how to create a healthy indoor environment

Biophilic design display at Can Ikigai, Barcelona by Biofilico

Describe your work in the healthy buildings and workplace wellness space?

I take a nature-oriented approach to health and wellbeing, while working in the real estate and hospitality sectors - be that office, residences, gyms or hotels. 

Biofilico offers creative design, interior consulting and building certification services. In short, that equates to designing a space’s wellbeing interiors ourselves, or as part of a wider team as external advisors with a specific brief collaborating with architects, engineers and project management.

In every project, our aim is enhance an interior’s mental and physical health credentials. Offices are a big part of that now, as are homes and hotels. I also do work at a more strategic level helping real estate developers to align their portfolio of property developments with ESG principles.

Biofit on the other hand is specifically about wellness concepts, gym design and wellbeing programs, mostly for hotels and workplaces. 

Both businesses are intricately related to the spaces that we spend our time in - the mission is to ensure the buildings we live, work and play in are aligned with our own health and that of the planet. 

What is a ‘sick building’ compare to a healthy building?

A sick building can manifest itself in a number of ways including headaches, problems with concentration, low energy levels, reduced cognitive function, high numbers of staff sick days.

In contrast, a healthy building that integrates wellbeing interior design and follows a global standard such as the WELL Certification with a WELL consultant on the project team, is promoting occupant mental and physical health. Typically this is delivered partially using construction or refurbishment, as well as during an interior fit-out and eventually facilities management policies once the building is in use. 

Interestingly these same wellbeing design principles can be applied both in your workplace and on a smaller scale at home.

What is Biophilic design?

Biophilic design is an integral part of both ‘green building’ and ‘healthy building’ systems, it effectively bridges both worlds of sustainability and human wellbeing in real estate and interiors terms. It involves nature-inspired design that brings the outside world in, providing positive benefits for both People and Planet. 

So called ’green building’ or ‘sustainable building’ strategies are focused on the building’s impact on the environment while ‘healthy building’ strategies are focused primarily on the mental and physical wellbeing of those spending time in the building.

Biophilic design can be multi sensory, combining aesthetics with touch, smell and sound. Often it involves the use of natural patterns, textures, circadian lighting, and often plants, many many plants, but I’d argue, these are not a sine qua non of a space being labelled ‘biophilic’. There are also more minimalist interpretations that use organic design, rough ‘wabi-sabi’ textures. 

A corporate office that I helped deliver in Switzerland required everything to be about clean and precise lines while the residence Can Ikigai by Biofilico in Barcelona is more about neutral, calming tones and organic materials o not try to be perfect in any way, so Biophilic design can, I’d argue can go in a number of directions. This at least is my interpretation of it as a Biophilic design consultant working in this space for the past five or six years. 

How does Biophilic design connect with healthy buildings?

Biophilic design is one element of a far wider concept which is healthy buildings. Events over the past two years have brought this subject into the limelight like never before because we spend so much of our time indoors. For most of us 80% to 90% of our typical day in fact.

Then consider that similar percentages of corporate overheads are also tied to office rent, benefits and salaries - suddenly the wellbeing of your workforce and how it relates to the physical work environment takes on new relevance. 

What are the health benefits of Biophilic design?

It can increase productivity and concentration levels in our workspaces. It's been shown in one study to speed up patient recovery times. That's now creating some interest from people working in the senior living sector for example.

Certain countries in the world already have their GPs experimenting with ‘green prescriptions’. So in Japan, South Korea, Sweden you'll have doctors prescribing time in nature for stressed professionals. 

Biophilic design is effectively trying to capture that same concept of connecting with nature for its calming, energizing effects but in an indoor environment - as our cities get bigger and we are increasingly cut off from wild parks, lakes, mountains and rivers, we can still take matters into our hands.

We've seen this in hotel lobbies and office reception spaces for example, where studies show lingering time extends exponentially when people feel comfortable an at ease surrounded by nature. 

Many of the new Apple Stores use a very minimalist form of biophilic design but everything in there is natural, pure, clean, fresh, and they usually have a big vertical garden wall of foliage or a huge indoor tree, and that becomes this sort of almost beacon of positive energy around the space. It's very very clever what they've done there but of course, they can pay for some of the world’s top architects to do it for them!

What research studies prove the impact of Biophilic design in the workplace?

If I'm talking to a CFO or CEO about how Biophilic design can add value to their workplace, scientific data is everything. In 2017 Biofilico was commissioned by EcoWorld Ballymore to do a research study by creating a Vitamin Nature re-charge room in London's business district of Canary Wharf. 

We created this greenhouse space full of air purifying plants, birdsong, lots of natural light and circadian lighting smart lighting systems, air purification systems running the whole time, pine forest aromatherapy, and then brought in a team of researchers from the University of Essex to create the before and after study for us. 

In total 108 local workers from that business district in London spent around 60 minutes each in the recharge room - a complete digital detox zone.  Some meditated, others quietly ate their lunch, others held creative brainstorming sessions. 

We basically said, look, here's this space for you to ‘just be in’, please tell us how you feel before you come in and how you feel when you leave. The results were really interesting from our perspective, and show some of the main benefits of Biophilic design interiors. 

So, for example, 74% of people felt an improvement in their mood from the time they arrived to the time they left, 87% of people felt less perceived stress when they left, 83% felt generally more productive, like they were going back into the office feeling just that much more positive about the work they had to do that afternoon, and 87% reported feeling more creative. 

One of the main things within that research experiment was the quality of the indoor air thanks to the plants and the boost provided by the Dyson air purifier. Now suddenly, that's such an important theme in the COVID era because it's an airborne disease. 

What is Indoor Air Quality or IAQ?

Strategies to improve indoor air quality can be applied both at home and in the workplace. So at home, for example, here I'm thinking about natural cross-ventilation. If it's a rented apartment I can't easily change the filters in the HVAC air con system or indeed change anything at a building level, the landlord won’t like that at all. Same for a rent office potentially.

How does a healthy building improve air quality?

Natural ventilation strategies require at least two windows open to create a passage of air from one part of the space to another. This type of gentle airflow has been shown to be a feature of biophilic design as it connects you with the outside world in a multi-sensory way that can also prevent drowsiness whilst clearing out dust particles from the indoor air. 

We can also work with plants to improve the indoor air of course, there was a famous NASA study when they were looking at what plants could be taken into space to improve the air quality onboard. 

According to them, you’ll do well with a Spider plant, a Chinese Evergreen, a Boston fern, Bamboo Palm, or ‘ZZ’ plant indoors, the latter plant being both an air-purifier and, in our experience, remarkably hardy. They can all be kept indoors, they'll remove CO2 by day and give off Oxygen at night, that means they're also fine to keep in your bedroom.

If we consider a workplace environment, a facilities management or HR team can make a request for enhanced air conditioning filter system - it's all about the filters noways for air quality! Carbon filters are good for the VOCs, chemical off-gasses, while a MERV with a double-digit number next to it such as MERV13, is going to zap all the dust particles, small and large, from circulating in the indoor air. 

If we’re making an effort to purify the air in a healthy building, removing harmful substances from our indoor air, then it is essential to start monitoring that air. Commercial-grade air quality monitors are now relatively easy to install need they are an essential piece of any healthy building certification system such as WELL. 

The better the quality of monitor the better data you get out so a Dyson air filter in the corner of my home office is just about OK and certainly better than nothing, but multiple commercial grade monitors in a workspace, with data automatically sent to the cloud for analysis, is a far more comprehensive workplace wellness strategy.  

When strategically positioned at head height in key locations around an office they can provide a detailed overview of what is happening, in real time. This at a can, ideally should be communicated to building occupants via publicly displayed screens, for example in the lobby or at the elevator.

What are healthy materials in an interior affect indoor air quality?

The materials and finishes in an interior are a potential source of hazardous, toxic chemicals that will release into the air for what may be one month after installation but potentially up to two years after being introduced into the space.

Preventing such chemicals from making it into the interior specifications is on this basis a fundamental step in ensuring a healthy indoor environment.

Paints, insulation, adhesives, drywall , even fabrics in certain types of furniture and of course flooring can all be sources of Volatile Organic Compounds, a.k.a VOCs. These are chemicals that slowly release into the air over a period of what may be a week or more than a year.

By selecting healthy and non-toxic materials consciously as part of an interior fit-out we can limit the exposure occupants will have to such chemicals. We're looking to avoid most plastics, synthetics, epoxies and resins, as well as anything that has been chemically treated (typically such treatments are disguised as ‘antibacterial’ or flame retardant’ or ‘waterproof’ qualities of the material in question).

By focusing on natural natural materials instead, such as linen, cotton, jute, wood, wool, leather, bamboo, cork, clay and bio-materials as well as anything that has been given a seal of approval by a third party system such as Cradle 2 Cradle.

If in doubt, we ask for an ingredient list from the relevant manufacturer, just like you might do at a supermarket. Often, the problem is in what is not revealed, so material transparency is key to ensure a healthy indoor environment.