A few years ago, the Environmental Protection Agency published a startling fact about modern life: “Americans, on average, spend approximately 90 percent of their time indoors.” That statistic originated from a report to Congress released in 1989, before internet culture and the knowledge economy made us more office-bound and home-bound than ever. Given that we resemble, as Stanford University researcher Wayne Ott once wrote, “an indoor species,” we should all be interested in how such living and working conditions influence us physically and mentally.
Studies have shown that subpar home and office environments can have a negative physical effect on occupants, exacerbating pre-existing respiratory ailments, decreasing cognitive function, and possibly even causing depression. An unhealthy indoor atmosphere includes potential harmful effects from mold, dampness, and particulate matter, unregulated temperature, excessive noise, contaminated water, and poor lighting. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs), chemicals that seep into the atmosphere from indoor surroundings such as paint and furniture, are another troubling issue. This combination of negative factors has long been unrecognized, but research over the last few decades has revealed just how damaging an inadequately designed building can be to its users.
“More time and creativity has gone into designing natural habitats for zoo animals,” Judith Heerwagen, a research psychologist with the US General Services Administration, wrote in Creativity at Work, “than in creating comfortable office spaces for humans.”
Indoor air quality is one of the most pressing health issues associated with architecture, possibly made even more so by two years of pandemic awareness. Poor air quality, combined with the airtightness and conventional HVAC units of many modern designs, can lead to Sick Building Syndrome, where occupants report illnesses whose causes are rarely connected to their environments. Lack of ventilation and outdoor pollutants can create a low-level toxic environment, and airborne pathogens in the covid era are not just harmful by accrual over time; they can be potentially deadly within weeks.
In her book The Great Indoors, The Surprising Science of How Buildings Shape our Behavior, Health, and Happiness, Emily Anthes describes how bacteria is just one aspect of an unhealthy environment. “More indoor dangers lurk if you go beyond the bounds of biology,” Anthes writes. “Lead remains a major public health concern, and flame retardants–which have been linked to cancer, neuro developmental delays and hormonal problems–soak many of our household goods, from our sofas to our TVs. Many of the basic activities we perform regularly in our homes like cooking and cleaning, produce gases and airborne particles that are dangerous when inhaled.”
Emotional well-being is another aspect of daily indoor life that can suffer from a poorly designed environment. The key factor here may be a lack of daylight, which can skew circadian rhythms and limit the production of certain neurotransmitters, such as serotonin. Building for wellness includes using cutting-edge technology, but it also calls for strategic orientation and design layouts, stressing natural light, and developing holistic plans that encourage interaction in offices or maximize airflow in homes. An office or home that allows plenty of sunlight is likely to have healthier, more productive inhabitants.
One of the lesser-known factors that negatively impacts health is noise. While some might argue that excess noise is largely an urban problem, it still impacts millions of Americans across the country. Reducing noise through the use of acoustic tiles, vibration isolation hangers, mass roofing, and insulation material is critical for a productive space.
Since the green building movement began to coalesce in the late 1980s, progressive architects have steadily refined what it means to build responsibly. Energy conservation was followed by new strategies in sustainability focusing on renewables and more recent concepts such as PassivHaus construction, net zero planning, biophilic design, and battling embodied carbon. Today, wellness and health are two increasingly important elements of construction.
With climate change, air pollution, and the possibility of further pandemics, our health seems increasingly fragile, but architecture is at the forefront of improving lives. It might sound like something futuristic, but a building that can take care of you is not an outlandish concept plucked from a science fiction pulp novel. When most people think of healthy architecture, they think of smart homes, where artificial intelligence, wearable tech, and tracking gadgets on-site or embedded in phone apps combine to monitor and alert inhabitants of potential health risks. Some of these ideas and innovations can seem intrusive or overly complicated as well as extraneous. But there is a much simpler and more effective way for well-being to be an everyday aspect of living and working: a high-performance building.
While high-performance buildings are known for sustainability and energy reduction, they also acknowledge and address one of the most important aspects of architecture as a humanist pursuit: how the built environment affects the well-being of its occupants.
Each design component of a high-performance building is calculated with the well-being of its occupants in mind. High-performance buildings feature whole-house filtration systems that ensure safe water, high-capacity HVAC systems with variant refrigerant flow and filters that deliver clean air and filter it, thermal regulation for comfort, and an emphasis on natural light.
This focus–health–is not an add-on or an optional feature but the essence of high-performance buildings and, as our knowledge of the physical and psychological impacts of the built environment evolves, the future of architecture. “The decisions we make today regarding our buildings,” Joe Allen said in the Harvard Public Health Review, “will determine our collective health going forward.”