HEALTH AND WELLNESS Left: 81 Bay Street – the first of the two towers comprising Bay Park Centre – will feature 49 floors and 1.5 million square feet of state-of-theart offices and collaborative spaces, with expansive views of Lake Ontario and Toronto’s skyline. Right: Bay Park Centre’s numerous amenities are designed to accommodate the active, healthy lifestyles of its tenants. A high-end fitness facility, secure bicycle storage, tenant showers, and changing facilities cater to the active lifestyle.
went even further by requiring projects to consider such human health and wellness factors as visual pollution, urban agriculture, access to nature, beauty, and biophilic design (“Biophilia” being the instinctive human affinity for the natural world). However, no building rating system has focused exclusively on human health and wellness. That is, until the International WELL Building Institute launched the WELL Building Standard® (WELL) in late 2014 with the intent to “improve human health and well-being through the built environment”. The WELL rating system is structured similarly to LEED and based seven concept areas:
and wellness considerations have also been integral parts of green building rating systems — either implicitly or explicitly — for many years. The LEED rating system, for example, has included many optional strategies related to human health and wellness, such as thermal comfort, indoor air quality, and daylighting, among others. As well, the Living Building Challenge
AIR It’s estimated that people spend about 90 per cent of their time inside. The air quality of the indoor environment, therefore, has a profound impact on human health. To account for this, WELL includes 29 features to promote cleaner indoor air, including cleaning protocols, antimicrobial surfaces, air infiltration management, humidity control, and avoiding toxic materials in paints, carpets, finishes, and furniture. WATER While water has been a core component in many green building rating systems, those systems often focus on water use reductions and improving the
management of stormwater quantity and quality. WELL, however, is the first to focus on the quality of drinking water in the building and requires that projects test the quality of the source of their building’s water, and then apply specific strategies, like filtration, to meet specific end use thresholds. Projects are also rewarded for providing people with easy access to highquality drinking water. NOURISHMENT Poor food choices and sedentary lifestyles have contributed to a global obesity epidemic. This trend could be reversed with better guidelines and design strategies that improve access to more nutritious food. With WELL, building cafeterias and food outlets are encouraged to offer food with fewer processed ingredients and better nutritional content. Food labels identifying potential allergens and nutritional content also enable people to make more informed choices. Furthermore, providing aesthetically appealing and pleasant eating spaces and break area furnishings can encourage people to step away from their desks, enjoy interaction with co-workers, and be more mindful when eating. LIGHT Research shows light has a profound influence on the human internal body clock, also known as the circadian rhythm. www.REMInetwork.com
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