities personnel with material health information, consolidated in one educational offering that will build their capacity to positively transform their practices with human health at the forefront of their decisions.

It is composed of four self-paced online courses, which lead to a certificate in Healthier Materials and Sustainable Building.

The first and second courses provide an introduction to key topics in the field of materials and health for those with general or more specialized interests.

The third and fourth courses are geared towards professionals in the built environment, and those concerned with making a positive impact in product specification, installation, and maintenance.

The goal of the program is to empower practitioners to make change with the knowledge that healthier buildings lead to healthier lives.

The program is intended to both complement existing Parsons degree programs and serve as continuing education for professionals.

Living Walls in biophilic design with UrbanStrong NYC

A conversation with Lily Turner of UrbanStrong NYC for my Green & Healthy Places podcast episode 039 on sustainability and wellbeing in real estate and interiors.

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Conversation highlights

Living walls offer a myriad of environmental, psychological, physiological and economic benefits

Plants have the ability to purify the air, they should be thought of as natural air purifiers.

Plants also are wonderful noise pollution mitigators

We as living creatures share a deep affiliation with nature - this is called biophilia

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green & healthy places

Welcome to episode 039 of the Green & Healthy Places podcast in which we explore the themes of wellbeing and sustainability in real estate and interiors.

I’m your host Matt Morley, Founder of Biofilico healthy buildings and Biofit wellness concepts.

This week we’re in NYC talking to Lily Turner, Director of Operations at UrbanStrong, a company providing green building technology solutions for enhanced productivity and wellness benefits.

green roofs and solar coming soon

In particular we focus on living walls and living wall dividers in this episode. Lily references Alan Burchell a couple of times, UrbanStrong’s Principal, so we have Alan lined up for a subsequent episode already when we’ll discuss solar and green roofs in urban environments. Lily meanwhile is quite the green wall expert!

biophilic design living walls

The discussion covers the health and wellness benefits of living walls within the wider context of biophilic design principles, the practical constraints of installing a living wall or, at a smaller scale, a standalone living wall divider, moss walls as a hassle-free alternative in low or no light scenarios, the air purifying, noise reducing and mood enhancing benefits of these installations, as well as the interplay between green and healthy building certifications, city wide legislation and the type fo interior greenery solutions offered by UrbanStrong.

If like me you normally listen to your podcasts sped up to 1.5 normal speed you may want to bring this one back down, we’re in Brooklyn here people, so expect a short, punchy convo with just a touch of the borough’s background noise for authenticity.

If you enjoy this episode, please hit subscribe, new episodes are released every week. Lily’s contact details are in the show notes, check out urbanstrong.com now let’s get into it.

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Matt Morley

Why don't we start with you describing the showroom that you're currently sitting in?

Lily Turner

Yeah, sure. It's amazing. I come every day and walk into a jungle, which I'm very thankful for. But our studio / showroom is located in the iconic Brooklyn Navy Yard in Brooklyn, New York.

Urbanstrong is technology agnostic, meaning we offer several different greenwall technologies depending on project goals, or design parameters, or of course budget. That being said, Our studio is full of different living law systems, small and large, everything ranging from $300, to what could easily be a $100, or $2000 $200,000 green wall system. And they all feature different irrigation designs too.

Matt Morley

That's a key thing, right? The idea of the different irrigation systems on it, there's a lot of different solutions out there. So we're mostly talking about vertical gardens today, and their various shapes and sizes, right. So before we jump off into any other directions, why don't we talk about those living walls and the systems that are out there, and which ones you work with ?

Lily Turner

Yeah, so like I said, we offer a range of different living wall technologies as part of our biophilic design offer, we have everything from the DIY, or I like to refer to as the ‘PIY’ - plant it yourself.

They're fairly intuitive designs and all encompassing. So really, all that's required for these little plant frames is that you mount them to the wall using nothing more than a couple drywall screws and anchors like you'd be mounting a shelf or a painting.

Then there's dedicated pockets for you to plant these four to six inch potted plants in and the irrigation design with those systems are capillary wicking action. So it's no different than a tiki torch concept. You know, there's a cloth or string draped in a little reservoir of water, and then it creeps up the cloth and the plants roots get the drink that way.

Matt Morley

In terms of constraints when installing a wall and then keeping it alive in the medium term. I know there are some horror stories out there about walls that die and then need to be replaced. In your experience, what are the hurdles that someone should be aware of before jumping in to a living wall purcase. So just being conscious of what precautions can be taken in advance so that everything runs smoothly.

Lily Turner

Sure, of course, with any living thing, and let's just focus on plants for today's call, water and light sources are required to keep plants not just surviving but thriving. So of course, a reliable and somewhat automated irrigation design is necessary for all living life.

If you don't have immediate access to plumbing, which oftentimes retrofits or light renovations don't, then a recirculating irrigation solution is required, which just calls for a submersible silent pump, no different than what you'd find in a fish tank.

In terms of lighting, every living wall manufacturer designer has their own minimum or their own standard for the amount of foot candles and exposure the wall receives. For us we’re a bit higher and a little more strict on that. But we require artificial lighting to be brought into the space if there's not enough natural lighting, exposed to the wall.

Matt Morley

Is it a particular type of artificial lighting or LED?

Lily Turner

So I do want to compliment the lighting industry, they've really come a long way. A lot of people still actually think when they hear grow lights, they think of those really disruptive red and purple shining lights. But now there's a ton of amazing LED lights, metal highlight lights on the market that can match the warm interior lighting of the other fixtures, anything from like 2700 to 4000 Kelvin.

Matt Morley

So is it the intensity or the color spectrum that's of most relevance for the for the plants?

Lily Turner

It's a bit of both, you know, plants read a certain color spectrum, the reds and the purples and that is needed for them to photosynthesis sorry photosynthesize, but also a certain footcandle level is required for them to be happy. And that's even true for our low light tropical plants.

Matt Morley

So there are large format installations but you also have the smaller solutions such as standalone panels now that have integrated lights and irrigation systems, right? They're kind of complete solutions that are mobile too, correct?

Lily Turner

Right. Absolutely. I think you're referring to our mobile living wall dividers and are a lot of fun and they're increasing in popularity as well. I suggest those to designers and architects on a weekly basis, they're great for the post pandemic return to the offices. They're definitely more living and thriving than those nasty Flexi glass or acrylic partitions that you might see in spaces.

But with our mobile living little dividers, you're absolutely right, we have a LED bar that kind of cantilevers from the top, and then a water reservoir, depending on the unit can hold anywhere from 100 to 150 gallons of water. So all that's needed is a standard 120 B outlet, which is usually found in an office space, versus some of our customisable, larger living law systems that we spec, you know, we need a proper water source and cold water zones running through, we also need drainage, and then again, we need to bring in the artificial lighting. So that can get a little costly.

Matt Morley

Then effectively there's two paths. This one's where you just need a smaller scale intervention, and one where there's a bit more space available. If we take a step back then and look at the ‘why’ behind this, what sometimes ends up in conversations around Biophilia and ‘nature first’ arguments in which it's almost as if nature in itself is enough justification for doing these things as a quasi Romantic argument. What is the ROI on these living walls from your view? When you talk about biophilic design, we talk about the benefits, the wellbeing mental and physical benefits of being surrounded by or spending time close to one of these green interventions within an interior space.

Lily Turner

Yeah, I'm glad you asked about that. You know, like you said, living walls are first appreciated, and for good reason for their aesthetics. They're considered obvious striking forms of natural art. But, like you said, living walls offer a myriad of different benefits from environmental, psychological, physiological and economic benefits.

Healthy indoor air

So first, I mean, just touching on environmental benefits. Plants have the ability to purify the air, they should be thought of as natural air purifiers. And oftentimes, you know, indoor pollution levels caused by things like cleaning products, or building materials, carpets, paints, mold, can be even worse than those outdoor pollution levels.

So in most living wall systems, the plant root zone absorbs Volatile Organic Compounds such as benzene, formaldehyde, acetone, ammonia, to name a few. And it works like this, the air is actively drawn through the plants and the growing medium, and then the cleaned air is redistributed throughout the building.

And then also for environmental benefits, we like to touch on reduction in urban heat island effect, which in dense urban areas, and concrete jungles like New York City, you know, the use of plants, parks, living walls, and green roofs really work to reduce the heat by cooling the ambient temperature around.

Plants also are wonderful noise pollution mitigators. So plants can absorb about up to 40% more sound than traditional facades can.

And then, of course, increase in biodiversity with exterior living walls. This has been depleting again in dense urban areas as we continue to develop with hard materials, like concrete and glass. So living walls just provide those alternative ecological habitats for migratory species.

Biophilic design

And then for more psychological and physiological benefits, you know, people just feel more relaxed in natural settings. This is a premise to biophilic design, or just biohilia, in general.

So we as living creatures share a deep affiliation with nature, and life is attracted to other forms of life. So in this innate affinity for life, this provides opportunities for building owners and designers and architects to really foster environments which elicit positive responses from their tenants or their shoppers, workers, patients of whoever's interacting in that space.

Matt Morley

There is this balance between the yin and the yang, between the tangible, practical side around, you know, noise absorbing benefits for example, and air purifying, then the slightly harder to pin down and quantify benefits around the Biophilia hypothesis, right?

There's just this there's just this connection in all of us and within our psyche, and we just same reason why it feels good to have a quiet moment in a garden or a forest just to listen to the birds sing, you know, just occasionally to do that and be a natural animal. versus being this urban version of ourselves. And I think, you know, with enough of space with enough space given over to these green walls, you can really start to get into that. And I think that's the magic here.

Lily Turner

Absolutely. You know, we as humans are just so deeply connected and interwoven with nature and the natural world. And realizing that I mean, it is starting to become measurable, some of it can be considered or perceived as a bit of a reach. But there is substantial evidence, white papers and journals produced around productivity costs and creativity costs associated with a worker, employee retention rates is big. And then also, the ability to reduce recovery times, which I know hospitals appreciate. Not to be crass, but sometimes it's almost treated like restaurants, they want you to heal as quickly as possible turn over the bed. And when you add all that up on an annual budget that can save them hundreds of 1000s of dollars.

Matt Morley

Yet the hospital recovery rates, one is interesting, it does come up quite a lot. I mean, I think when one digs into the, you know, the original Roger Ulrich study, which I think was like mid 80s. You know, once that's asked questions of why nothing more has been done since then, in terms of creating some some solid data because we all go back to that same study that was done quite a while ago.

But then you see what's happening in places like Singapore and Hong Kong, where they're starting now to integrate no serious levels of biophilia into their latest hospitals. And and that's for me a real sign that there's there's a commitment on that level, and that there's a sense of, of tangible benefits, tangible health benefits around those recovery times an offer sort of the mental, the mental health piece, you mentioned, the air purifying benefits.

Do you need to choose therefore specific air purifying species within the plant walls? In order to do that?

Lily Turner

Sure, that's a great question. And that goes back to our initial assessment with a client and architect and just really trying to identify the goals of the product, or the project and sorry, so if the client is really set on air purification, then we will incorporate species such as Chinese evergreen, peace lily, Snake plants, ZZ plants, some species are known more for their indoor purification than others. And that's simply due to the kind of electro magnetic charge in the air with the dust particles and the plant leaves.

So they're actually sucking the dust and harmful particulate matter out of the air, if not to their roots. But you can also see it on their leaves, too. So what might look like water spots, if you look closely, it's actually just just built up. And those leaves also as a part of, sorry, that leaf cleaning is also a part of our maintenance that we do. So the plants can again, properly photosynthesize sides, and we're not kind of filtering their life that they received and also use.

Matt Morley

So what you reference there is the idea of having to ask very common theme, but the idea of needing to, on a case by case project by project basis, establish priorities around planetary and people health and well being. And it's I think it's it's one of the toughest parts of doing what we do, which is that sometimes it's just not possible to do everything and to sort of hit the high note, both in terms of environmental sustainability and human health and wellbeing and sometimes somewhere along the line, there's a call to be made, for example - we really need to focus on indoor air quality in this office environment.

You also have preserved moss walls, which in some ways, I think create a similar visual effect, perhaps not quite the same, and yet still very much part of this sort of what how can we bring a biophilic component and to pretty much cover an entire wall or as a panel. So how do you see those and how do you typically communicate around them versus having a real living walk because the moss is effectively preserved? Right?

Preserved moss walls

Lily Turner

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, I can't speak for other companies, but our preserved moss is harvested according to ecological practices.

So the moss is preserved using a food grade safe glycerin and then natural dyes are pumped back into a different species to really give that vibrancy, but it very much, I mean, you can almost think of it as taxidermy, right? I mean, very much of the texture is still there and The color and, and it does also still have that Woody smell, especially initially when we install a larger scale moss wall. But moss walls are great. And for the longest time, you know, I always kept them in my back pocket, I just had such a love and admiration for living walls. And that's how I got my start. But I really did a ton of moss walls just due to last year, you know, new construction was was halted all over the world. So we really had to come up with a retrofit solution.

For the people that still work continuing to design their interior homes or, or spaces are preserved. Moss doesn't need any water or light to thrive, which is really great. I won't say it's zero maintenance, because I have installed mass walls in lobbies before and just when you're handling especially in New York City, when hundreds of people are going through that lobby, there is a bit of foot traffic. And sometimes the moss walls can take a beating if people want to tug and pull on things, you know, even as adults were so curious beings, but I really do think, yeah, there's a time and place for every system. And if I was, you know, consulting with a client, and they said, Hey, we can't give you any water light, then I would absolutely and I do absolutely recommend our preserved Moss, because it's a great way of incorporating still a natural element into our built environment, which is ultimately the goal.

Matt Morley

I've used them in the past on gym design projects where, you know, there's a brief around biophilic design or biophilic interiors. But as is often the case with a gym, or some kind of a wellness space or physical activity space, you know, it's a lower ground, but there's no natural light, or it's sort of an internal room, where again, there's just no access to daylight. And and so they're pretty much have to flip into muscle or moss panel territory. And yeah, I think just reading between the lines, I think it's worth clarifying that there are products out there that are not of the same eco friendly standard as yours. So there are versions that are not using natural dyes, etc. So I think that's what I picked up from doing my research on particular ones that you stock. And it kind of highlighted that in my mind that, you know, there is some variety out there in terms of quality and eco friendliness, so good only for finding the right one. So to say.

Lily Turner

Yeah, absolutely, we definitely heavily that every technology that comes in, we do offer quite a range of technologies. But again, they've all been carefully considered and, you know, tried and tested before we bring them into a public or a client space.

Matt Morley

So I know it's not your areas of expertise. But I know you do also do the green roofs and the solar panels within the urban strong offering. So just as a very sort of quick overview. How do they integrate into the you typically selling? Or going in on a project with multiple strands? So sort of multiple product? offerings? Or is it and the synergies between them almost?

Green roofs

Lily Turner

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um, so Urbanstrong, does specialize in design, installation and ongoing maintenance for living walls and Green roofs. But we also, there's another side to our business, which Alan we'll get more into, but the financing and the technology consulting side, so we have a lot of condo or Co-Op board members come to us.

New York just incorporated a few local laws mandating that folks outfit their roofs with either solar or green roof. So a lot of people are calling us and saying, Okay, I want a green roof, oh, no, I want solar? How do I decide between what's the ROI associated. So we'll walk them through a very careful assessment, we'll ask some really high level questions mainly around the structural integrity of the roof. Just because there is a weight load associated with our different greener systems, you know, you're dealing with growing medium soil and all of that.

And also, just, again, their goals if they want, you know, if they have enough capital upfront, and they wanted to invest, then we think solar is a better option. Because right now the payback period is great. It's not just net metering. We, I'm sorry, New York just offered up this community solar program, that you can actually sell your energy back energy that you collect far beyond what the building is using. And it's a nice little passive revenue stream for, for the building owners.

Matt Morley

So there's either at that slightly more strategic level, there's, there's either something happening at a municipal or a city or state level whereby there's new registered legislation coming through and that, in a sense is designed to push the industry forward. And collectively, within the real estate interiors industry, for it to encourage more integration of natural components, I think in in a sense is doing the same type of work, but in coming at it from a different angle as the building certifications that are out there. Things like USGBC’s LEED and WELL and FITWEL that in their own way, do a similar job which is nudging us all forward particularly in real estate to work. greener and healthier solutions. So how do your particular products fit in with all that?

Green building and healthy building certifications

Lily Turner

Absolutely. And LEED and WELL are great, they're both amazing standards and organizations. And they have largely been responsible for, like you said incentivizing building owners and architects to start incorporating natural elements into their designs.

When we're discussing exterior living, long installations for LEED, several points are possible. And that's just due to reduced heat island effect, potential for water efficiency, meaning that you could harvest stormwater and work it into the irrigation design of the living wall, through collection.

And then other points, of course, are gained through optimizing energy efficiency performance, that's through thermal insulation or systems. Innovation and operation is another category and then occupant comfort. And that's all within the under the LEED umbrella. And then for the WELL building standard living walls helps satisfy three out of the set seven core concepts of that standard. So it's air mind and comfort, comfort is mostly associated with the plant's ability to mitigate noise pollution, and reduce sound in an area.

Matt Morley

So lead slightly more towards a fundamentally based around sort of planet, an environment and well coming at it from a more more human aspect, just to close them in terms of what you you have lined up and where where the business is going. And where you see yourself developing and future into the product and services like what's coming next. What's what's in the pipeline for lift, Robin strong.

Lily Turner

I mean, if you asked me last year, the answer would be completely different. I applaud urban strong, we've always remained really flexible. And our willingness to pivot I think has really helped us through especially COVID. Last year, we released an online store with a shippable, plant DIY friendly systems I was explaining earlier. And that really got us through and also connected us with consumer base.

One thing I really don't love about the living off system is that fill, there's a minimum square footage assigned to it just due to the economies of scale, and therefore there's a minimum budget that you need to have, which is can be upwards of $25,000.

So it's really excluding to the small, medium sized budgets. So we're really excited about that revenue stream that's tailored and focus more on the consumer. And then also, and this is more Alan's area of expertise or principle, but our ability to just really consult and help building owners, or property developers and condo and Co Op board members that have a budget and don't really have access to education sources and don't know really, how did they spend their money, and you know, how it fits in with our goals. So we're really excited about not just the roofing but the living wall aspect as well.

Matt Morley

Very cool. Well, we're going to line up a separate conversation with Elon to go into some of those other juicy subjects. So thanks for your time. If people want to reach out and contact you, obviously, as a website in terms of social media or other channels, what do you what are you mostly focused on?

Lily Turner

Yes, our website is great. I think on every page, we have a call to action, contact us or let's chat button. We like to consider ourselves really accessible. And we just love having these conversations. And then also our Instagram handles urban strong NYC, we post not only our projects, but our partners projects, and then just really notable products in the industry we like to put a spotlight on and just keep up to date with what the new technologies are and what you can do with these living long, greener systems. And then, of course, my personal email also should be on the website. But maybe we can post that too, in case anyone has any questions or follow up. comments on this.

Matt Morley

Awesome, Lily, thanks so much for your time today

Lily Turner

Yeah, I appreciate it, Matt. Take care. Happy Holidays, till next time!

healthy buildings vs sick building syndrome

What are the cognitive health benefits of green healthy buildings?

Source: THE COGFX STUDY https://thecogfxstudy.com/study-1/

What is Sick Building Syndrome?

Unexplained feelings of fatigue, irritated eyes, runny nose, sore throat or headaches when spending long days in an office or home can be signs of an unhealthy indoor environment.

Although the immediate symptoms may be deemed ‘light’, the long-term effects can include respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease and lung cancer. 

This is the story of Sick Building Syndrome (SBS) and how its counterpart, healthy buildings, are fighting back in the post-Covid era.

Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ)

Leaving aside any external factors such as lack of sleep, any existing ailments, poor nutrition, low level dehydration, or simply a hangover (!), indoor environmental quality (IEQ) has a tangible impact on our energy levels, cognitive function, and overall wellbeing yet, pre-Covid at least, was largely overlooked outside of certain progressive workplaces.

For more on this, see the Harvard Cognitive FX study on IEQ in green buildings, where IEQ is defined as being made up of - reduced levels of Volatile Organic Compounds, access to daylighting and views, smart lighting systems, and thermal comfort.

IEQ is suddenly top of the agenda in the form of enhanced indoor ventilation, air purification strategies, healthy interior materials and enhanced cleaning protocols. 

Its sub-group, Indoor Air Quality (IAQ), is focused specifically on measuring indoor air to monitor occupant exposure to Carbon Monoxide (CO), Carbon iodide (CO2), Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2), Ozone (O3) and Fine Particulate Matter (dust).

Healthy materials
The main source of circulating interior toxins come from what we can loosely call ‘unhealthy’ materials, i.e. those that off-gas chemical toxins into the air during their lifecycle, which to be clear, can mean during the production phase, the in-use phase and the end-of-life phase!

That new paint or furniture smell isn’t a good sign in other words, especially as the after-effects can linger for months if not years due to steady erosion (friction and wear) during the use phase, photo degradation from sunlight and volatilization (natural degradation off-gassing). 

VOCs chemical off-gasses

These chemicals can then be inhaled, absorbed via the skin or ingested by building occupants. Much of this can go unnoticed of course… until it doesn’t. The eventual health impact depends on the dose, frequency and duration of the exposure to such chemicals as well as each occupant’s personal genetic make-up and health condition.

Health risks in building interiors

Chemicals brought into interiors can be asthmagens, carcinogens and hormonal disruptors, so the risk is not to be taken lightly. And that’s before considering issues such as mold, flame retardants (found in old furniture) and pesticides, as well as outdated building materials such as asbestos or lead paint, even certain type of nail polish and perfumes will negatively impact indoor air quality.

This should not be the case in a brand new skyscraper but remains all too common in the affordable housing sector for example - think of how peeling paint and poor maintenance in an old building originally constructed using low grade materials could compound over time to create a severe case of Sick Building Syndrome for occupants

Common toxins to avoid in building materials and products

Unhealthy materials and toxic chemicals can be found in many different interior sources. Most commonly in insulation materials, paints and coatings, adhesives, furniture and fabrics, flooring and ceiling panels. 

Although there are many different toxins that reside in building materials, some of the most common include VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds), SVOCs (Semi-volatile Organic Compounds), Lead and HFRs (Halogenated flame retardants). 

Healthy building glossary

VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) and SVOCs (Semi-volatile Organic Compounds) become gaseous at room temperature, can be ingested or inhaled, and pose health risks even with minimal amounts of chemicals.

Lead is most commonly found in paints and can impair cognitive function—a trait that is especially dangerous for young children. 

HFRs are commonly ingested through dust particles, inhaled or skin contact and can be found in furnishings and electrical devices. 

Healthy Building Materials: Life Cycle Assessment for Wellness Design Consultants

Balancing environmental, well-being, human health, and ethical considerations in selecting building materials is a complex process - here's how a Life Cycle Assessment can help.

Image credit: Parson New School - Healthy Materials Lab

Impacts of the Built Environment

Buildings contribute to around 40% of the world’s energy use, a large accelerator of global warming. Climate change causes countless problems for both humans and the environment including increased disease spread, extreme weather events, water scarcity, deteriorated air pollution, and much more.

Building material choices and developments are key factors in reducing the built environment’s atmospheric emissions and improving indoor air quality. Those who inhabit the buildings are affected by construction and design choices, as well as those who live near or work in material extraction and manufacturing facilities, as they are closer to contaminated regions. Harmful substances in building materials can pose significant health risks, including respiratory issues and other serious health problems. Certain materials containing toxic chemicals can exacerbate these health risks, such as asthma, respiratory problems, hormone disruption, and carcinogenic effects. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted from building materials can significantly impact poor indoor air quality, making it crucial to minimize their presence by choosing healthier alternatives. Harmful substances in indoor environments, such as PVC pipes and vinyl flooring, can further degrade air quality.

To mitigate these issues, the concept of healthy buildings is essential. Using natural and non-toxic materials in construction can create safer and more comfortable living environments. Additionally, incorporating natural light into building designs can significantly enhance health and well-being, improving productivity and reducing utility costs.

Often, those who are the most impacted by climate change and construction-related emissions have the fewest resources. Therefore, the negative impacts caused by building construction and material choices become not only an environmental issue, but also a human health and equity issue. It is important to consider health, comfort, and well-being throughout all phases of a construction project to ensure safer living conditions. Toxic chemicals materials can significantly degrade indoor air quality and harm human health.

What is a Life Cycle Assessment?

Life Cycle Assessments are useful exercises to determine the environmental impacts of a building, material, or product over its entire life cycle. The goal is to reduce the carbon footprint and costs of a material throughout its life to help make smart building decisions for a more sustainable future.

Often, the use phase is the only consideration when making building decisions. However, all phases including raw material extraction, manufacturing, construction, use, end of life (disposal, recycling, etc.), and transportation between each phase need to be included for a true picture.

Life Cycle Assessments contain two prongs: Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), which considers the environmental impacts throughout the life of a material, and Life Cycle Costing (LCC), which considers purchasing and operating costs and savings over the life of a material.

Applications of Life Cycle Assessment

When considering the potential applications of conducting a Life Cycle Assessment, you must first determine what you want to measure and what to include in your system boundary.

There are different boundaries or limits that can be placed on any life cycle assessment, which may be determined based on the information, time, or resources available for a material or interested party.

Cradle to Cradle: end of life disposal is circular / involves recycling to avoid producing more waste

Cradle to Grave: manufacturer of the material is responsible for managing the waste they produce

Cradle to Gate: from resource extraction to factory gate (before delivery to customer)

Once the stages to include have been determined, the next step is to create a process flow diagram of the material in question, illustrating what happens over the material’s life cycle and which processes lie within the system boundary.

It is important to pay attention to what is included in the system boundary when comparing products or materials to understand the assessments.

After clarifying the steps required to produce the material in question, these phases can then be quantified into emission outputs and costs of interest from the data collected. These quantifications can then be used by a design team to make educated decisions between different materials or products.

The Goal - towards closed loop circular building materials

Nature is filled with ‘closed-loop cycles’, meaning resources are consumed, reused, and in a sense ‘recycled’ over and over again in a harmonious process that does not produce waste. There is no “disposal” stage in a natural life cycle in other words.

Man-made products on the other hand break this loop, often creating open or linear systems in which new resources are constantly added in, and then removed from the system as waste at the end of life. This process is fundamentally damaging to the environment especially when scaled up to accommodate for the global population today.

The goal therefore is to eliminate waste via strategies such as recycled content, down-cycling, or the use of organic and natural materials.

How Can This Concept be Applied to Materials?

Ideally all construction materials wouldclosed systems’, where at the end of life, they are reused, salvaged, and repurposed to serve another need. This reduces waste and the need for further extraction from the earth’s limited resources. Building elements like window frames, pipes, and roofing membranes play a crucial role in the overall health of a building.

When considering which materials to utilize, look for materials with Product Declarations, which contain information about the impacts of a material and can decisions. The LEED standard, for example, has several credits related to the use of product declarations, encouraging the implementation and use of available information.

Health Product Declarations (HPDs) and Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) both contain important disclosure information, with HPDs focusing on ingredient impacts on human and ecological health, while EPDs focus on providing information on a products environmental impact.

See more on this subject in the ESG / Sustainability section of this site.

Resources

BREEAM LCA

• BREEAM’s [](LINK 7) of LCA importance

• Application of LCA in the standard

• Application of LCC in the standard

• Responsible sourcing of materials

LEED v4

• Mentions importance of impacts throughout life cycle

Building Transparency

• Find/Compare Materials, Plan/Compare Buildings, Declare Products, Carbon Calculator

Materials Palette

• Find information on highlow impact materials (in terms of carbon) over life cycle/resources

EPD Library

• Database of some materials/products/furniture you can search (EPD)

HPD Library

• Database of materials/products/furniture you can search (HPD)

Benefits of active design in the workplace

Designing for incidental movement in the workplace or healthy coworking office

Instead of talking about workplace exercise it can often make more sense to think about how to foster and promote a culture of incidental movement during the work day - this is a combination of personal willpower and workplace design in the context of a healthy building strategy.

We were born to move, when you look back in nature in evolutionary time, we didn't deliberately exercise as such but we were active for at least a few hours every day, it was simply part of our survival strategy in a harsh environment.

We were moving around, gathering, occasionally hunting, and keeping busy when food was short, weather was bad or other animals made trouble for us.

Walking meetings / standing meetings

How does all that connect with workplace wellness and a healthy office culture? Steve Jobs was a big proponent of one-on-one walking meetings, he figured out that a short walk in the fresh air can be, in some cases as good as a caffeine hit.

Short, focused team meetings can also be taken standing, either in a meeting room or around a table. They can also help avoid those seemingly inevitable energy slumps, helping ensure your concentration levels don't wane mid-afternoon for example.

So, how do you make that happen. Well, you can, you can either try and instigate it yourself or perhaps it's leadership, the boss or manager leading by example. Again, each workplace needs to experiment here to find what works for them, the key is to be open to such workplace wellness concepts.

We've all felt that feeling of sluggishness at some point in the work day in an office environment and a long afternoon meeting in an enclosed room with poor ventilation is not going to help at all, there's really no need to suffer through that anymore!

We know too much about how to create a healthy positive meeting room designed for productivity for that to be happening.

Active design stairwells in workplace design

Moving through the office building, stairwells are often this forgotten corner typically just left white with no real design interventions or points of interest, it’s as if the office architects or designers just ran out of steam or considered the stairs to be back of hours, rather than a space to embrace into the workplace design.

Imagine what happens if you were to spend just a little time designing those stairwells with workplace wellness in mind, what would happen, even with a minimal budget?

Perhaps you've got music playing, there may be living plants or other forms of biophilic design such as moss walls and nature-inspired artworks, or large vinyl graphics, something cool is going on with the lighting so that it feels inviting rather than a harsh blue-white LED from morning until night.

All of that would be what's called active design in the workplace - you'd be implementing design strategies that are there to promote workplace activity just by making it a more visually pleasant space to use, to move through from time to time during the work day rather than this perennially forgotten and under-utilized ‘Plan B’ option for navigating the building.

active design signage prompts

Never under estimate the power of signage at the point of decision, office workers about to press the button on the elevator for the 10th time that morning can be easily reminded that “hey, we've got these really cool things called stairs just over there, why not walk up to the third floor instead?”.

If we each make it our personal mission to use the office stairs a bit more, it can cumulatively add up to a meaningful contribution to the so-called ‘10,000 steps a day’ (which just means - moving around plenty each day). So this is another example of incidental movement during your work day.

It can be as simple as not sending an email to someone five floors up but instead actually going up to see them, and then walking back down - over the course of a day, a month and a year, that can make a tangible difference. It is one strategy amongst many and not a complete fix but it’s completely free and within reach of everyone, so why not grab it with both hands?

Standing desks in the healthy workplace

Arguably the most prominent shift when it comes to creating a healthy workplace is what's happened recently around standing desks, immediately taking a large slice of those sedentary hours sitting hunched over a screen and injecting a degree of extra movement that is so critical to creating a culture of workplace wellbeing.

There's been a real change in perception of what is acceptable in terms of workplace furniture in recent years and implicitly what a standing desk can can do for us in that respect.

Endless sedentary days are linked to lower back issues, they generally do us no favors in terms of out energy levels and do more harm than good overall. It’s time to mix things up!

Standing for part of the work day stimulates your blood flow, helping to maintain energy levels.

You don't necessarily need to spend the entire day at your standing desk, it’s OK to lean on a stool as well to take the weight of your feet, we recommend using a standing mat (see accompanying image) so that there is something soft under the feet, that makes a big difference to comfort levels.

A great brand to look for here is Fully with their eco-friendly bamboo desk tops.

How to get started with a standing desk in your office

Like anything in life, this takes a little practice, so don’t start by trying to pull 8-hour work days without taking a seat, it’s just not going to work and you’ll crash or burn within a week.

Start with an hour, then two and before long you won’t notice the difference. Nobody says you can’t sit down for the afternoon after a busy morning either! Expect a transition period of around three months for this.

Creating the habit of exercise around a work day

The flip side to what we’ve been calling incidental movement in the workplace is deliberate exercise, a chosen period of activity that has been consciously added into the work day as an opportunity to vigorously move your body, to get your sweat on, or simply to do some stretching, mobility work and so on. It’s all good.

Key to making this habit stick is a systems approach rather than relying on willpower alone. No matter whether you're a beginner or an elite athlete there, it’s about removing obstacles to that exercise happening. Try scheduling a workout like a meeting in the calendar.

Prepare your workout gear the night before a morning session, perhaps engage with workplace colleagues who are going to train too so we can hold each other accountable.

Office gym design in workplace wellness

For home workouts, or office gym workouts, all you really need is a basic set of gym equipment with an exercise mat, a few weights, a kettlebell, medicine ball or sandbag - the rest is psychological, if it’s an underground bunker with no natural light, no fresh air, no sense of visual interest, no coach or workout partner around… that workout is simply not going to happen, let’s face it!

That’s why outdoor workouts are a safer bet, weather permitting, or making the effort to get to an actual gym - which then becomes a ‘place of practice’, somewhere to really get the job done, rather than a space that has been partially converted into a pale imitation of a true gym. This may mean more time from your day but the value it adds may well make it worthwhile.

Our psyches are sharper than we think, they are not easily fooled. So, understanding yourself, your own personal motivation and the recognizing the limits of your willpower are all essential steps in creating a healthy work day.

institute of Building biology and sustainability

An interview with Johannes Schmidt, course manager of the Building Biology Course (https://buildingbiology-course.org) at the Institute of Building Biology + Sustainability IBN, Germany.

Highlights:

• the roots of healthy buildings and building biology are here in Germany

• If you study medicine, you learn about illnesses but not about sickness caused by spending time in a building

• In any house, the most important place from our perspective is the bedroom

• We have drastically changed the way we live over the last few generations. Just 100 years ago, we spent much more time outdoors.

• we don't want to say we have to go back to the Stone Ages. I'm using a computer, I use electricity, in the institute we simply use it in a more efficient, less harmful way.

• I use my body as a tool for movement in a natural environment, every day ideally.

---

Institute of Building Biology & Sustainability

What is the background to the Institute of Building Biology and Sustainability (IBN) in Rosenheim, Germany?

The history of the institute is that it actually was founded by a professor, Dr. Anton Schneider. And that was done in the year in 1976-77. This is when he started with his Institute, he was a professor at a technical university, here in Rosenheim in Germany. And he was doing research on different kinds of wood technologies, and also wood treatments, preservatives, etc. And by starting this, he also he found out about the impact of chemical treatments on the health of human beings.

Non-toxic, sustainable buildings

He was wondering whether there are not other technologies, or maybe even other craftsmen ships that have been done in the past when people were building houses. And by doing the research on that, he found out that there are many ways how you can build houses in a way where you have less exposure to toxic materials. And this is by simply using more natural materials.

He also made the connection of the impact of using all the or many industrial building products that they used in those days. And that many new building materials have been invented and used in the building trade. And there he started to find another way of building that is more environmental friendly, that is more sustainable. And this that has less impact on the health of the people who live in the houses.

Professor Schneider retired early, he had some health problems, then he founded in 1983. This institute as a private company, so to speak. And as the institute, it was no longer a part of the university. And from there on, he continued his work.

When we think about the green building movement in the US, it it feels like, in a sense, what was happening with with building biology in Germany was almost predating that, it was happening before, have you from a historical perspective. Do you see what happened in Germany as leading the industry globally?

The birth of healthy buildings as a concept

I think the roots of healthy buildings and building biology are here in Germany. I think it was in 1967-68-69 that he was working together with some other scientists who were doing research on that, and out of this meeting, then Professor Schneider started with his Institute at the University.

A healthy building headquarters

I was particularly interested to see the building of the Institute in Germany. So can you describe the headquarters, the building itself, and then also the types of services that the Institute offers, because it's more than just education, although obviously, we're partly talking about the course today, but the Institute offers other things as well.

Yep. When Professor Schneider retired in 1983, he already lived in the smaller village, close here to Rosenheim. And there he had a second building there. And this was the original, or the other first building of the private IBM of the private institute. In 2014, when Fred Schneider who actually is an architect, we build a new building biology building, which is now the headquarter of the IBM of our Institute.

With this new building, we realized the building biology principles, and we used the building biology recommended building materials. And this is where we also now have a good example, how you can build an office building in a building biology wait.

And so if anybody who is listening here is in Germany, and if you want to see our institute of the building, you can certainly come and visit us and have a look and have a look at what what building biology in reality is not just on paper, but in reality, in a way. But there are also many other building biology buildings that have been built over the last decades.

Building biology for offices and educational facilities

Our building here, I think, is also a good example for office buildings. And what we are doing here at the Institute, so the main purpose of the institute is to educate people who are mainly in the building trade, about how to build in an environmentally friendly way, how to use natural materials, how to build in a way that our modern tools and equipment that we have is not harmful, and that we reduce unnecessary toxins or that we also reduce or eliminate it, electromagnetic radiation or electrodes, or electrical magnetic fields, in order to have less electrode smoke, so to speak.

Also if we use new building materials that be checked this new building materials out whether they might contain any kind of problematic toxins or something like that. So if you ask about the typical work at our institute here, the main thing is to give additional information to give additional knowledge to architects to craftsmans, to carpenters, to painters to maintenance, and everybody in the building trade.

But as building biology is also a connection with the aspect of health in the house, the building. We also do have students who for instance, come as doctors you know, or who are in the health sector, because we think there is a big gap or lack of knowledge between those two.

If you study medicine, you learn about illnesses but not about sickness that can be caused by spending time in a building. I mean, many people know the term of sick building syndrome. But they actually do not know what that is. And this is something where we also trying to educate the public about this connection. And so another thing that we have, but this is unfortunately, only in German, we do have now an online magazine.

there is then a next step in the education program, that on top of a basic building biology course, which also is available in English, we do have an additional education, for testing. So this mainly refers to all the buildings that already exist, that you have to find out. If you are hired as a building biology testing specialist, what kind of problems are in the house. And this is another education program.

On top of the basic problem program, where we teach people how to test was testing instruments, the electro magnetic fields, the electrostatics, magnetic static fields, radioactivity, radon sound. Now in since a couple of years, also about how to test light fixtures we have now more and more LED light fixtures in our houses, how do you check those out?

Toxic chemicals in buildings

Another aspect is or a big topic are all the chemicals that we have in our houses, for instance, like formaldehyde, for instance or VOCs volatile organic compounds, how to test those, but also how to test, for instance, pesticides, that have been treated wood as woodstain, where you have a lot of toxic components that you can still find in existing houses in another topic is all these problems that are related to too much moisture in a building, when you get fungus growth and mold. And there also is a connection with increases what we can absorb heat in Germany that you do have, due to climate change a change in the climate, we have more humid summers. And when you have more humidity in the air, you get more humidity into the houses, which then can increase the growth of mold and fungus.

So it also is a not just a small way of checking out the houses. It's also some kind of like a holistic approach, you know that we check out what kind of possible risks can you find within the houses. But so far, unfortunately, we do not offer this courses, this additional testing education in English, maybe in a couple of years. We don't know it depends on the amount of students that begets who take the English course.

And within the course there's also some basic theoretical knowledge about the testings, how to do that. And we do have, this is something that everybody goes into, you can check this out, we have a standard of testing methods. So if you're interested in then you can read that.

And there you can also read about our evaluation guidelines, you know, where we have a guideline, how to judge the measurement that we do when we test houses in if you look on our numbers on our readings that we should suggest what is dangerous and what isn't, that you will find out that this differs a lot from official limits for instance, that are published by the government because our reference is the human being and the health of the human being. And this is also a I would say a unique or a different approach.

Healthy interiors & ecological footprints

And what else are we doing here we also we are looking on furniture from instance and interior design, because with furnitures, you can have the same kind of problem, they are made out of a lot of new material. And so they also can cause health problems.

And we are also looking at the energy efficiency of buildings. And there we look, also in a holistic approach on the complete ecological footprint of a building. And this also refers to the time when you start building a house, you know, because it makes a big difference, whether you use building materials that come out of your region, or whether you import building materials from foreign countries that have been shipped over the oceans, in containers.

So this also has an effect on the ecology and on the ecological footprint of the house, this is something that we're looking at. But also when you maintain a house when you live in the house, how do you and where do you get the energy in order to live within the house?

Yeah, I think it also is looking at a house from a holistic point of view that we try to combine these different views, you know, so how healthy is the building, in the building actually shall be a place where we can relax, where we can recover. And in any house, the most important place for us is the bed, the sleeping area.

If you look at the sleeping time, if you let's say sleep eight hours a night, we spent 1/3 of our life by sleeping. And this is a very essential time, because in the in the in the time when we are sleeping, our body is recovering itself, if it repairs itself, it detoxifies itself. And in this time period, our body should not be interrupted or disturbed by in this case, specially in by electromagnetic fields, you know, because many of the functions of our body also work with electricity within our body, you know, and artificial electricity can disturb this. And this is something that also many people simply don't know, they are not aware of that. And this is where we also try to inform the public about this very important issue.

If you speak to doctors, or if you speak to doctors who are environmental doctors or naturopaths, you know, they will also confirm that they have many illnesses, new illnesses. In they are also to a certain degree, they know where they might come from, but many of these doctors do not know what is the cause. And this is something that we also try to teach the public that we have to look on other aspects of here, we have to take into account other things in these days where more and more people realize that for instance, food organic food is better, and maybe eating less meat etc. and organic food is good drinking enough and good water. And but we do not look enough on the aspects of our buildings.

We have drastically changed the way we live over the last few generations. Just 100 years ago, we spent much more time outdoors. And now we spend about in our civilized world, about 80 to 90%. Indoors. And from this perspective, we want to build, create and improve houses in a way that for us, the human beings, our living environment, our buildings are as natural as possible in order to keep us in good health.

Buildings in harmony with nature

So in a way, you're challenging the assumption that everything that is new, is necessarily better or healthier. You're saying actually, so in some cases, in many cases, the new building materials and the new furniture materials that we're using are not necessarily healthier for the people for us or for our planet. And in fact, maybe some of the answers were already in place. We just have to go back and look for them.

Yes, I would agree to that. I mean, we don't want to say we have to go back to the Stone Ages. I'm using a computer, I use electricity, in the institute we simply use it in a more efficient, less harmful way. So we simply reduce it. And even me living here, or working here in a building biology office, and also having a building biology home, I'm also spent a lot of time outdoors, you know, in the nature, you know, going through the woods for exercise outdoors. I use my body as a tool that has to be used for movement, in a natural environment, every day ideally.

These days, we are sitting for eight hours or more hours a day, just in the chair and looking straight with almost no movement into a computer screen, you know, this is also very unnatural. Our eyes, for instance, they were also used to look in the distance close, in the front of your feet, you know, to the left to the right, you know, there was a lot of different movements, and we have reduced this in a way that it also can be harmful over the years for our eyes, you know, besides all the possible toxic influence from poor air quality, or electromagnetic fields, etc.

you know, we also be should make more use of our physical body, how it was intended by nature, and our body was not intended to spend 80 90%, in buildings, where you are exposed to all kinds of new chemicals that never existed 100 years ago on this planet, and to expose your body to electromagnetic radiation of all different kinds of frequencies and intensities, this is something that we are not used to.

Designing a healthy bedroom

So this idea of having a healthy bedroom, where as you say we spend a third of our life. Beyond having a natural natural fabric, mattress and pillows and bed sheets, for example, you're also thinking about the potential damage of EMF that's happening in the room?

Well, I mean, one of the first steps actually is to get information about this and so that you know what, what what happens if you use electricity, you know, and this was actually something that we are teaching in our course, you know, for instance, we also we do have electricians, you know, and an electrician, if you if you hire an electrician, to do some changes at your house wiring system, he will do everything that goes in according with the building codes, and he will make sure that you have that your light fixtures are working, that you can use your Wi Fi and that all these kind of things are working.

But these electricians they do not know how to reduce this kind of exposure. And there's for instance what most people have in their bedrooms they have electricity and they have their light fixtures beside their bed and they do not know when they turn off the light that there is still the electric current on on the wireless system, which makes up with always have an electrical fields, and this electrical field can connect to everything where electricity can flow. And electricity also can connect, for instance, to water. And our physical body contains about approximately 70% of water.

So our physical body can connect to this electrical fields, and then we have an artificial flow of artificial electrical fields that actually have nothing to do in our physical bodies that they simply shouldn't be there this artificial electricity is, you know, and also what is that, for instance, our physical body is using also electricity with a constant variation of the frequency.

You know, for instance, right now, if a testing laboratory would test the frequency of your brain, right now, they would probably find a frequency range of some around 15 to 35, up to 40 cycles, you know, and the cyclists that you have on your electricity in Germany is 50 cycles in the United States is 60 cycles.

And if you if you have a constant connection to this artificial 60 cycle, electricity was in your body, this is a constant disturbing to your body to do and to do all the electrical flow that is natural, you know, and you have there from your brain, for instance, you have electrical flows to your muscularity. In the daytime, when you are moving yourself, you also you have a constant connection to all your organs within your body. And if there's always a constant, artificial fields, this simply makes it very hard and stressful to keep up with the natural organization and and stimulation of your complete physical body.

And from this point of view, what we are saying, how can we change that. So what we do, when a testing specialist for instance, comes to house, he measures the amount of fields that you have within your bed, you can measure this, and with a testing tool, or with different testing tools, and then you know, what's, what's the actual situation, and then you judge this actual situation, according to our standard of testing methods will fit with this guidelines, you know, and the next step would be to turn off the circuit of the bedroom.

And usually, then if you then continue to test American neck next testing, you in most cases, you would find that the readings have dropped significantly. The next step is if you still have some Phillips there, that you for instance, turn off the bathroom, that is beside your sleeping room, or the kitchen, you know if the bedroom is in the first in the second floor, you turn off the circuit for the kitchen that is below the bedroom, or from the living room, you know, and then you check out which kind of circuits have an influence on the bedroom. And then when you find out, let's say you have the bedroom, the bathroom and the living room.

And for instance, the guest room, then the building biology testing specialists will recommend to build in so called Automated circuit breakers that turn off the electricity if you don't need it in the nighttime. You know, that means when you turn off your light fixture, when you lay in your bed, you turn it off, then this automated circuit breaker will realize or recognize that you don't need the electricity and it will turn and it will shut off the regular 120 50 cycle electricity in Germany and I think in the States is 110 voltage 60 cycle, we'll turn it off.

And we'll only now have a DC voltage with 12 Watts to your light fixture and this 12 volts DC is not a problem for the body and doesn't harm us, you know. And when it's dark in the night and you have to go to the bathroom in the night you need to light you just turn on your light fixture and then The automatic circuit breaker will notice this by this 12 volt system. And we'll switch to your 110 and 60 cycles, and it takes half of a second, and your light goes on. So this is a very simple technical solution, where you can eliminate those electrical fields in your bed while you are sleeping. And you don't have to, you don't have to worry about any kind of influences from the electricity. Well, this is a very simple way. And this may cost you a couple 100 bucks to get this installed. And this is a very simple solution.

And our recommendations, for instance, if you build a new house, you have another you have another choice, you can use so called shielded wires, and those shielded wires, they it's something like an aluminum mesh around the the three cables within the wire, and you have to connect this to the ground, and they eliminate radiation of the electrical fields, when we don't have to turn off the circuits. You simply use those shielded wires system and the plucks, and you have eliminated those electrical fields. And then you can plug in this is now also available shielded light fixtures, and you have eliminated the electrical fields within your house.

So this is no Hocus Pocus, this is not something very tricky, this is something very easy. But the problem is most people do not know that they could do this and most electricians don't know about this possibilities. Now, this is what we are trying to teach. And in order to do that, you also have to do it in the proper way, you have to testing more properly. And this is what we teach in our course.

human-centric design concept

Doing my research into Building biology, I came across this term that you use quite a lot called “human based design”. Now that appeals to me immediately when I read it, but perhaps you could just talk to us and describe a little bit that concept and what his main characteristics are?

Well, I think as the term actually says human based, that the focus is on our humans, and this also includes that we as human beings, that we feel better if you for instance, look on harmonic relations have the dimensions of room, you know, and that you also look on natural materials, and this is something different.

If you only ever design that is only based on the most economical point of view, you know, how can you save? Or how can you get the best, the best revenue or the best outcome on your investment, so to speak, you know, that you just look on a building from a money point of view, you know, that you try to use and use cheap building materials, you know, and it also makes a difference.

For instance, if you then touch these kinds of surfaces, you know, it makes a difference. For instance, if you have a wooden desk, you know, where you are working, or whether it's just an artificial born or whatever it is out of plastic and an artificial surface, for instance, you know, so it's goes by the look. And it also goes for instance, for instance, right now for look out of my window, you know, I have a big window so that I can also see the outdoors, you know, this is something that's important for us that you are not in an environment where you but you can see to the outdoors, you know, this is also some because there you can see if you're lucky if you're not live in the big cities, that you can also maybe look and see a tree or something like that, you know, this is that you also include the the the needs, also from from what we are what our physical body has been used over the last I don't know many centuries, you know, and millenniums you know, and all also that you can smell for instance, natural materials, you know?

And and, yeah, how can you say that, and also one thing and know whether you be linear the expression of the Golden cut, you know, that is an expression where architects use this in order that you have a certain kind of the lengths to the width to the heights of room, for instance, you know that this is in a harmonic relationship, where you simply feel better, you know, and if you have something that has been built according to this harmonic dimensions, when people enter rooms like that, and if you ask them, How do you feel in this room here?

Labor, so, oh, well, it feels good, it feels nice, you know, and this is something that people say, when they come through our building, or to our Institute building, you know, then they say, Oh, wow, this here, it smells good, and it feels good. And so, on the opposite, if you go into a modern building that only has been built with economical rules, then you might also feel well, you know, it doesn't feel really good. Or the smell oh, well, no, it smells a little bit strange, or it smells chemical or something like that, you know? So, this is what I would say that this has something to do with the human based design.

Building Biology post-Covid

How has building biology responded to what we've gone through with the the COVID crisis? Like what's the reaction been from within the building biology world?

Well, on the one hand, it's actually nothing new for us, because what we are saying is that we should, yeah, ventilate our houses better. And that we that in order to have a more a better air quality and natural air quality, and now it's this is thanks to COVID to Corona, that people are now ventilating their offices and also their houses much much better, you know, and one additional aspect is that you also reduce the amount of possible viruses that might be in the air, but in order to carbon dioxide for instance, or if you have building materials or furnitures that are built with chipboards, where you have formaldehyde is a problem.

Or if you have artificial building materials that off guess VOCs you also get a reduction of these kinds of toxic air pollutants. And so from this perspective, it's a positive effect of the Coronavirus you know, that people are now realizing how important ventilation is the other thing is that we are saying that building biology is also one aspect that improves your health status.

And if you live in a building biology built house, you can also expect that you will have a better immune system that is more stable and then also can that you then also have a natural way how your physical body can treat with this virus if you should be exposed to it. And so, we also we did get some questions from our viewers how shall we deal with the mask for instance, you know, and this also is a topic where we say that has to be looked at and some of the aspects are good, but there are still many many questions and to the way how we are dealing with this COVID crisis here.

And we say eat proper organic foods, drink a lot of water, spend much time outdoors, inhale proper air in nature in the woods go through the woods, you know, that also cleans a lot of our toxic dust and etc. So that your support your physical body and also spent a lot of time outdoors in the sun. You know we do need direct sunlight you know we do don't need more artificial light in only wear the mask when it's really necessary.

And for instant, but this is my personal opinion, if I see people walking outdoors, who the woods and wearing a mask, it doesn't make sense to me, it's from my point of view, I think it's actually an increased health risk, you know, because when we human beings, when we exhale, our physical body tries to get rid of stuff, of particles, also of particles of viruses of bacterias of carbon dioxide, you know, and if you're wearing a mask, you are inhaling at least a certain percentage things that our body wants to get rid of.

So I would say only wear a mask when it's really necessary. And also change those masks in the regular basis, you know, if people are having masks in their pockets, and then using the same kind of mask for a week or longer, I mean, this is also not very good idea. Because you also might get within the mask, some kind of fungus grows or whatever, you know.

So yeah, it's, it's certainly is an additional topic. And for our institute yet also meant some disturbances here and made more workload for us because we had to shift our hands on seminars, and giving those seminars online, in many of our speakers of the spoon biologists that we have as speakers, they weren't used to that, you know, so we were kind of thrown in the cold water, having here zoom conferences and zoom seminars.

And, for me, I also have to admit that it's much more exhausting. If you speak for six hours, just always introduce green dots of your computer where the camera is, you know, and you don't see the interaction, you know, with the people know, if you're in a room, or you have a seminar, where you can see the people may you can

Building Biology online course

So in terms of the structure of the course and the duration, it looks like it's about a year to complete, so quite a serious undertaking more than just a quick certificate that that we might do in a month. This is this is a year of still part time work?

Yeah, the English version is 100% online , so that everybody on this planet, no matter where he is in New Zealand, or Australia, or the United States, that he can take the course in English. And people have to study at home. And we do recommend that you, for instance, open one chapter of the course and that you then study offline, you know, and that you also use a cord connection to your computer and not just using Wi Fi, you know, when you are learning our course that teaches you not to use Wi Fi.

So, but yes, it would be better, you know, if you have the students right in front of you, but it also wouldn't be very ecologically that people students would have to fly to Germany or that we would fly to different countries on this planet, you know, in order to teach us so It's, it's a compromise, you know, I mean, we are not that happy.

But on the other hand, if more and more people on this planet are using in their individual countries, the building biology principles, you know, the better it is for this planet, you know, even if there is a lack of communication or back and forth, you know, and, but we are still in touch with the students and from time to time.

Also, I do have individual zoom meetings with the students who take the course. And sometimes we get visits, you know, if the course come to Germany, they visit us here. And there is a growing community of building biologists all over the planet, which is nice, but it's still a small percentage of people in the building trade, you know it, but I think we urgently need more more people who are working in a building biology way, also due to climate change, you know, we are also in touch, for instance, here in Germany with the, from the Friday for future movement with the architects for future with a lot of young architects, you know, who want to do something.

And when they started, they also thought how can we develop a architecture that is good for the climate? And we simply could say, well, we have these these concepts already since 30, or 40. Deck years, you know, and so you don't have to invent, invent the real new, and just get the knowledge for Building biology.

And if you build the building biology principle, it's the best way how to build buildings, in order to do something for the environment, and also for the climate for the climate change, you know, and, but there we need much more. I mean, I mean, we need building biologists on this planet, like the amount of doctors or architects, they all should know this, if this knowledge, you know, this would help our, our planet Earth a lot, you know,

Healthy Materials with Matter of Stuff

Materials for a healthy interior with Matter of Stuff in London, UK

Green & Healthy Places podcast episode 032

Wellbeing & sustainability in real estate & hospitality

Welcome to Episode 032 of the Green & Healthy Places podcast, in which we explore the worlds of wellbeing and sustainability in real estate and hospitality. I'm your host, Matt Morley, wellbeing champion - Founder of BIOFILICO healthy buildings and BIOFIT wellness concepts.

This episode, I'm back in London, UK talking to the two Italian founders of Matter Of Stuff - a furniture procurement consultancy that offers bespoke manufacturing via a network of craftsmen as well as research and development of new materials and manufacturing processes.

sustainable interior materials

My conversation with Simona and Sofia focuses on the sustainable material side of their offer. It is worth noting that their range goes far beyond that inspired, at least in part by their links to artisans throughout their home country.

Here though, we're digging into the importance of choosing locally produced building materials, considering a materials entire lifecycle, and a circular economy approach to repurposing building waste.

In terms of specific materials, we cover things like sustainable ceramics, clay plaster, live mycelium, recycled glass, biodegradable cork walls, and an ingenious sea stone product made of discarded seashells from the seafood industry.

All of this is really just a reflection of the wealth of knowledge at the fingertips that these two young ladies have. And they're now setting their sights on construction materials in addition to interior surface materials, so expect to hear plenty more from them over the next year or so.

Matter Of Stuff

Yeah, so I'm Simona. And we're both architects, we set up Matter Of Stuff seven years ago, wow. Time flies, but we came from an architectural background working in offices in London, I had a big studio for myself. And we find a gap in between the manufacturing industry and what is the the actual scenes of the architectural industry. So we are defining ourself as a consultancy for both materials and procurement of furniture manufacturing. We are actually trying to fill the gap in between architects, interior designers, and the manufacturing world.

Healthy interior materials for architects

So are you finding that generally, is it perhaps that architects are focusing on on the big picture, and they perhaps have their regular materials that they go to materials that it's easy for them to specify? And in a sense, you're, you're trying to propose new ideas?

Matter Of Stuff

“Busy architects may not have the luxury of time to research deeply new products and materials constantly. This topic has become very broad and their job has been pushed into larger more complex projects, so we help them navigate the world of materials and sustainability. ”

— Matter of Stuff

Craftmanship and sustainable materials in offices

So how do you see the hand crafted in relation to say industrial production? How do you see the relationship between the two because there's the sort of the imperfections on the one side, that kind of Wabi Sabi thing. Then in some contexts, and you mentioned offices - they are typically prefer almost an industrial approach to the furniture and the finishes. So how do you balance those two?

Matter Of Stuff

We wrote a manifesto about perfection, debunking the myth of imperfection, really, because we believe that in crafts as opposed to industrial production, imperfection is a symbol of craft ands add value, there are two way of manufacturing items one is producing at a large scale in a line.

What we value is the handcrafted. And so often, like small scale businesses, which are very dedicated to really high quality, however, there is a there is a little thing about the the mentality, the making by hand that goes and add a little detail, and every item makes every item you need. And that's what we value most.

Carbon footprint for furniture

How do you manage your own carbon footprint for the furniture projects that you're involved in?

Matter Of Stuff

Yeah, so for basically for every piece of furniture that we sell, we deal with, there is a little code a little number that assigns a carbon footprint of every object and when we add up in a schedule all those numbers then we come up with a total quantity of carbon footprint emitted and then we try to offset it by partnering up with the Tree For Life - a charity set up in Scotland, the first place on earth to declare a climate emergency actually.

“I think of carbon offsets as the last resort for companies trying to make a difference; everybody should do it if possible but getting to the root of the problem requires researching materials that can transform the building and construction industry, such as recycled materials, mycelium and so on. ”

— matter of stuff

There are there are many ways potentially to influence the market to change and one is triggering thoughts and reflection and topics of furniture to interior design to the actual construction. Like we can do bricks in virgin material or we can break down an existing building and rebuild it from the materials that are actually used in the demolition process.

We also need to start thinking about localizing production. So bringing manufacturing closer to the construction site. What I mean by this is, for example, we work with recycled plastic - a super interesting concept and idea. However, if it is shipped from Italy, let's say to Los Angeles in California, then it doesn't really become sustainable.

A Life Cycle Analysis of Materials

So on one level, we have recycled materials but we also have to think about where that material is produced and the distance that it travels to get to the site.

Matter Of Stuff

Yeah, and the final thing that you need to add to that is also the life cycle of our materials. So once you finish the project, you're not done at all, you have all these new life of materials that need to be repurposed from the building that you have completed. And as that is long life cycle.

So it is about adding a third element to sustainability thought, which is, how can I then reuse this material that I've used in my project in another project, and so on creating a circular process of reusing all your waste, because at the end of the day, we don't have only a problem of resources, we only have a problem as a massive amount of waste we are generating. So by kind of shifting the thoughts on these three topics, you can really make the massive differences.

healthy materials - ceramics

If we then go one level deeper and start looking at some of the materials… let’s start with ceramics, you've got some really interesting ceramic tiles, including some that have industrial waste made of iron and manganese and metal? How do you communicate those to a potential client in terms of why you would use certain types of ceramics over others?

Matter Of Stuff

Ceramic is a very exciting material. I think, because it's been used for centuries, we have so much knowledge gathered around it. And really, I think what we have tried to convey in our selection of ceramics is mainly How can we do it in a more sustainable way so that the impact of an oven at 1200 degrees doesn't become a problem in terms of carbon emissions.

We actually selected mainly companies and independents that are trying to use ceramic in an interesting way. So the first thing is, we don't have our range or set of ceramic tiles, we only make them bespoke to the needs of a client. But we are producing only on demand, which is a massive shift to how ceramic is conceived.

This means we don't create waste because we obviously don't produce more than what is demanded. We only turn on the oven when it's necessary, which is another point. And then I think there is a really interesting thing because ceramic is made out of iron sand sort of glazing that it's mostly having chemical reaction in the oven.

And by actually trying to recycle metal waste we are regenerating those materials that are polluting the environment into a product that can have beautiful color as a normal glazing by reusing something that would be otherwise poisoning landfills. We try to really guide our client and architect to understand what they're purchasing and only purchasing what is necessary.

Non-toxic materials for improved air quality

Okay, so the recycled content is the pigment in the glaze on top of the tile that contains these recycled components but you also mentioned there's some toxic elements potentially in other types of ceramic tiles? The ceramic tile unglazed is a healthy material but it is the glaze we have to careful of is that it?

Matter Of Stuff

Yeah, so I mean, in general, when you create tiles, you are having a body of clay that needs to be skipped, let's call it and you put it into the oven, and you fire it, and this is unglazed. And then we use glass and metal particles and pigments to create the beautiful coloring of the surface of the time.

Obviously, there are chemicals in that process that are not natural, that could actually be poisoning. And obviously we try to avoid those and try to only use things that are, you know, potentially natural source of coloring. Obviously, by using some of these iron and manganese and other metals that were left in the, in the landfills, we are offsetting the pollution that they will generate and instead creating a beautiful coloured glaze.

the healing power of clay

Do you see that as almost part of one healthy material family then as you also supply clay plasters and paints, all offering a connection to one of our most ancient building materials.

Matter Of Stuff

Yeah, clay and earth is one of the oldest material humans have used. I think the main difference with clay plaster and paints is that you're actually using the clay unfired so you're not turning on an oven, you are mixing it with different types of pigments or silica, and things that can create really beautiful coloring, and then you're just plastering walls with it.

What is also quite important is that clay has incredible properties is actually a healing material. We use it, you know, as a face mask, we use it as well to cure our aching joints when they are a bit stiff. So clay has this really strong natural power of healing. And by using it as a natural product on your walls, you're creating a surface that is hypoallergenic, but has also ability to regulate humidity inside a room, which is something that is very important for the health of of, you know, of as human in cylinder.

materials that are both green and healthy

You're describing these materials both in terms of people and planet, both the healthy and the environmentally friendly. So balancing the two in terms of the impact the material has on the planet, but also on the potentially positive impact that can have on on the health of the people spending time in that space. What about mycelium in that sense, it is a new material that's suddenly getting talked about so much. What is its potential?

Matter Of Stuff

Yeah, I mean, it's biophilic Design, I mean, it comes, there's something interesting in designing with a living material, right? We can plan the outcome and we can kind of control it in a way that it comes to a desired form or shape or certain performances.

What's great about mycelium is that it's a fungus, and it grows by eating some kind of organic matter. And then what we can do, we can stop the growth of the material once it's rich, the shape and the performances that we want. And we can kind of see it in a way that it stops growing and it stops it starts actually performing.

But after its lifecycle as a building material, for example, if an office needs to be taken down in 10 years time, then the acoustic panel that is composed of mycelium can be taken out of the wall and thrown in compost and actually it biodegrade with nature.

I think that's something completely beautiful and and it's new Of course it's there's so much of this research that it's has been gone through I think as a consequence of the Greta Thunberg movement you know a couple of years ago people are getting a lot more like aware and I think governments are investing a lot more into funding and subsidizing also research and design and new manufacturing processes that are you know, innovative and have you know, something something new to give to to kind of the construction industry I think that's great and it's it's the only way forward in a way

opportunities for recycled glass in wellbeing interiors

You also have a range of glass products and recycled glass in particular such as recycled glass panels made in the UK 100%. So it's taking the sort of the local box if you had a local project in in London or the UK, right?

Matter Of Stuff

So recycled glass, it's an amazing opportunity for all of us because glass, again, is one of the oldest material humans work with. Most of our recycled glass are taking shape into a pixel that could be repeated, either creating chandeliers or creating new wall systems with other materials, as well as the recycled glass which becomes actually an incredible tool to control acoustic performances into a room.

So by changing completely the composition, this creates material that is almost like a pumice stone type of thing. So it's very light, very porous, and can actually trap Sound waves inside in a very special way. So we simply use glass as a new material. But in a way, we can recycle it infinitely because it's only about you know, melting again the glass and so to keep on adding on it.

Also what is quite interesting about being very local is that you use the glass, the type of glass you have very close to you. So you control the quality of the glass and the colors. And therefore you can start creating patterns and so the composition that you know, are controllable and predictable.

We have also created recycled glass reception desk, or even tables, which is quite it's quite interesting and exciting, but we mostly work with designers who are private client they want to are interested in the material and then we come up with a beautiful design for it.

Cork walls as a sustainable design feature

Okay, so we have a couple of alternative options for acoustic panels. With the mycelium and the recycled glass. The recycled glass can also be almost kind of like decorative panels, but in the mycelium, I noticed can also be a type of floor tile. Talking about the walls I noticed you've also recently started working with Portuguese cork wool supplier, corks that some of the finishes there and that the designs that they have are really amazing. It's not what you would expect from a piece of cork, right?

Matter Of Stuff

Well, I mean, I think the main purpose of design is to innovate and make a material look new and interesting. So what Gencork has developed with cork is I think the ultimate design plus onto a material that has been seen and kind of used a lot.

So it's quite interesting to work with a Portuguese company because with cork because they are the biggest, you know, biggest premier production of cork in all Europe. And the trees are protected so they can only aravis cork in specific way and they need to ask permission to the government to actually you know, pick up the bark and produce it.

So it's very controlled process. And this is because they don't want to arm ever the plant. Also, by using cork we are using something that is completely renewable because it's only the skin The auditory, and therefore it can be constantly growth.

So it's harvest every normally six years, leaving the tree the time to regenerate. Expanded cork is produced differently from normal cork, we use high steam, and these makes the cork pop like popcorn and expand. And he kind of binds the material together with the rising of the trees instead of using a lot of other products or glue or epoxy resins.

So this means again, our cork panels are 100%, biodegradable and organic and they could be re cycled in a new pond. And I feel cork is like us for insulation of solids and many other purposes, but has never been pushed into a beautiful material that can be actually a facade or an interior cladding.

So the main purpose of this panel is generating a new aesthetic, a new three dimensional surface. And almost they can be carved as as a piece of marble really. So not only becoming a wall, but they could potentially be used even to create bespoke furniture or, or reception desk or, you know, seamless moving from a floor to a wall to a ceiling panel, which is quite exciting. I think for designers out there.

sustainable materials made from seashell waste

And finally, then I wanted to ask you about the recycled system to read so that you have because it just seems to have this beautiful story about the tons and tons of discarded seashells is that from the from the from the from the seafood industry?

Matter Of Stuff

Yes, we basically it's a project developed by two designers studied in London, it's a very exciting project where they actually started looking at how the seafood industry is kind of, you know, dumping a lot of these really beautiful material, because it's actually calcium carbonate. And we normally feed these into our production by, you know, kind of like seeking it.

While we are done throwing it away and sort of creating a lot of waste. So by reusing it and creating a composite that is kind of natural, they are generating a new type of concrete, they were actually asking a point to try and make the structural to really replace concrete entirely.

And it's quite interesting how much attic theory is behind this product, because the designer actually don't want this because as soon as you start trying to give more performance in terms of strength, they will have to add heat to the to the production.

And these would take away these completely non toxic completely like low carbon emission material, which I find very interesting because in a way, all our work revolves around one single tote, which is how can we make these material cheap enough and sustainable enough to replace technical materials that we are using.

So if we are able to make mycelium are really strong compared competitor to polyrattan, for example, or to or to a really terrible acoustic panel made out of synthetic fibers, we are really shifting the industry and we are not anymore forcing people to say oh, I need to spend so much more money to use these really sustainable material that is then maybe not behaving as I want.

We the real change and real shift into the industry could happen only if we make this product really permeable and easy to use. So ultimately, I think all our work revolves around trying to keep fanatic around what what is material do and try and really to push them to behave in a way that can replace those terrible materials that we are working with now.

And I mean, one thing that I think it's important to ensure we have only talked about surface material, which are only probably 10 or 15% of what is used in the industry. But we are working a lot on the vaccines to try and also scout for those materials that could really replace the larger quantity.

So how can we do an MDF that is more sustainable? Or it's completely recyclable? Or how can we replace entirely bricks with a new concept that doesn't allow doesn't require so much firing? So I think it's an interesting open quest, you know, and we all need to sort of exchange information and and knowledge and so that's why I think it's lovely what you're doing with this podcast, like trying to engage people to discover each other and hopefully, you know, this can lead to, to more knowledge shared among people in industry.

Healthy materials advisory

Are you advising construction companies? Are you collaborating with architects? How perhaps the range of different clients if you could describe those and how you're delivering your services effectively?

Matter Of Stuff

Yeah, so we, we work with both architects, interior designers, and of course, artists interior designer at the change maker, the are the main specifiers. And we've worked with contractors before, we've worked with directly with co-working spaces that have different locations in in London, supplying furniture.

And of course, there's a huge level of research that goes through and, for example, for furniture as well, like we've recently introduced a way to browse furniture on our website by sustainable properties, say let's furniture have, you know, certified wood or if they're made out of recycled material, if they are recyclable.

And that's, that's all research that we do. And it's kind of a service of the people that, you know, we work with, in a way. We believe in kind of free content, kind of sharing as much as possible.

Of course, London is quite a wild industry, but we're quite generous with our research. And, and yeah, so it's a we're open to new collaboration, we're open to private clients, as well as, you know, construction companies. And we welcome all kind of enquiries.

https://www.matterofstuff.com/

multi-sensory wellbeing interiors

How to use light, sound, scent and texture in multisensory Biophilic design for wellbeing benefits

What is wellbeing interior design? 

Wellbeing interiors are simply indoor spaces that have been maximized for human health and wellness. These may or may not include consideration for sustainability as the focus here is primarily on People rather than Planet. The role of human senses is crucial in this context, as a fundamentally multisensory approach to design can enhance the overall well-being of occupants by considering a broader spectrum of human perception, including light, air, sound, and materials selection. Multisensory design is essential in creating meaningful experiences that engage users’ senses, impacting mood, behavior, and well-being.

It’s a subtle distinction and by no means one that suggests mutually exclusive concepts, in fact we would argue that the best examples manage to marry both, bridging both worlds, respecting the environment whilst also promoting enhanced health for occupants of the space.

Wellbeing design considers light, air, sound and materials selection. This is often delivered by a Wellbeing Champion either independently or as a consultant on a wider project team.

What is biophilic design?

Biophilic design combines elements of nature, health and sustainability in interiors and architecture.

Far more than just landscaping, in its finest examples, it maintains a strong visual connection between indoor and outdoor worlds through the careful selection of colours, materials, patterns, shapes and, yes, both living plants and non-living representations of nature.

Our ‘tools’ in this sense include indoor planters and mini gardens, living walls, flooring, wall decor, acoustic panels, natural artworks, furniture fabrics, even eco cleaning policies, aromatherapy, soundscapes.

Natural light in healthy indoor environments

Lighting in a home office environment is important not just for ensuring a respectable image on a Zoom call but also for its role on our mental wellbeing. Natural light is crucial for maintaining consistent circadian rhythms, promoting physical and mental health, and contributing to a healthy multisensory workspace. Digital design plays a significant role in creating multisensory workspaces that incorporate non-visual sensory aspects, such as smell, taste, and touch, to enhance overall perception and experience. Considering a broader spectrum of sensory perceptions, it may not be the first thing we think of in relation to Biophilic design and healthy indoor environments but it is a valuable component in any wellbeing interiors project.

In a workplace wellness strategy, both for home and commercial spaces, daylight exposure is key for well-being.

First up, it’s always a good idea to get a few minutes of direct natural sunlight within the first 30 minutes or so of waking in order to help regulate your circadian rhythm - use a smart light system that recreates that same spectrum of colour for you indoors during the winter months, these lights can also be used to replicate sunlight as your alarm clock all year round, assuming dogs, cats and kids do not get there first!

Similarly, when working from home place your desk set-up near a window to give you as much natural daylight during your work day as possible. When you need supplemental lighting, again a smart light system will allow you to program the colour frequency from blue-white in the morning to amber in the evening, easing you into the day and winding you down steadily at night.

In the evenings one should avoid exposure to intense sources of blue-white light. Halogen ceiling lights will struggle to create the right atmosphere mornings and evenings above all, so you’ll want to switch to a combination of standing lamps and task lighting (e.g. desk lamp) to give more flexibility.

Get this wrong and it can severely affect quality of sleep - we may even be able to fall asleep as usual but there will be less REM sleep and therefore less mental recuperation taking place during the night. Those with sleep monitors on their wrists or fingers should be able to produce their own data to verify this for themselves.

Clearly all screens, be they from a TV, computer or smartphone are possible sources of this same sleep-disrupting light, so ensure there is a program such as f.lux on your computer or just the TV brightness later in the evening - better yet allow yourself a minimum of one hour of screen-free time before bed.

In a family or work scenario where compromises need to be made for whatever reason, individually electing to wear a pair of amber-lensed glasses in the evenings does the same job. Again, it’s worth testing this out and monitoring your sleep quality if it is of interest.

Acoustics in wellbeing interiors

A healthy building needs to address acoustics and other sensory features in order to create a healthy indoor environment that does not promote stress, while aiding in concentration and, in a residential context, ensures high quality sleep at night.

Incorporating sensory integration into the design process is crucial for creating a healthy indoor environment, as it considers the impact of various senses on inhabitants and promotes well-being through a multisensory approach.

Sound insulating materials are often integrated into or under flooring tiles, dry wall insulation, decorative wall panels, room dividers, planters, furniture and even wall paint.

Distracting noises in large, open-plan office spaces can have a direct impact on worker wellbeing and leave staff struggling to find a quiet corner in which to do deep work alone.

Equally, a small room with no soft furnishings in, such as a second bedroom converted into a home office, will require either carpet or a rug, furniture and fabrics - basically anything soft to help stop the sound reverberating around the room.

Once an acoustic plan has established an agreeable baseline of background noise, then we can apply acoustic Biophilic design by bringing in subtle nature sounds or other forms of white noise to mask noise from HVAC systems and elevator shafts. This may not be appropriate everywhere but can, for example, be applied in specific areas such as a reception or waiting area, or canteen.

Sounds of trickling water could be a fountain outside, allowing nature sounds from outside to come indoors, acoustic world music, ethnic, or traditional music from around the world especially drumming, those are all evolutionary aligned soundtracks that are likely to promote focus and drive without distracting.

Delos in the US, the company behind the WELL Certification for healthy buildings, amongst other things, recently launched a biophilic sounds and mindfulness app called MindBreaks that offers high-quality 3D audio to help you “Escape, Energize, Rest, Meditate, Focus and Inspire”.

Acoustic sound booths such as these ones we sourced for the HERO food group’s corporate offices in Switzerland can also be integrated into a Biophilia plan by selecting suitable colours for the acoustic fabrics inside, options for models with wood (or veneer) panelling, placing plants around the booths and generally ensuring they integrate smoothly into the overall workplace design.

Finally, music with lyrics can be distracting at least in a language that we understand and there is nothing worse in a workplace context than a playlist that prevents us from doing our best work each day but as a rule, acoustic, traditional and ethnic sounds are going to be especially good at filling the void in a workspace context without demanding too much of your mental focus and attention.

Whether that is a realistic game plan for 8-10 hours a day or not is up to you and your colleagues to decide, perhaps just as we move around a workplace for different tasks, having specific playlists (or indeed a ‘no music’ policy) that match those tasks, might be a sensible solution?

Scent in Biophilic design interiors

So, we mentioned the idea of forest bathing a corollary of Biophilic design in interiors. Forest phytoncides are a particular airborne substance given off by certain species of trees that has been shown in South East Korea to boost the human immune system too.

When combined with what we know about the mental health benefits of spending time in nature, it’s clear that aromatherapy has a role to play in a multi-sensory Biophilic design strategy. This strategy emphasizes the importance of sensory experience, incorporating all five senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell, and even taste to create innovative and memorable environments. Adding layer upon layer of nature-inspired detail in a Biophilic interior concept can significantly enhance the sensory experience.

Invest in a high-quality pine or cypress oil for your home aromatherapy diffuser, perhaps combined with rosemary and peppermint to capture some of the same health benefits of spending time outside in a forest.

Think especially of how this could be done in a home office environment, for example, where a little Biophilic design can go a long way in creating a wellbeing interior geared for productivity and calm. The impact of sound in the workplace environment should also be considered, addressing both its positive and negative effects.

Equally, citrus oils such as bergamot and lemon are especially good for focus, followed by lavender later in the evening to help you wind down when the workday is done.

Texture in healthy interiors for sensory experience

Last but not least, let’s not forget the role of texture and sensory qualities in wellbeing interiors, as designing for all the senses with a carefully chosen natural fabric or finish with just the right amount of tactility can add an additional layer of nature-connectedness to a Biophilic design.

Man-made materials tend to be impossibly perfect compared to nature, so integrating natural materials such as wool, cork, wood and cotton in carefully selected places can invite a tactile interaction with the interiors. Plastic may be cheap and easy to clean but, at least from a Biophilic design perspective, it will never be able to compete with real wood or bamboo say.

We might imagine a decorative cork wall in an office reception for example such as those by Gencork or a textured jute rug by Nanimarquina in a home office inviting the user to spend time barefoot during the day.

Not all of the strategies need to be combined in every wellbeing interior but there is magic in integrating more than one of them as a way to add interest and intrigue…

how to create a healthy indoor environment — biofilico wellness interiors

Biophilic Design Display at Can Ikigai, Barcelona by Biofilico

Describe Your Work in the Healthy Buildings and Workplace Wellness Space

I take a nature-oriented approach to health and wellbeing, focusing on the real estate and hospitality sectors, including offices, residences, gyms, and hotels, to create healthy indoor environments.

Biofilico offers creative design, interior consulting, and building certification services. We design wellbeing interiors ourselves or collaborate with architects, engineers, and project management as external advisors with specific briefs.

In every project, our aim is to enhance an interior’s mental and physical health by ensuring good indoor environment quality. Energy efficiency measures are integrated into our designs to ensure good indoor air quality and occupant health. Offices, homes, and hotels are now key areas of focus. Additionally, I work at a strategic level, helping real estate developers align their property developments with ESG principles.

Biofit, on the other hand, focuses specifically on wellness concepts, gym design, and wellbeing programs for hotels and workplaces.

Both businesses are intricately related to the spaces we spend our time in, aiming to ensure buildings are aligned with our health and the planet's wellbeing.

What is a ‘Sick Building’ Compared to a Healthy Building?

A sick building can manifest in various ways, including headaches, concentration problems, low energy levels, reduced cognitive function, high numbers of staff sick days, and other health problems.

In contrast, a healthy building that integrates wellbeing interior design and follows a global standard, such as the WELL Certification, promotes occupant mental and physical health. This involves construction or refurbishment, interior fit-out, and facilities management policies once the building is in use.

These wellbeing design principles can be applied both in the workplace and at home, contributing to a healthier indoor environment.

What is Biophilic Design?

Biophilic design bridges sustainability and human wellbeing in real estate and interiors. It involves nature-inspired design that brings the outside world in, providing positive benefits for both people and the planet.

Green building strategies focus on a building’s environmental impact, while healthy building strategies prioritize the wellbeing of its occupants. Biophilic design is multisensory, combining aesthetics with touch, smell, and sound, often involving natural patterns, textures, circadian lighting, and many plants.

Biophilic design can vary from clean, precise lines to neutral, calming tones and organic materials, showing its versatility. This design approach can enhance the indoor environmental quality, reducing the negative effects of poor indoor air quality.

How Does Biophilic Design Connect with Healthy Buildings?

Biophilic design is a key element of healthy buildings, which has gained prominence due to the increased time we spend indoors. The wellbeing of the workforce and its relation to the physical work environment is now more relevant than ever. This connection helps reduce health risks and improve occupant comfort.

What are the Health Benefits of Biophilic Design?

Biophilic design can increase productivity and concentration levels in workspaces and speed up patient recovery times. It’s gaining interest in sectors like senior living, as it helps in reducing health conditions such as heart disease and lung cancer.

Certain countries have doctors prescribing time in nature for stressed professionals. Biophilic design aims to capture the calming, energizing effects of nature in an indoor environment, benefiting us even as urbanization cuts us off from natural spaces.

Studies show that biophilic elements in hotel lobbies and office reception areas extend lingering time, making people feel comfortable and at ease. This is particularly important in urban areas where fresh air supply and outdoor air pollution are major concerns.

What Research Studies Prove the Impact of Biophilic Design in the Workplace?

In 2017, Biofilico was commissioned by EcoWorld Ballymore to create a Vitamin Nature recharge room in London’s Canary Wharf. This greenhouse space, full of air-purifying plants, natural light, and circadian lighting, provided a digital detox zone for 108 local workers.

The study showed significant improvements: 74% felt an improvement in mood, 87% felt less stressed, 83% felt more productive, and 87% felt more creative. These findings highlight the importance of creating healthy indoor environments that support human health and productivity.

What is Indoor Air Quality (IAQ)?

Improving indoor air quality (IAQ) is crucial at home and work. Strategies include natural ventilation, air-purifying plants, and enhanced air conditioning filters like MERV13 for dust particles and carbon filters for VOCs. These strategies help mitigate the effects of indoor air pollution and airborne pollutants.

Commercial-grade air quality monitors provide detailed, real-time data, essential for any healthy building certification system like WELL.

How Does a Healthy Building Improve Air Quality?

Natural ventilation strategies require at least two windows open to create a passage of air from one part of the space to another. This gentle airflow connects you with the outside world in a multisensory way, preventing drowsiness and clearing out dust particles from the indoor air.

We can also work with plants to improve indoor air. A famous NASA study identified several plants that improve air quality, such as Spider plants, Chinese Evergreen, Boston ferns, Bamboo Palm, and ZZ plants. These plants remove CO2 by day and give off Oxygen at night, making them ideal for indoor use, including in bedrooms.

For workplace environments, facilities management or HR teams can request enhanced air conditioning filter systems. Carbon filters are good for VOCs, and MERV13 filters are effective for dust particles. This helps in maintaining a healthy indoor air quality and reducing airborne particles.

Monitoring air quality is essential when purifying the air in a healthy building. Commercial-grade air quality monitors are easy to install and are an essential piece of any healthy building certification system like WELL. These monitors provide real-time data that can be displayed to building occupants, enhancing transparency and awareness.

What are Healthy Materials in an Interior Affecting Indoor Air Quality?

Materials and finishes can release hazardous chemicals into the air. Preventing these chemicals is fundamental to ensuring a healthy indoor environment.

Choose natural materials like linen, cotton, jute, wood, wool, leather, bamboo, cork, clay, and bio-materials. Avoid plastics, synthetics, epoxies, and resins. Ensure material transparency by asking for ingredient lists and looking for third-party certifications like Cradle to Cradle.

By selecting healthy and non-toxic materials as part of an interior fit-out, we can limit the exposure occupants have to harmful chemicals, reducing health risks. Material transparency is key to ensuring a healthy indoor environment.

Q&A with a Biophilic Design Consultant: Healthy Building and Wellness Interiors — Biofilico

How did you enter the field of wellbeing interiors, healthy buildings and biophilic design?

Biofilico’s Founder, Matt Morley at the creative workspace ‘Montoya’ in Barcelona, Spain

Biofilico’s Founder, Matt Morley at the creative workspace ‘Montoya’ in Barcelona, Spain

I spent 10 years with a mixed-use real estate developer and operator in what eventually became a Creative Director role delivering new business concepts. I’d work with the construction and development teams, as well as finance, marketing and operations, taking a sports bar, coworking space, business club, beach club or concept store from idea to reality.

It was an amazing learning experience for what would come later - effectively doing a similar thing but a boutique consultancy business and focusing specifically on green and healthy spaces, incorporating biophilic design principles.

Where did your interest in health, fitness, and mental health come from?

So in parallel with that 10-year process I’ve just describe my 7-10 hours per week of training starting to take on ever more importance in my life, especially as I was doing so much of it outdoors, immersed in nature, with minimal equipment.

I was also experimenting with standing desks, going barefoot, a low-carb Paleo diet and bringing the outside world in to my office and home. I aimed to bring nature into my living and working spaces to enhance wellbeing and productivity. Incorporating these elements into my living and working spaces helped to reduce stress and improve overall wellbeing. In other words, my life became a testing ground for these new ideas around workplace wellbeing, ancestral health and wellbeing interiors.

Do you remember the exact moment you first discovered biophilic design?

It was a very organic, intuitive process for me. This is so important to reiterate as a biophilic design expert - I got there by myself, using my own instinct and listening to my body, testing things out on myself and eventually coming to the conclusion that most indoor spaces devoid of the natural world were simply not happy, uplifting places for me to be. I realized that integrating biophilic principles, such as the use of natural elements and patterns, was essential to creating environments that promote wellbeing and productivity.

At that point, I knew I had to quit my job and make my own rules from then on. I needed to go to an extreme to understand what was out there, what was possible and what my body could feel if I went all-in on this approach for a while. I don’t think my then-girlfriend knew what on earth was going on by that point!

In other words, biophilic design was not something I studied, it was as if it came from inside of me first and all I had to do was recognize what was happening.

Of course, it helped to be immersed in real estate and interiors for my work at the same time, that was the magic mix that made it possible to become a wellbeing champion and biophilic design consultant later on.

What experts influenced you on the path to becoming a biophilic design consultant for real estate and hospitality?

Over time I worked out that there was a whole school of thought largely led by the US around how to actually do what I was talking about in a clear, structured way. Terrapin’s 14 Patterns of Biophilic Design and Stephen Kellert’s The Practice of Biophilic Design were fundamental reference points. Their work highlights the proven benefits of biophilic design in promoting wellbeing, productivity, and creativity in living and working spaces.

How did you become a consultant in healthy interiors and biophilic design?

I set up my first company, Biofit, back in 2015 specializing in creating sustainable gyms and wellness concepts through biophilic interior design. Over time that evolved into a fitness advisory business working with hotel groups and corporates around Europe to create innovative wellness concepts, gym facilities and fitness programs. This work also emphasized the importance of the built environment in promoting overall wellbeing.

Originally I thought I was setting up my own natural fitness studio in London but several successful pivots led me to where I am today!

In 2018 I set-up my second business, Biofilico focusing on a wider market of wellbeing interiors and healthy building services. This is much more closely aligned with the work I was doing for the mixed-use developer / operator before becoming an entrepreneur.

What advice would you give to someone hoping to become a biophilic designer or wellbeing interiors expert?

My path is not the only path clearly, other people may be coming from an engineering background, architecture or sustainability but to do this you really need to have a solid understanding of real estate, construction and how buildings are made.

Otherwise you’re going to struggle to put yourself in the shoes of your clients, to understand what their objectives are and how best to help them get there.

If you intend to be an independent consultant in biophilic design, wellbeing interiors, or indeed healthy buildings, you’ll need some certifications to show for it to, so studying for at least one if not several certification systems is a really good place to start. Certifications like WELL, LEED, and Living Future are essential for demonstrating expertise in biophilic design. Interior designers play a crucial role in integrating biophilic design concepts into interior spaces, significantly impacting mental health.

Additionally, biophilic design consultants often work alongside architects, engineers, lighting designers, acoustics consultants, and client representatives, emphasizing the collaborative nature of these projects.

Biophilic design research study for The Wardian - an EcoWorld Ballymore residential development in London’s Canary Wharf

What prompted you to do your own research studies into biophilic design and natural elements in London?

We were commissioned by a real estate developer called EcoWorld Ballymore to take over a space of theirs by the river in Canary Wharf, London’s business district for a 4-week residency.

We created a mini biophilic workspace in small glass building, turning it into a creative meeting room right by the water full of air-purifying plants to improve indoor air quality. We also integrated natural elements such as natural light, plants, and water to enhance the connection between the built and natural environments, creating a healthier built environment. A team from the University of Essex then created a scientific research questionnaire for us as a ‘before and after’ questionnaire for office workers during their visit to our ‘recharge room’ full of Vitamin Nature. (see the full report here)

In total 108 people spent about an hour in that biophilic green space designed for mental wellbeing, and we saw very positive results for key indicators such as productivity, creativity, nature-connectedness, stress and anxiety levels, even concentration.

So, a ‘recharge room’ or office ‘quiet space’ can become especially interesting when we layer in biophilic design as a way to give purpose and meaning to for example an unused office.

Maybe there is room for a little yoga and stretching in there too, or maybe not but let’s be clear - mental health in the workplace has never been more important than it is today.

This type of nurturing space in an office environment may seem a mismatch but in fact it can be a tangible help for HR departments looking to recruit and retain top talent by ensuring they have a happy and healthy workforce.

Biophilic design in the WELL Building Standard

what role does biophilic design play in the well building standard for human health?

The verdant rooftop courtyard of Montoya co-working and event venue, Barcelona, Spain, exemplifies a biophilic environment as outlined by certification standards like the WELL Building Standard. This approach addresses health and wellbeing issues in urban environments by integrating natural elements to improve overall quality of life.

What is the definition of biophilic design?

Biophilic design is about combining nature, sustainability, and well-being interiors by integrating the natural world into our built environment to create spaces that are better aligned with our evolutionary history, that offer some kind of nature connection rather than turning their back on Mother Nature completely. Biophilic design principles emphasize integrating natural elements into designs to enhance well-being, sustainability, and the human-nature connection.

Biophilic elements play a crucial role in enhancing well-being and sustainability by incorporating natural elements into architectural and interior designs.

Tools available to us include indoor and outdoor landscaping, vertical garden walls, air-purifying plants, natural aromatherapy, natural soundscapes, circadian lighting strategies, providing views of nature, creating scenes of natural beauty, the deliberate use of natural patterns, colours, textures, materials, fabrics, and natural elements - to name just a few.

what is the well building standard?

The WELL Certification process for WELL V2 is now widely established as the leading healthy building and wellness real estate standard in the world today. It is essentially a series of guidelines backed by rigorous scientific research and sustainable design principles, that when taken together, will guide a real estate project, whether new build construction or refurbishment and fit-out, towards a final product that is aligned with human health and wellness.

To gain in-depth knowledge about integrating biophilic principles into WELL-certified projects, consider enrolling in a biophilic design course or an online course. These courses provide comprehensive guidance on incorporating nature into architectural and interior designs, focusing on residential spaces, workplace environments, and public spaces.

Sections of the V2 standard are dedicated to Air, Water, Nourishment, Light, Movement, Thermal Comfort, Sound, Materials, Mind, Community & Innovation.

What services do WELL Building Standard consultants offer?

Consultants specialising in the WELL Building Standard for real estate are likely to come from engineering, architecture & interiors, sustainability and/or real estate development backgrounds.

In our case as Biofilico, we have a combination of creative design and real estate development experience, we also have a niche in biophilic design consultancy as well as integrating health and fitness into the built environment.

This means we approach projects from a very different perspective compared to say, a team with an engineering background.

Although we have a wellness architect on our team, we are consultants first and foremost, meaning we are accustomed to working alongside and advising large-scale architecture studios, project management teams and developers on wellbeing design, healthy interiors and biophilic design. We also help clients implement biophilic design principles effectively in their projects. Consultants can benefit from biophilic design online resources to stay updated with the latest trends and practices.

Does the WELL standard favour biophilic design with natural elements?

The short answer is ‘yes’ it does, and likely in more ways than you might think as there are both direct and indirect references to ‘nature’ and ‘biophilia‘ in the standard, just as there are ‘direct‘ and ‘indirect‘ forms of biophilia at our disposal when designing an interior space.

Knowing how to make the most of biophilic design strategies therefore requires in-depth understanding not just of its breadth and depth as a design concept, but a combination of creativity with rigorous knowledge of the standard itself.

Fundamentally, biophilic design contributes to a wider healthy building strategy by benefits on air quality, mental wellbeing, healthy materials, nature connectedness and more, just as it contributes to a green building strategy in terms of sustainability, and so on. The WELL standard encourages designers to incorporate biophilic design to enhance these benefits.

What credits can biophilic design principles help with in the WELL standard?

There are obvious places to go hunting for credits in the WELL building standard as a biophilic design consultant, most notably in the MIND section where connection to nature is referenced in Precondition 02 Nature and Place as well as M09 Enhanced Access to Nature. So, let’s address these before moving on to the arguably less obvious credits that biophilic design can contribute to in the standard.

MIND / Precondition 02 Nature & Place

Here we are on our home turf, this is the main biophilic design credit for all intents and purposes, as it rewards the use of natural materials, patterns, shapes, colors, images or sounds as well as the integration of plants, the presence of water features and nature views into the project.

Part 2 of this WELL Standard Precondition is a more cerebral concept yet also provides considerably more creative freedom for architects and designers to interpret the brief through the lens of biophilic design as we are tasked with creating design elements that celebrate company culture or that of the local community, a celebration of place (connecting to the location in other words), elements of art and, wait for it, ‘human delight’.

MIND / Enhanced Access to Nature M09

M09 is then a continuation of this as it gives specifications of what percentage of workstations on each floor of the project should have direct views of indoor plants, a natural landscape or indoor water feature. If we play that one through to its logical conclusion, the extent of the indoor biophilic design interventions will depend greatly on the availability of external views onto natural landscapes.

If none are available as the project is in a densely populated urban area such as a business district, then the focus will of necessity have to be on bringing the outside world in, if the project is to secure these two credits for M09 by integrating natural elements.

MIND / Precondition Promote Mental Health & Wellbeing and MIND / M07 Restorative Spaces

One possible component of Part 1 in the MIND Precondition is a dedicated restoration space or recharge room.

We specialise in creating biophilic, nature-inspired restorative spaces such as the one above that we created for the HERO Group headquarters in Switzerland in 2019.

One restorative space can then double-up for credit scores in the M07 credit as well, provided it adopts a multi-sensory design covering lighting, sound, thermal comfort, seating, biophilia and ‘calming colours, textures and forms’ (this is clearly open to interpretation but a biophilic approach is always going to be a winner in this regard, with proven science behind its calming properties).

In 2017 Biofilico carried out a own scientific research study into this very subject for EcoWorld Ballymore in London for their Wardian Residences:

NOURISHMENT / N01 Fruits & Vegetables

Part Two: Promote Fruit & Vegetable visibility - create enticing displays in an office canteen or kitchen area that takes on near sculptural form, just a little creativity can go a long way here.

NOURISHMENT / N07 Nutrition Education

A hydroponic garden wall or individual hydroponic towers of edible lettuce leaves and herbs for example can provide opportunities for gardening / planting workshops with staff as well as additional biophilic decoration for the office on an ongoing basis. This strategy also doubles up as a solution for N12 Food Production, see below, as well as N13 Local Food Environment - contributing food produced on-site back to the local community.

NOURISHMENT / N12 Food Production

The provision of a gardening space within 0.25miles of the project can be easily solved either with a hydroponic farm set-up in the lobby or with an urban garden on the rooftop of the building if feasible. Such a facility needs to be accessible to regular occupants during. the daytime and be between 200ft2 and 1500ft2 in size according to the number of regular occupants in the project.

LIGHT / L03 Circadian lighting design

Circadian lighting is a foundation of biophilic design as the key aim is to align our body’s clocks with the regular cycle of dawn and dusk. We have written elsewhere on circadian lighting strategies and how to implement them. L03 in WELL specifies “appropriate exposure to light for maintaining circadian health and aligning the circadian rhythm with the day-night cycle”.

MOVEMENT / V08 Physical Activity Spaces & Equipment

Here WELL are looking for evidence that there is a gym or fitness facility available at no cost for regular building occupants to. use, either in the building itself, nearby or in a nearby outdoor space such as a park.

We specialise in designing green fitness spaces that secure additional points within the WELL certification for MIND M07 Restorative Spaces and MIND M09 Enhanced Access to Nature (using biophilic design that brings the outside world in).

MATERIALS / X06 VOC Restrictions and X07 Materials Transparency

To secure these credits requires an understanding of healthy materials and indoor air quality as well as biophilic design.

The key concept is that all natural materials such as stone, wood, bamboo and cork do not contain any VOCs and come with their own material transparency.

Our main issue here is ensuring that we specify the finishes and fit-out substances such as primers, glues and adhesives as these can inadvertently carry chemicals containing VOCs, thereby negating the good work done by specifying an organic materials in the first place!

To enquire about our services as biophilic design consultants for WELL certified projects, contact us here.

Biophilic Design and Wellbeing Interiors- an evolutionary perspective

A lot of the same principles are at the root of biophilic design, wellbeing interiors and healthy buildings. Here we explore the synergies between these distinct but ultimately complementary concepts.

Q. What is your personal background?

Matt Morley: I come from a real estate development background. I was a creative director for real estate developer for many years, from there grew a passion in what we could call healthy buildings or what's often described as wellbeing design in the real estate sector.

In parallel with that I was always heavily into nature and spending time outside and looking for natural alternatives to what I was doing indoors, so if we put that all into a shaker, the cocktail that comes out is this company Biofilico.

I started with gyms under the Biofit moniker, that remains a highly specialized business providing consultancy services to hotel groups and real estate businesses on creating green, healthy gym spaces with style.

It's a very niche market, but there's a market for it, and it's been growing steadily over the last five or six years I’m glad to say.

Q. How did you move into the workplace and residential sectors?

I noticed that there were adjacent categories where applying the same principles of how you to create a healthy building or biophilic space could be of value.

So I soon started working on office projects and more recently residential, as well as hotels.

Q: How do you think about healthy interior spaces?

For me it all goes back to our evolutionary history which is obviously so much longer and more extensive than the history we have of living indoors in centrally heated, air conditioned, electrically illuminated environments.

This post-industrial age is just a tiny blip in our evolutionary history over the last call it three and a half million years or 200,000 years if we're going back to the start of Homosapiens. No matter how you look at it, our ancestors spent a long ,long time surviving out in nature, that's our DNA, that’s what our genetic make-up is still equipped for but contemporary lifestyles are largely disconnected from that. For better or worse.

For me, that's where biophilic design comes by in trying to realign our indoor environments with the natural world and our evolutionary past.

Q: How do you define biophilia and biophilic design?

There are two versions for that. There's the version that you will read online that says either Eric Fromm or E.O. Wilson coined the term but for me all they were doing was giving a name to the innate connection that we all have as human beings to nature. They didn’t invent anything as such.

Biophilic design then takes that a step further by bringing it indoors, into the modern world and the realities of life today where we spend most of our time in some form of built environment.

When I talk about it I'm very much pushing the idea of biophilic design bridging two worlds, between green buildings and healthy buildings.

A lot of the work for LEED or BREEAM building certifications is focused on the environment while WELL and FITWEL building certifications zero in on the human aspect of buildings and interiors, the health and wellbeing side. Together, that gives us people and planet.

Healthy spaces are more to do with the people, the inhabitants or occupants and the users while the planet angle is more related to impact on raw materials, pollution, and so on, Biophilic design combines elements of the two, so a natural environment that is both healthy for the people who spend time in it but also healthy for the planet in terms of its impact on the world around us.

Biophilic design joins the dots between nature, human health and environmental wellbeing.

Q. What are the key principles of wellbeing design?

One key component is indoor air quality - here we are working to purify the air via enhancements to the ventilation system’s filters for example but it is also about the materials and finishes introduced into that space during the fit-out. Are they natural, non-chemical materials or are they materials containing plastics of chemical treatments for example, such as flame retardants?

There's a lot of interesting research out there about the mental aspect as well so if air quality is about physical wellbeing in one sense it is also a way to boost mental performance, through productivity and concentration levels. It is a way to improve how office workers perform during the day or how residents sleep at night. So producing in one sense and recovering in another, both linked to the indoor air quality.

Then we have light quality - having a connection to nature with a view out onto plants, greenery or a landscape will serve to exposure you to certain color spectrums of light at certain times of day. This can be supplemented with smart lights indoors that produce the ‘right kind’ of blue-white light during the day time before softening to a more amber tone towards the end of the day.

Philips Hue bulbs are great. I've been using them for a few years, but there are others out there now too. It's a relatively simple system, you don't have to have it set up to your Wi Fi network if you decide you want everything grounded and you want to avoid EMF risks, but that's a separate topic!

These lights serve as my alarm in the mornings so I wake with a replica of sunlight that slowly increases over a 30-minute period in what is hopefully my pitch black bedroom - to promote deep sleep and recovery.

Q: What air-purifying plants do you recommend?

It's relatively easy to find air-purifying plants that can be kept indoors with indirect light and they'll do a lot of good in terms of taking out the bad stuff, and pumping oxygen back into your home, for more Oxygen and less CO2.

Air-purifiers simply enhance and improve that same process, as plants can only do so much alone given the quality of inner-city air nowadays! The key is to go big, don’t hold back on your plant strategy, aim for six to eight plants per person in a room of say, 25m2

If you live in a remote location, if you're living in the middle of the woods or mountains, that's one thing. If you're in the middle of a city then I tend to hack that scenario a little bit with an air purifier running during the night. In other words, a combination of wellness tech and natural solutions is best.

In terms of plant species, my go-to species is the ‘ZZ’ plant as they're really resistant. They do a lot of good for you as well so I recommend those in your home especially.

For a home gym, garage gym or garden gym, space is probably limited so your floor space is at a premium, here I'm looking for low maintenance plants while keeping my floor space free for training activities like crawling, running, jumping, and so on. Generally, potted plants on the floor in your gym is a bad idea, especially if cats and dogs are in the mix as well.

Q: How do you use wabi-sabi design in wellbeing interiors?

This is a Japanese philosophy of finding beauty in imperfection. So imagine an organic apple, perhaps not the best looking, it may not be perfect but it is going to taste 100 times better than one that has been genetically modified to look ‘perfect’. The organic apple is full of vitamins and is far closer to an apple as nature intended it to be.

So wabi-sabi design can have a patina of age, curves instead of right angles, or a wobbly edge to a handcrafted ceramic plate for example.

Q: What healthy materials do you work with most often?

I always try to recommend a non-toxic, chemical and VOC-free paint for interior walls. There's this whole world of eco-friendly paints out there now, for example from the likes of Graphenstone or Lakeland, both fine examples of what is possible today from a sustainability perspective. Some paints can even absorb unwanted gases and chemicals that might be coming out of the plastics in your furniture.

Flooring is another key area to focus on for healthy materials. There's lots of high quality rubber and cork gym floor options out there that are generally much better than some of the cheaper flooring tile solutions, if natural wood, bamboo or stone is not within the realms of possibility budget-wise.

Q: What segments of the real estate market do you expect to see biophilic design impacting in future?

At the moment I'm looking at example at two different projects around the ‘senior living’ space. So, what I see is that post-COVID there's a huge spike in demand in advisory services on healthy materials as well as projects aimed at creating healthy indoor environments, and where better to do that than in a health clinic or residential development for seniors?

There are different concerns according to the specific project type but what makes it interesting is that they all join up and overlap in the end, at least in terms of my consultancy briefs.

mental wellbeing clinic design - the soke, london

The ‘Green & Healthy Places’ podcast series explores the role of sustainability, wellbeing and community in office real estate, residential property, hotels and healthcare facilities today.

Episode 27 is with Dr Chi-Chi Obuaya of The Soke in London, UK a private mental health clinic that has re-defined the mental wellbeing clinic for an upmarket clientele, setting a new benchmark in the process.

We discuss the cultural differences between UK and US in openness around mental wellbeing, the impact of Covid on our relationships at home and in the office, mental health champions in the workplace, why having an off-site venue for discussions around mental health is preferable to an in-office solution, designing an interior for mental wellbeing, the parallel with boutique gyms and private clinics in terms of aspirational positioning and how working on your inner game can make you a more effective manager through empathy.

An indoor environment shouldn't reinforce the fact that you feel unwell, that you're a “patient”. We wanted to create a space that really made people feel nourished, and the design features I think tick the boxes in that respect, but also to be aspirational. 

Dr Chi-Chi Obuaya

GUEST / DR. CHI-CHI OBUAYA OF THE SOKE, LONDON, UK

• https://www.thesoke.uk/

• https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-soke/

• https://twitter.com/TheSokeUK

• https://www.instagram.com/thesokelondon/

HOST / MATT MORLEY

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattmorleylux/

• https://www.instagram.com/matt.aspiotis.morley/

FULL TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS COURTESY OF OTTER.AI - excuse typos!

Matt Morley

Chi-Chi, welcome to the show. I'd really like to dig into your role as Head of the Clinical Board for The Soke so could you talk to us about what that has involved for you so far and how you see it evolving over time?

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

Really excited to be here, Matt, good to see you again, as well after all these years. I'm a Consultant Psychiatrist here, I trained as a medical doctor specialized in psychiatry, and I focus on adult psychiatry so I see anyone aged 18 and above, with a range of mental health difficulties, including depression, anxiety, problems related to birth, trauma related issues, addictions.

I'm the Clinical Lead at The Soke - a behavioral health center in the heart of London, we're coming up to our one year anniversary. And the whole premise of setting up The Soke was really that within the UK, there are plenty of mental health professionals that people can see. But we found that there's still massive stigma around mental health and accessing care. And we just wanted to ease that process for people by having a really high quality service that has a beautiful environment, encourages people to come forward and supporting that by offering them very good quality care in an environment that is conducive to promoting good mental wellbeing.

Matt Morley

I think that really comes across in terms of the space that you've created, and clearly that's one of the key attributes in the experience on offer. But in terms of the mix of resources on the team, and the range of services that you offer, presumably you each have specialisms, but there seems to be this interesting client service director role that is atypical, or less common let’s say. How is your mental wellbeing team structured?

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

Yes, so our clinical model is a multidisciplinary one, I think we recognize that in private practice, you can certainly access a whole range of mental wellbeing therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and it can be quite difficult for people to navigate through the system, and to really understand who they need to see and what skill set that person needs to have.

So most of us have a pretty broad range of people we would see with a vast range of conditions. But within that, there are areas of interest. So for me, I still work within the National Health System. And I see people with ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. We have therapists who have a particular interest in supporting people who have, for example, body image issues, who might have disordered eating, but maybe aren't quite meeting the threshold for eating disorder diagnosis.

I'd say generally, one of the themes is that we're trying to be quite proactive and preventative. So a lot of healthcare services are set up to treat illness, and that lends itself to seeing people when they're already really unwell. And there's certainly a role for that. But we're trying not to offer that acute care rather to catch people before they fall into major difficulties.

We have a broad range of child, adolescent and Family Services. So we're working with couples, parents, right across the age span. So really from from birth right through to old age. The multidisciplinary model is key in that we meet on a daily basis as a team, discuss potential referrals, discuss clients who might be seeing a range of us within the team. And it's then bringing our different bits of expertise together to think about how we can holistically support people from a mental wellbeing perspective.

As I said, we're just coming up to our one year anniversary. So there's still plenty of room for growth, and we want to be able to offer a wider range of services, such as nutritional advice. There are a vast array of therapies. So we're really at the starting point, and we want to add to the clinical team there.

Our client services manager is really the go-to person to help people navigate through the team, because it can be quite daunting and the reality is that when people are seeing therapists, they sometimes don't know how to benchmark that, or to get a sense of what progress they're making.

We're data driven, we have outcome measures and we try to be very goal oriented. The Client Services Manager is the person that can think about some of the services we maybe don't provide, but can signpost people externally for that, and where there are challenges where people do feel stuck therapeutically, which happens, it's not a sign of the therapy being of a poor standard, it just happens that sometimes you don't have the right fit with an individual therapist. We're really trying to think holistically, systemically, I think the multidisciplinary aspect is something that has often been missing within private healthcare.

Matt Morley

That really resonates with me having been through a period of about six months of therapy myself and feeling that it was very much as if we were operating in a complete bubble, there was no third party around to bounce ideas off or to sense-check how it was all going. What you've just described having another person, not in the room exactly but right outside would have been so helpful.

Having a beautiful space in which to physically connect with someone in person rather than online would have been good too!

To pick up on something you've alluded to that earlier, the idea that it's prevention rather than cure. And I wondered how you feel as a Londoner, if there is a change, that's already happened, or it's happening around acceptability of discussions around mental health, the idea of not waiting too long before you pick up the phone or walk through your front doors, for example, when you feel that something's reached a point where it's arguably not too late, it's already become critical.

In the US we'd we'd imagine in places like New York, it's far more common that one should engage with these things, almost on a regular basis, not just for six months, but perhaps semi permanently, how do you see culturally where London's at in terms of this dialogue now with around mental health?

UK-US cultural differences in talking about mental wellbeing

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

Yes, great question, we're on the journey, we're certainly not at the level of the US, in terms of it just being really ingrained in the culture and something that wouldn't make you bat an eyelid. If you and I were having a conversation and you said, I've just come from my therapy session, that would just be a perfectly normal thing.

The UK is still quite conservative, and we might feel a bit awkward. If somebody said that in the middle of a conversation, we are getting there, there have been massive public mental health campaigns, trying to de-stigmatize mental health, both within society and I think particularly within the workplace.

the impact of Covid on mental wellbeing

I would say that the the covid 19 pandemic has forced people to have these conversations because guess what, it's affected people in every way you can imagine. And I think it's made the language of mental health difficulties much more accessible to people, because they can understand when you start talking about grief, for example, which in British culture, we're not great at doing. People can understand it, because it's actually affecting people directly, or people that they know, given what's happening.

Work has been disrupted for a lot of people. People have lost jobs. They've been put on furlough schemes. They felt that their jobs are under threat. They've been working from home and that's equalled stress. They've been trying to homeschool children too, that's very difficult. So I think the conditions are ripe for that conversation to move forward. It is moving forward. I'd still say it's a little bit too much towards the the reactive end. I when people are experiencing difficulties, that's when they're accessing help. And our vision is that we'd like to support people who kind of think you know what, I don't see anything wrong with just having some exploratory therapy just to take stock of things. Even if there isn't Externally what we might regard as a major issue. And I think that's where people are in the state. So I think we'll get there. But it's going to be a process.

Matt Morley

You mentioned the the impact of what's happened over the last year and a half on mental health in the workplace, and the impact on corporates, large businesses, and how there is clearly a need for there to be a wider conversation in the office.

How do you as a company or yourself personally engage with the business end of mental health, because it does feel like that suddenly become such a critical piece now within our overall wellbeing strategy in the workplace. What does that look like for The Soke?

Workplace wellbeing and mental health

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

There's no one size fits all solution. I think that's the key thing to understand. And you use the word ‘conversation’’, I think the key aspect is to be a part of that conversation, and see where it goes. The reason I say that is that different sectors, different businesses within those sectors are at very different points in terms of their recognition of the scale of the problem when it comes to mental health challenges, and also what they really want to do about those problems.

To give an example, at the end of the scale is just dipping one's toe into the water. There are lots of mental health campaigns now across the calendar, we have mental health awareness week, which is often a focus for businesses. And those businesses may get in external speakers. And we've been part of those conversations. I think with any of these initiatives across a range of issues around social injustice and lots of challenges around the workplace, that really is the start. However it isn't enough on its own. All that really does is it raises awareness. And it gets people thinking and ultimately businesses need to decide what's best for them, we try to support that process.

At the other end of the scale, we've had really good engagement with companies that massively want to change their culture. And that could look like having mental health, first aid training, having champions across the organization, having a culture of supervision, which creates opportunities for conversations amongst peers and one's colleagues, through which discussions around mental health again, can just naturally flow. So those are some of the workshops that we offer to corporates. And it really just depends on on how much time, effort and resources they want to invest in.

One of the really interesting things has been to observe from the outside what different corporates do. I'd say that things have moved in a healthy direction over the last 5 to 10 years. A lot of corporates felt that the right solution was to bring a lot of these services in house, that might include offering GP services or psychological therapy services in the house. We have a fantastic space here. And what we find is that there can be reticence from employees about accessing services in house among senior leaders, they see it as too much of a reputational risk.

Amongst more junior colleagues, there's often a culture of competitiveness, and they find that they're worried about their job security if they're accessing the mental health suite, on on floor x within the building. So often, these initiatives are well meaning but they don't really quite cut it in terms of people really accessing them. Often people will even in very well resourced organizations seek external help, because they're more comfortable with that. So we want to get to the stage where Businesses really understand that and they're able to engage with us in that fashion, because often the employees want to do that way. It might be convenient for them to access us in this increasingly fluid working environment that people have at a time that suits them in an environment where they're more relaxed, and we've put in some features to really to bolster the client's experience, and that's probably going to work better for them, we feel.

Mental health officers in an ESG strategy

Matt Morley

You mentioned the mental health officer role. And it's come up on my radar, having done some work with a real estate developer in London, on their ESG strategy. - environmental, social and governance. Mental health is now part of that remit. So if you have a pension fund putting money into a project and a real estate developer the annual report on their ESG depends partly on their approach to mental health in the workplace.

I just thought that was an interesting combination, because the role of the mental health officer is purely to identify a problem and then get that person to pick up the phone, send an email, or make contact with a professional, passing on the issue to the experts in other words. Nothing more nothing less.

I remember thinking that makes total sense, not trying to resolve something themselves, but having the right person on the end of the line and just joining the dots so that that person feels comfortable in taking action.

Interior design for mental wellbeing

That leads us then into the idea of having a physical space that is not the office, but you might get there having been recommended via your corporate, your employer, you then rock up to the soak. And from what I've seen online, your private clinic’s interior space just does not look like anything I've seen in terms of mental health clinics, I think on some level rewriting the rulebook of what it should feel like and look like when you when you go for one of these sessions.

For those who haven't seen the website, can you describe the type of environment that you have there? I mean, there seems to be sort of Scandinavian influences, vintage furniture, it's like a it's like an interior design showroom. As much as anything, it looks beautiful!

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

Absolutely, I think you're spot on. And that is all by design. I certainly wish to take absolutely no credit for it. My role is to focus on the clinical work. But our founder, Maryam Meddin, had a vision. We've talked about the fact that we want people to be able to access care in a way that really feels normal. But the problem she identified was that the environment, and we've got some of the best clinicians in the world in London, I think, New York's up there, but London is about as good a place to practice psychiatry, psychology anywhere in the world.

The indoor environment shouldn't reinforce the fact that you feel unwell, that you're a “patient”. As you said, when you go around a lot of hospitals, which have fantastic clinicians, practitioners offering really high quality level of care, the environment just lags behind. We wanted to create a space that really made people feel nourished. And the design features I think, tick the boxes in that respect, but also to be aspirational.

Aspirational boutique gym designs compared with most private mental health clinics

Lots of people go to gyms now, we don't think anything of it, it's a pretty regular thing to do. And you just go maybe in your lunch break, and you go back to work, and it's not a big deal.

Boutique gyms have become a bigger part of our lives. When they first launched, there was something very aspirational about them. And so the aesthetics support about view that you went to a gym and you just had that wow factor. And that's exactly what we're trying to do here. So you come into reception, it doesn't feel clinical, the sofas are really comfortable. You feel relaxed, it's a bit like being in someone's living room, and a nice one at that.

One of the things about seeing a mental health practitioner in London is that people tend to be very busy. So you leave a session and then you're back out onto the main road and you get on with your day. But actually, we wanted to make people feel that they weren't being kicked out of the building, that they had that time to reflect, and just to not feel rushed, particularly when they're talking about some quite challenging issues.

So one of the key design features would be our pods - spaces next to the therapy rooms, where you can just sit back very comfortably, read a book, have some time in a darkened room to reflect on your session, we have some evidence base technology that supports people, one of these is alpha stem, a device that delivers a microcurrent to your ear lobes. It's a small device, you put it on for anywhere between 20 and 60 minutes. And it has evidence for supporting people in improving their sleep, and also in reducing anxiety levels. And it's going to be approved by nice the National Institute for care and excellence in the treatment of generalized anxiety disorder.

We see a lot of young people, and they have parents. And so we're able to give something to the parents when they're hanging around, So that's thinking about the family as a system. And we don't just talk the talk, we're able to do that by by linking the building to the therapy directly.

Matt Morley

That reminds me of some work I did in the past around with a hospitality client, we were looking at the guest journey and identified this pain point when you're checking out of a hotel or resort and you know the holidays over and guess what you get slapped with a huge bill and then you're sort of just spat out onto the street again. So how could we rewrite the script on that to turn it into a moment of delight?

After a therapy session you may well be feeling a little vulnerable. You might not want to go straight out into the into the hustle and bustle of London street again. So creating that third space between the outside world and the therapy room and allowing someone just to chill is very innovative, I think.

Create a wellbeing interior design that appeals to men as well as women

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

If we go back to your example. It's about recognizing who the client is. And we've done some work around that as well. So yes, the environment, broadly speaking, allows people to have a really great experience. But we also need to understand who our customers are. And so we wanted an environment that had these soft features. But to say very bluntly, one that isn't feminine, per se, because we have a lot of male clients, we know that men are not great at talking, generally speaking, there's been a lot of work in the public domain around getting men to talk about their mental health difficulties.

So they're a big target group in terms of this whole de-stigmatization process. Being in central London, we know that a lot of our our male clients are going to come from a corporate background. So we wanted to make sure the optics weren't suggesting that we're some sort of hippy or New Age service. So we wanted soft, but also very professional. And I think we strike the balance just right.

Matt Morley

So if we then follow that thread a little further, what would you say are typically the red flags that take place before someone .looks for help, for example, someone in a corporate environment? What should we be looking out for in terms of cues?

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

I think it's important to recognize that there are a broad range of mental health conditions and one of the traps we sometimes fall into as psychiatrists when we're asked this question, we think about the more severe end.

So I do see people with really severe depression. People who've experienced significant trauma, even people who might have a psychotic illness. And we tend to go for that, but there's so much in the middle that we miss. And I think your question speaks to the person that that might be undergoing significant stress over a period of time. It might be work related, it may have nothing to do with work. And it could be very much to do with their personal circumstances. And so it's a lot more ill defined. And we know that stress affects people in many different ways. But in keeping with the idea that we want to get people, maybe before they present with a severe depression, I think it's understanding some of those themes around stress and how it manifests for people.

So the sorts of concept I'd want to get across would be pretty high level. And we might talk about people who are thriving. And it's just as it sounds, it's when you've got that spring in your step, you're very outward focused, you feel energetic, you're paying pretty good attention, broadly speaking, to exercise, your your nutrition, you're engaged with friends, family colleagues, and you've got a I don't like to talk so much about work life balance, there are people who have very busy jobs and work long hours, but you're paying attention to the things that give them a sense of energy and enjoyment.

I think particularly in the current context, burnout is one of the key aspects people need to be looking out for. And that builds up over a period of time, where there's that loss of attention to the things that give one a sense of rejuvenation, and replenishment.

At the other end of the spectrum, we might think about the concept of languishing. And it's just as it sounds, you know, the energy levels are down, you start to become a bit withdrawn from colleagues, you're just not quite on top of things at work. And one experiences significant stress. And one of the things we're mindful of is that people can experience this cliff edge experience where they're functioning outwardly, for a period of time, but where stress is building up, it can hit you very quickly. And the cliff edge term comes from the fact that you can very quickly go from outwardly functioning to really not functioning very well at all. And that can have significant implications within the workplace. But of course beyond that, as well.

Matt Morley

Is it rather like an athlete having a strength and conditioning coach, they might have another one who's their mental coach? If we assume that a high performing executive or indeed any professional who's trying to be at the top of their game, do you think there's a case to argue for their having someone on their mental health team, such as a life coach?

a word on executive performance

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

Certainly it’s best not to wait until something goes wrong. I’m biased so you may guess that my answer is going to be yes, it will be a great idea. I think it's really important to be very clear about what the role of that individual or team would actually be. There are psychologists who work in corporate organizations, and may be termed ‘performance coaches’ or ‘psychologists’.

We've been quite clear about what our perceived role is, and that's why I said there are different conversations with different corporate clients. What we don't see our role in doing is saying we're going to come in, and by engaging with our intervention, you impact the bottom line. If that happens as a result of optimizing employees wellbeing, reducing sickness rates, people being happy at work and so on , then yes of course, we want that. But that's not a direct goal.

I think if I use the analogy of a sports person, and there have been a lot of sports people coming forward, people who've played at elite level, who talk about the fact that everything was geared towards winning and performance, and it wasn't actually looking at them as individuals. And there could be a lot of resentment that sets in for people who outwardly appear to have these amazing lives living the dream. And it's far from that. And I think that's relevant to the workplace as well.

We're not here to just help the organization, we actually want to focus on the individual. In the same way, with an elite athlete, you want to look at them holistically, and say, how do we support this person not to run faster, or to put in more minutes in whatever team sport they're in. But to really focus on their wellbeing, that will, of course, have the direct knock on effect, that they will be able to focus on the challenge that they have, be it in the sporting arena or in the workplace. So yes, we want to engage in those conversations. But we want to do it with real clarity about what we're actually trying to achieve. And I think businesses need to wake up to that aspect. It may sound counterintuitive but actually, this is the way forward.

mindfulness, empathy and the inner game

Matt Morley

Certainly from my personal experience in doing this work, it became very much complimentary to my mindfulness meditation, which by itself was getting me somewhere, but I felt perhaps not to where I wanted to be. Combining the two was a magic formula for my mental game.

I think the point I'd ask people to consider is that by loving ourselves, we're able to give more love back out to the world. And if you're managing people in an organization, if you're managing a team of 10-20, however many people, empathy is critical.

So much of that can come from being able to love and respect yourself first. And knowing what your own triggers are and why you react in a certain way, or why you struggle to get into someone's head, the way a particular person rubs you up the wrong way, that's a real problem, because they're on your team yet somehow you still have to handle them every day and get the best out of them and nurture them.

It's not about friendship, it's a professional relationship. But still, I think, this type of work that we do on ourselves, has so much benefit, not just for us, the individual. but for those around us. I think for me, that was almost this unexpected benefit, a knock on effect that I felt able to connect more easily and in a more honest way with those around me, and particularly people I was managing at that time.

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

That's the point I was alluding to, when I said at the starting level, it's get a speaker in to give a half hour talk for Mental Health Awareness Week, what you described, actually enables cultural change, but it requires a conversation. We don't just have an off the shelf package for organizations. But what you have articulated there is where we want to get to with organisations, but we fully understand that it requires leadership, it requires a bit of knowledge about the mental health landscape, what different providers can offer.

Where you want to get to as an organization that absolutely is on the money in terms of where we want to go. And in our workshops. That is what we try to do we go through that journey with people in understanding a bit about their own mental well being. And the key word is empathy, and just being able to understand what's going on for other people. But yes, the journey starts from within, absolutely spot on.

Matt Morley

Thank you so much for your time. It's been great Chi-Chi!