It’s interesting to note that the active design movement coincided right around the time of our most recent economic downturn; just as property across the country was dropping in value, our collective long-term national health was then and still remains at an all-time low. Meanwhile, in commercial interiors, the idea of concentrating workers in an open plan environment was gaining momentum.
For design professionals and end users alike, our ideas about work environments are changing rapidly. Early conversations around sustainability were mostly concerned with the world’s material resources; today, the discussion has expanded to also include human resources.


Throughout history, much of what design does has been leading us down a path towards less activity. Now, the pendulum is starting to swing the other way. When Michael Bloomberg, then mayor of New York City, formed the Center for Active Design in 2010, it started out as a collaboration between several city agencies and private sector design and research professionals. Early outreach from the Center for Active Design to local NYC design firms promoted stair use over elevator use and provided valuable insights about cognitive maps of interior spaces, but not much else appeared to be of an actionable nature.
Today, it is an international non-profit agency that maintains a multi-disciplinary perspective that translates health research into design solutions, among other things. Just as our economy has grown and become more resilient over the years, so has the active design movement, thanks to the Center.

Marking a commitment to active design within its organization, KI recently published a whitepaper entitled, “Understanding Active Design: The Rise of Human Sustainability,” available for free download here.
Coinciding with the publication is a series of panel discussions with industry thought leaders on active design. Last week in New York City, KI joined forces with IIDA to host a revealing discussion on wellbeing in the workplace in their brand new showroom at the New York Design Center at 200 Lexington Avenue. IIDA CEO and the evening’s moderator, Cheryl Durst, provided insightful comments and guided the group, which included Joan Blumenfeld from Perkins+Will, Jonathan Webb from KI, Joanna Frank from The Center for Active Design and Nila Leiserowitz from Gensler.
After introducing the alarming statistic that 75% of today’s workers in North America are classified as either obese or overweight, Ms. Durst noted, “This is not just a North American condition. Worldwide, our collective butts are getting wider. If you look in the typical diets from Mediterranean, Asian, Scandinavian or Middle East locales, the influence of fast food has been amazing.
“In some places, there has been an 80% increase in diabetes and cardiac condition just from shifting from a local diet to fast food. Previously, many people spent time at the home around the dining room table, conversing and talking, which is very healthy for us to do while we are eating. All that has all changed.
“We recognize that workplace is really the frontier for culture,” said Ms. Durst.
And media-based culture is inescapable these days.
“Our clients are not only reading things in the media, added Ms. Leiserowitz, “but they are understanding that the role of healthcare has changed. Clients are now realizing their employees can go to a hospital and the cost will be high, or they could deal with wellbeing in the workplace before anyone needs a hospital, and that is why this is becoming an especially prevalent conversation across the country.

Since most people spend the majority of their time at work or at school, it is critical that we create environments that encourage healthy behavior. But how?
“Over the last five years, there has been a lot of research on exactly what happens in the human body on a metabolic level when we sit for more than half an hour,” said Ms. Blumenfield. “There is also a lot of research around the fact that exercise is great, but small amounts of exercise throughout the day are actually just as good. That is one of the reasons why the statistics around exercise are so muddy.
“They were clouded by the fact that people who were just fidgety actually do just as well health-wise as people who go out and run in the morning. Once people start to understand that, it is up to us designers to ask, “How can we create an environment that will encourage people to think of work differently?”

One answer is to offer occupants as many choices as possible.
“We talk a lot with our clients about absenteeism,” said Ms. Leiserowitz. “However, presenteeism is the bigger number. That is when you are at work but not really working. Engagement at work is so important, and something that we are starting to focus on now as designers. If you are healthy and active at work, you are a more engaged employee.”

Mr. Webb, the sole manufacturer on the panel, noted that the workplace itself has become an incubator for sedentary behavior.
“In our recent white paper, one of the things we asked workers was if they feel encouraged by their employer to move around throughout the day. Only 28% of the employees stated that their company encouraged them via the facility as well as the culture to continue to move throughout the day.
“That is a problem. If the average worker wants to be healthier and live a more active lifestyle, workplaces have to reflect, support and encourage healthier practices.”
And, by and large, that is beginning to happen.
“92% of employers that have more than 200 employees offer some kind of workplace wellbeing program,” said Ms. Durst. “That number is up 75% from just five years ago.”

Offering a real-life example of aactive design principles applied to commercial interiors, Ms. Leiserowitz described a recent renovation at Beckman Coulter in Los Angeles. “This company is transitioning their workforce from boomers to Millennials, and with that, the current physical space was not attractive to Millennials.”
Younger workers were asking for a number of items, but most importantly, they wanted to leave work healthier than when they started working that day.
“They’re saying, ‘It is really important that the physical space allows me to connect with my friends, allows me to do great work, and allows me an opportunity to take breaks if I need to in order for me to be effective at my job’,” she said.

Transitioning to a bit more historical perspective on past civic initiatives, Ms. Frank noted, “Many people today credit the role that interior design and architecture played in reducing the spread of infectious diseases in the 19th Century. City zoning was started here in New York City with the understanding that we need to actually start regulating the use of space in our built environment.
“Back then, there was an attitude that as a government or as a country, we could not look at using our built environment to address individual health issues because they were out of scale, just too large a public issue. That brings us to today,” she said with a smile. “We have been really successful at dealing with infectious diseases in the past 100 years or so. Unfortunately, we all have to die of something, so now the main culprit of death is chronic disease.”
Ms. Blumenfeld added, “It is chronic illnesses, many of which are caused by obesity or being overweight, that are now a major public health issue. If you look at a timeline from 1980, most states have a 5 to 10% incidence of obesity. By 2012, most states are now above 30% obesity.”

“We’re really talking about taking the stairs,” said Ms. Frank. “We’re talking about walking two blocks from the subway, or small and incremental changes that active design is addressing. If we continue at our current course, 86% of the adult population will be overweight or obese by 2030. This will bankrupt us. It is time to reverse course, and design has a big role in addressing this issue.”
As life expectancy rises and modern medicine increases the survival rate of those with serious injuries, illnesses and birth defects, interest in universal design continues to grow. Seen as the grandfather of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), universal design is a concept of designing the built environment to be aesthetic and usable by everyone, regardless of their age, ability or status in life.
“If you create an environment, whether it is the interior of a building or a streetscape, and it is designed for the person who has the least ability to navigate it, you are creating something that will have enhanced design for everybody,” said Ms. Frank. “Having curb cuts has benefited more people than just those in wheelchairs. We don’t think of universal design as just how people move around a space. We are also talking about light, noise and many more things; it permeates all the design strategies.”
The panel stressed that universal design coupled with active design is about opportunity and analyzing who the people your project is serving. Each project needs to be evaluated on its own terms, and active design as well as universal design are not one-size-fits-all programs.
“We work a lot with senior housing developers,” said Ms. Frank. “For them, encouraging stair use above one floor is probably not the most effective use of resources. In that instance, we may look far more at gardening options, and social interaction, and dispelling social isolation because we know that has a detrimental effect on health.”
Another popular trend in commercial interiors is bringing the outside in, or vice-versa.
“This was probably the biggest a-ha moment in our research, said Mr. Webb, of his new whitepaper with KI. “Only 15% of the employees that we spoke with had any kind of access to outdoor space. Nearly three quarters of the individuals that we spoke with said this was something that they really wanted.”
As the workplace is becoming less formal, outdoor areas are seeing increased usage throughout the year, sometimes regardless of climate.

For Mr. Webb, the active design discussion has hit home quite literally.
“KI has had a corporate wellness program for years now. We are encouraged to work out 90 minutes a day, and that message comes from the top down. Because of this program and our commitment to making lives healthier, we are now implementing more pillars of active design. We have had one health insurance premium increase in the last five years, and most companies our size have an increase every year. That it a true return on investment,” he said.

As the panelists offered plenty of options and details to activate commercial interiors throughout the discussion, it became clear that, similar to LEED certification, many of these solutions are idea-based, and not based on products that just get installed in the project. Just as one cannot simply buy all the ingredients of a sustainable building or interior, the same goes for active design.
“There is, however,” said Ms. Blumenfeld, “an active design innovation credit in LEED. The checklist on it is very useful and has some great ideas. The GSA is developing another active design checklist, something called FIT-WEL, and they are planning on making it available to everyone when it is finished,” she noted.

Blumenfeld also mentioned Delos, another sustainable certification organization, but unlike the USGBC, is a for-profit entity.
“Delos has upped the ante on the discussion,” she said. “There are only a few projects that have the accreditation so far. It is a performance-based standard, not a document-based standard. What that means is that with LEED, we send all the documentation to them and they certify that we have done our job. With Delos, what they do is test after construction for things like the level of sound, indoor air quality, water quality, and other things.”

The desire for some sort of active design certification is brought up regularly when this subject is discussed. “People like recognition that they have successfully completed something or have been outstanding in their field,” said Ms. Frank.
While many people think that may be premature, it could have long-term benefits.
“One of the things that happened with LEED, because Active Design is following a similar path to some degree,” said Ms. Frank, “With LEED, there came a point where a sustainable built environment became the status quo, when research emerged about the increase in the value of a property after it had achieved LEED certification. At the time it was about a four dollar a square foot increase, which is a significant enough value add.”
Aware that she was speaking to a room full of interior designers looking to apply what they have heard from the panel, Ms. Blumenfeld spoke to the crowd, “Even if you are working on an existing space, there are things designers can do to make people more active, and a lot of them are behavioral changes or operational changes,” she said. If you can’t put in sit/stand desks, then put in a touchdown station that people can share as a stand/sit station. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to give people choice and offer the occupants a more active option.”