biophilic design in WELL certification — biofilico wellness interiors

what role does biophilic design play in the well building standard?

The verdant rooftop courtyard of Montoya co-working and event venue, Barcelona, Spain

What is the definition of biophilic design?

Biophilic design is about combining nature, sustainability and wellbeing interiors by bringing the outside world back 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.

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 patters, colours, textures, materials and fabrics - 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, 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.

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.

Does the WELL standard favour biophilic design?

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.

What credits can biophilic design 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.

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!

Biophilic design in the WELL Building Standard