concept design visual of a healthy office environment for Carnegie Mellon University Qatar (CMUQ) & Qatar Foundation (QF)
Why healthy building principles are becoming increasingly relevant to the next generation of wellness clubs
The wellness industry has become remarkably sophisticated in a relatively short period of time. A new generation of clubs and recovery spaces is bringing together thermal wellness, contrast therapy, advanced recovery technologies, diagnostics, meditation and longevity-focused treatments within increasingly refined interiors.
This is basically where we are at right now, the current state of play - meaning almost every new brief I receive contains some combination of the above.
Yet from my perspective running both Biofilico wellness design and Biofit gym + spa design, there is a subtle but important contradiction emerging. A business can invest heavily in technologies designed to support human health while paying comparatively little attention to the health performance of the building in which those technologies are experienced.
For the next generation of wellness facilities, that distinction is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.
At Biofilico, much of our work has historically been about taking the principles associated with wellness outside the gym and spa and applying them to workplaces, residences, hospitality and other everyday environments. Increasingly, however, we are also seeing the reverse happen: healthy building strategies are finding their way back into dedicated wellness environments.
The result is a convergence between two disciplines that have often developed separately — wellness design and healthy building design.
Wellness no longer stops at the treatment-room door
Consider the journey through a contemporary wellness club. A member might arrive for a recovery treatment, spend time in a sauna or cold-water experience, use a piece of biohacking technology, meditate, shower and then relax or socialise before leaving.
The individual interventions may last only part of that visit. The rest of the experience takes place in the building itself.
What is the quality of the air they are breathing? How are temperature and humidity being managed across spaces with very different uses? What chemicals or emissions are associated with the interior finishes? Does the lighting support rather than disrupt circadian rhythms? Are quieter restorative areas protected acoustically from more active zones? Is drinking water quality being considered? Can occupants connect with nature, daylight and outdoor space?
These are familiar questions within healthy building design, but they take on additional significance when applied to a business whose core proposition is health and wellbeing.
This is where the distinction between providing wellness services and creating a wellness environment starts to matter.
When health is the product, the building has to support the proposition
Indoor environmental quality should be considered in every building type, but the commercial logic is particularly compelling for wellness facilities.
If an operator is explicitly asking customers to invest in their health, recovery or longevity, the physical environment inevitably becomes part of the credibility of that proposition.
This does not mean turning every wellness club into a laboratory, nor does it mean that every project needs to pursue formal healthy building certification. It does mean applying greater scrutiny to aspects of the interior that have historically been treated primarily as technical or specification issues.
Indoor air quality is a good example. Ventilation rates, filtration, humidity management and source control are normally considered part of the engineering brief. Within a wellness environment, however, they also affect the experience being sold to the customer.
Materials provide another. The question is no longer simply whether a finish achieves the desired aesthetic, durability and maintenance requirements. Increasingly, we can also ask what we know about its emissions, chemical composition and supporting documentation.
Lighting, acoustics and thermal comfort follow the same logic. Each sits somewhere between building performance and human experience, which is precisely why they become so relevant in wellness environments.
From healthy intentions to measurable performance
There has also been a broader evolution in healthy building design itself. Earlier interpretations of wellness interiors could sometimes rely heavily on visible signals: natural materials, planting, daylight, calming colours and other biophilic design elements. These remain valuable, but they represent only one layer of a much wider approach.
Healthy building strategies increasingly combine the experiential with the measurable. Indoor air can be monitored. Water can be tested. Acoustic conditions can be assessed. Lighting performance can be measured. Material specifications can be interrogated and documented. Thermal conditions can be monitored rather than assumed.
This shift from design intent to verified performance is particularly relevant to the wellness sector because it provides a more rigorous basis for claims about the environment being created.
Frameworks such as the WELL Building Standard and RESET Standard provide different mechanisms for introducing that rigour. WELL takes a broad view of human health across multiple aspects of the built environment, while RESET offers performance-based standards with a particularly strong emphasis on measured environmental data.
Formal certification is only one route, however. A project can also use the underlying principles of healthy building design to establish its own priorities according to its concept, investment level and customer proposition.
The important shift is the mindset: the building itself can be treated as part of the wellness infrastructure.
A more integrated definition of wellness design
This has implications for how wellness facilities are designed. It is relatively easy to add another treatment, technology or amenity to a brief. The more difficult task is ensuring that all of these elements sit within a coherent environment that supports the same health objectives. That requires conversations about wellness to happen earlier.
Ventilation and filtration cannot easily be treated as an afterthought once mechanical systems have been finalised. Material-health objectives are more useful when they inform procurement rather than being applied retrospectively. Acoustic performance needs to be considered alongside adjacencies and space planning. Circadian lighting principles need to influence the lighting strategy rather than being reduced to a decorative specification at the end of the process.
This does not necessarily mean adding substantial cost. In many cases, the opportunity lies in making better-informed decisions at the right stage of the design process, rather than replacing completed work later.
It also requires prioritisation. Not every healthy building intervention creates equal value for every project. The appropriate strategy will depend on factors including implementation cost, technical complexity, operational implications, impact on the member experience and the commercial value of independent verification. The objective should not be to accumulate wellness features. It should be to identify those interventions that genuinely strengthen the concept.
Healthy building performance as part of the brand
There is a commercial dimension to this convergence as well. Premium wellness operators increasingly need to differentiate themselves in a market where saunas, cold plunges, red-light therapy and recovery technologies are becoming familiar rather than exceptional. The presence of the equipment alone will not necessarily communicate a sophisticated wellness proposition. The environment surrounding those experiences can.
A club that can demonstrate considered approaches to indoor air quality, material health, water, lighting, acoustics, thermal comfort and restorative design has another layer to its story. More importantly, those measures can improve the experience behind the story. This is where healthy building strategy potentially moves beyond compliance and becomes part of brand credibility.
Certification may strengthen that proposition by providing independent validation, particularly for operators making ambitious health claims. For other projects, a carefully defined internal healthy building strategy may be more appropriate. Either way, the direction of travel is similar: wellness environments are becoming more accountable for the environmental conditions they create.
Taking wellness out of the gym — and healthy buildings back into it
For Biofilico, this convergence reflects a wider evolution in the meaning of wellness design. For years, one of the central ideas behind our work has been that health and wellbeing should not be confined to dedicated wellness spaces. The principles traditionally associated with spas, retreats and restorative environments can inform the places where we live, work, study, travel and spend our everyday lives. Now the same thinking is travelling in the opposite direction.
As wellness clubs become more ambitious, healthy building principles are entering the gym, spa and recovery environment itself. Air, water, light, acoustics, materials, thermal comfort, nature and measurable environmental performance are becoming part of a much broader definition of what a wellness facility can be.
The two disciplines are beginning to meet in the middle. And that feels like an important next step for the sector. It will increasingly seem contradictory to invest heavily in technologies designed to improve human health without applying comparable scrutiny to the building in which those technologies are experienced.
The next generation of wellness facilities will not simply contain wellness. The building itself will become part of the experience.
This article was written by Matt Morley, founder of Biofilico, a healthy building and wellness interior design consultancy working across residential, hospitality, workplace and dedicated wellness environments.