Imagine arriving at work and being happy there. A happiness that Cambridge Professor Koen Steemers calls “feeling good and functioning well.” It is this kind of happiness that building owners hope for their occupants, according to a Dodge Smart Market Report in 2016.
Fine, except for one thing: who has the plan to get there? HOK and the WELL Living Lab at Mayo Clinic have a fruitful beginning.
The WELL Living LabTM is a collaboration between Mayo Clinic and DelosTM, founder of the WELL Building StandardTM. The Lab’s purpose is researching real-world impacts of environments on human health and wellbeing.
As a WELL Living Lab Alliance partner since February 2017, HOK is the Alliance’s only design, architecture and engineering firm. Partners draw upon their respective strengths and accomplishments toward success in this innovative endeavor.
From HOK come scenarios drawn from the everyday work of the firm’s architects and interior designers. These real-world conditions serve as the basis for experimental simulations using test subjects inside the WELL Living Lab. The test subjects live, work and interact in the Lab, where a sensor-enabled environment collects data for analysis by a battery of Mayo Clinic researchers. Outcomes from these studies will form the basis for HOK’s formulation of design strategies for improved health and wellbeing for workers across the range of building types.
Soon the toolkits of designers and architects could include fresh approaches to designing indoor environments for healthier and happier workforces.
“The happier you are, the better your brain works and the better you feel and perform at work.” That’s what Dr. Emiliana Simon-Thomas told Entrepreneur Magazine in May 2016. She is the Science Director of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley.
“When workers are happier, they’re healthier and accomplish more. They work better on teams. They’re more well-liked by their coworkers, and they’re more immune to burnout,” said Dr. Simon-Thomas.
She adds that convincing management groups of the benefits from happy employees should make designs for happiness an easy sell.
Mara Baum, AIA, of HOK, meets with end users who echo Dr. Simon-Thomas’s comments.
“I’m hearing the words ‘happiness’, ‘wellbeing’ and ‘health’ in some of my client meetings,” she said.
While these words are not interchangeable, they are interconnected.
“Health itself is very personal,” she said. “Organizations approach these subjects differently based on their leadership and culture.”
Ms. Baum, with 18 years of sustainability experience in architecture, urban planning, research, teaching and green building certification, has earned the Evidence-Based Design Accreditation and Certification (EDAC), is a WELL Accredited Professional (WELL AP) and is a LEED Fellow. She has witnessed the evolution of HOK’s sustainable design leadership over time; she calls it “the heart of HOK.”
“We pursue our focus on people’s health and wellbeing by merging art, science and technical knowledge into a design approach around sustainability,” said Ms. Baum.
As the firm’s sustainable design leader, health + wellness, Ms. Baum is one of two HOK architects leading efforts to integrate health and wellbeing practices throughout the firm and among its clients. She is based in HOK’s San Francisco office while her compatriot, James Stawniczy, AIA, senior consultant, wellness, works from the New York City office. He is a WELL AP and a LEED Accredited Professional with a Building Design + Construction specialty.
Mr. Stawniczy, who joined HOK in late 2016, brings front-line experience in owner-level implementation of sustainability programs and accreditation training programs for LEED and WELL. “Our role centers on education for implementing the WELL Building Standard.”
Where LEED has environmental responsibility as a focus, the WELL Standard seeks improvements in a building’s health and wellbeing impacts on humans. The WELL Standard offers seven categories of standards compatible with LEED as a rating system of the care a building provides for the health of its occupants.
The significance of one category of WELL stood out to Ms. Baum and Mr. Stawniczy as they considered where to begin work with the WELL Living Lab.
“Lighting is one of the leading topics in the industry,” said Mr. Stawniczy.
The interest from HOK’s standpoint is getting more information about circadian rhythm and ways to design for daylight and artificial light to support it.
“This connection is necessary among those whose work limits their exposure to regular cycles of day and night, such as healthcare providers, flight attendants, night shift workers.” Mr. Stawniczy added that for some groups of workers, like flight crews, making lighting changes to benefit circadian rhythm in hotels is gaining interest.
“WELL puts forth a recommendation around circadian lighting,” said Ms. Baum.
WELL provides guidelines that minimize disruption to the body’s circadian system and enhance productivity.
But Ms. Baum says that from her perspective there is room for more data.
“Both HOK and the WELL Living Lab have an interest in lighting. And we’re looking at that focus for 2017.”
Of the many real-world conditions to choose from, lighting demonstrates the connection between healthy workspaces and human’s daily activity cycle of waking hours and resting hours.
“We are learning that interruptions in circadian rhythm carry a higher risk for cancer,” said Ms. Baum. She says those working night shifts over an extended period are among those at risk. In 2007 the World Health Organization classified night shift work’s disruption of circadian rhythm as a probable carcinogen. Later work associated rotating night shift work over a 15-year period with a modest increase in lung cancer mortality. In reporting this in January 2015, sciencedaily.com cited these results as further evidence of “a potentially detrimental effect of rotating night shift work on health and longevity.”
However, the finding is controversial. The Journal of the National Cancer Institute published an article in October 2016 where the meta-analysis of 10 cancer studies in women found night shift work had little to no effect on incidence of breast cancer.
Just one month later, sciencedaily.com published results of a Chinese study linking 20-years or more of night shift work in men with an increased cancer risk. Researchers involved in these studies agree more study is warranted.
The common link in these studies is circadian disruption that leads to development of diseases, even making conditions worse. [Image:
As Ms. Baum explains, “We see short-term health problems including insomnia and other sleeping problems, as well as depression and mental health issues. There are also long-term issues.”
An article published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in December 2015 connects the circadian system with “important biological functions such as breathing, hormone balance, heart rhythms, lung function, immune function.” That article offers no means of restoration for a dysfunctional circadian system, so emphasis shifts to care to maintain the circadian system’s health. But care in what form?
To start, maintaining circadian rhythm means the right amount of blue-white light reaching the cornea helps establish day-night cycles. People spending lots of time inside buildings do not necessarily receive enough of the proper light.
The Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute expressed in 2014 that “present-day electric lighting is manufactured, designed and specified only to meet visual requirements.” Their report to the GSA suggested that LED lighting could “enable greater control over both the amount of light and spectral characteristics, both of which are known to influence circadian processes and health outcomes in experimental settings.” The Lighting Research Center reported on personal light exposure, health and wellbeing at the Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt Building in Portland, Oregon.
LED lighting manufacturers tout its capability to shift color temperature. Award-winning manufacturer LightCorp says LED lighting provides a range of cool, bright and warm colors, mimicking the natural fluctuation in daylight. The opposite of blue-emitting fluorescent light, LEDs potentially create less disruption to a person’s sleep cycle when managed properly.
Ms. Baum capsulizes the situation: “We’re only beginning to learn the biological response triggers of our eyes and our bodies. This science is 15 or so years old. As a result, these are early stages of our efforts to understand what type of building design options are most beneficial.”
The WELL Living Lab exists for this sort of work.
Visitors see no test tubes or Bunsen burners in this lab. The Lab is a procession of modular rooms for work, learning, living and sleeping. Sensors worn by occupants and embedded in the space collect data for analysis and outcomes.
The infrastructure of the WELL Living Lab has unique capabilities for controlling individual or multiple variables in the physical study environment. These include lighting, daylight, acoustics and thermal conditions.
For studies, the control of natural light operates by programmed timing for shades to rise and fall. Or luminance sensor data could control shade movements.
Precision settings for LED lighting establish light levels and color temperature based on study requirements. Lighting designs change easily as with integrating new technologies introduced going forward.
Sensors closely monitor the effects these changes create. The sensors monitor changes in both the environment and responses from the human test subjects. Because the Lab’s sensors are networked, data routes to a central collection site.
“By employing a variety of methods, we capture an enormous amount of data,” said Dr. Jie Zhao, director of Delos Labs. In addition to wearable and environmental sensors, these methods include validated psychological tasks and observation.
“We can then analyze the data collected to give us a deeper understanding of the impact on our wellbeing.”
The relevance of a study is the human response. From Dr. Zhao: “There are many different aspects of people’s responses that can be measured to understand how lighting affects people.”
Dr. Zhao discussed the importance of measurements to insights.
“When we are exploring any theme, we also consider more general impacts of what we are studying and include qualitative measures and analysis in our data capture.”
Behavioral measures such as surveys, psychological tasks and behavioral outcomes, are supplemented with physiological measures such as heart rate, skin temperature and galvanic skin response.
“When we combine quantitative and qualitative measures, it tells us a richer story and leads to actionable insights,” said Dr. Zhao.
In any study, the WELL Living Lab may explore outcomes such as comfort, productivity, cognition, alertness, mood, sleep and team dynamics.
Work in the Lab includes more than analysis. The Lab staff ensures maintenance of the research spaces according to the study protocol. They also manage sensors, data collection and prepare for future studies.
How does the WELL report results?
Says Dr. Zhao, “The Lab team shares information on studies after publication. Alliance members receive early insights in several ways, including in one-on-one conversations and via a private online portal.”
The WELL Living Lab hosts an annual Alliance summit, which will occur on September 26 & 27, 2017, allowing ample time for networking and sharing of ideas. The Mayo Clinic Institutional Review Board reviews and approves all studies. A Mayo Clinic principal investigator leads these reviews.
Conducting investigations and sharing outcomes continues HOK’s global leadership on emerging design issues. The firm authored “The HOK Guidebook to Sustainable Design,” the industry’s first book on sustainability. HOK may well and properly write the first book on sustainable lighting.
wellness across its 100-plus features. Photo: HOK