Exploring the Impact of Wellbeing Architecture on Health and Happiness
biofilico fitness studio interior design
The ROLE of Wellness in Architecture
According to the World Health Organization, health is “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being.” Wellbeing in architecture focuses on designing environments that enhance physical and mental health. These spaces are created to foster positive mental states and promote healthy routines.
Architects play a vital role in designing buildings that actively improve the lives of their occupants. This concept is often referred to as “healthy buildings.” Meanwhile, specialists like Biofilico, an interior design firm, focus on creating wellness-centered interior environments.
As we spend a significant amount of time indoors, the built environment has become a key factor in our mental and physical health. Today, architects are tasked with more than just aesthetics and functionality—they must also create spaces that nurture and elevate the human experience.
Designing for Wellbeing
Designing buildings and interiors with health and well-being in mind requires a deep understanding of social and behavioural sciences, psychology, and urban planning.
Thoughtful design choices—such as natural ventilation, green spaces, and easy access to essential services—can enhance human well-being and support positive mental health.
Architects must consider how layout, lighting, materials, and acoustics affect both mental well-being and physical health.
By integrating health-related elements into their designs, architects can positively influence human cognition and create environments that support both health and clinical excellence.
Beyond Aesthetics: The Multisensory Approach
Wellbeing design extends beyond simple aesthetics. It incorporates a multisensory approach, engaging sight, sound, smell, touch, taste, and proprioception. Including psychological factors in design can promote social interaction and foster self-reported altruistic behaviour.
By considering sensory elements, architects can create spaces that foster comfort, safety, and positivity. Outdoor natural environments, strategic lighting, and ergonomic designs can stimulate intellectual development, particularly in children.
Simple Changes for Healthier Spaces
Simple design changes, such as adding natural elements, maximising natural ventilation, and designing open layouts, can subtly influence behaviours and encourage healthier habits.
Research in health studies and clinical psychology confirms that well-designed, walkable spaces with safe pavements and community-driven areas promote physical activity and mental wellness.
Prioritising Urban Health
With rising mental health challenges, prioritising urban health resources and healthy indoor environments is more important than ever.
By leveraging insights from global studies and medical research related to health-focused architecture, we can create spaces that not only improve the well-being of occupants but also benefit the wider community.
The Impact of Physical Spaces and Air Quality on Mental Health
The physical environment has a powerful influence on human behaviour, habits, and daily routines.
Minor changes to a space can lead to significant improvements in mental wellbeing, such as adjusting furniture placement to facilitate movement or interaction.
Architects have the power to create environments that promote both physical and mental health through deliberate design interventions.
The interplay between mental health and spatial configurations requires architects to consider how factors such as layout, lighting, materials, and acoustics affect occupants.
Physical ill health can be exacerbated by poor indoor environmental quality, highlighting the need for architects to prioritise health-supporting design.
Wellbeing in Different Building Types
Hospitals: Healing Environments
Hospitals are places of healing and recovery, and the design of the building plays a critical role in supporting this process.
Hospital wards should prioritise patient well-being, incorporating features such as high-quality daylight, views of the outside, and a strong connection to nature. These elements create a calming and restorative environment that aids in recovery.
Residential Buildings: Promoting Physical and Mental Well-being
Residential buildings can support physical well-being through healthy design features, such as active buildings, changing facilities, and bike storage.
They can also enhance mental well-being by focusing on visual quality, thermal comfort, and acoustic quality. Together, these elements contribute to what are known as healthy homes.
Office Buildings: Creating Healthy Workplaces
Office buildings can be designed to the highest sustainable and wellbeing standards. These spaces aim for Net Zero Carbon emissions and strive to achieve certifications such as BREEAM Excellent and WELL Gold. Such buildings, known as healthy workplaces, promote both physical and mental well-being for employees.
Universities: Restorative Spaces for Learning
Universities can be high-pressure environments, and both students and faculty benefit from calming, restorative spaces in which to work and study. Architects and interior designers with a focus on wellbeing can create these environments, helping to reduce stress and support productivity.
The Benefits of Wellbeing Architecture
Wellbeing architecture improves physical and mental health, boosting productivity, creativity, and overall quality of life. By addressing biological and physiological symptoms, architects can design spaces that enhance human wellbeing and long-term health.
Beyond individual benefits, wellbeing-focused design positively impacts the environment and society. Integrating physical and social constitutes ensures spaces cater to diverse needs, improving human wellbeing on a broader scale.
Architects play a key role in shaping environments that support healthy habits. Applying precise physiological comfort theory and quantitative physical parameters helps create spaces that promote mental clarity and physical comfort.
A more holistic awareness of design’s impact calls for new approaches. Considering factors like income and education level and urban accessibility can lead to improved wellbeing and sustainability.
Even small interventions matter. Thus, the assessment of a poorly maintained space can uncover ways to optimise own life and overall wellness.
As wellbeing architecture evolves, professionals must refine their approach to meet changing health and sustainability standards, ensuring lasting benefits for all.
The Future of Wellbeing Design
The pandemic has underscored the need for spaces that prioritise health and wellbeing. Architects are now adopting a more holistic understanding of how design influences human wellbeing, integrating health-supporting human behaviours into sustainable spaces.
The future of wellbeing design will focus on enhancing health through key physical design characteristics, such as natural ventilation, daylight access, and adaptable layouts. These elements help prevent chronic physiological health problems and create a preferably natural environment that supports mental wellbeing.
The World Health Organisation emphasises that health includes physical, social, and environmental factors. Architects must consider qualitative health considerations, specific or prescribed functions, and health-threatening indicators to ensure accessibility for not all users while maximising health benefits.
Collaboration between health services and urban planners is essential to designing spaces that promote indoor physical activity and foster social interaction. Simple, more immediately attainable treatments, such as biophilic design, can contribute to improved wellbeing without major renovations.
The Architects’ Mental Wellbeing Forum continues to highlight the importance of mental health in design. By encouraging such positive behaviour and supporting casual encounters, architects can create environments that improve overall health performance and quality of life.
Healthy buildings for mental and physical health
Wellness real estate, wellbeing architecture, and healthy buildings each focus on different aspects of design to enhance health. Wellness real estate emphasises overall health with features like air filtration and fitness facilities, natural light and biophilic design.
By incorporating these principles, spaces like Recharge Rooms promote relaxation, mental clarity, and productivity. Prioritising well-being in design helps create healthier, more positive environments for both work and home.
Biophilic Architects: Architecture Studios for Biophilic Design — Biofilico Wellness Interiors
our overview of the leading architecture studios for biophilic architecture that bring the outside world in, combining sustainability and wellbeing in real estate.CookFox, USA
GG Loop, Netherlands
Heatherwick Studio, UK
K Studio, Greece
Kengo Kuma & Associates, Japan
M Moser, China
our overview of the leading architecture studios for biophilic architecture that bring the outside world in, combining sustainability and wellbeing in real estate.
Batlleiroig, Spain
Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), Denmark
CookFox, USA
GG Loop, NL
Heatherwick Studio, UK
K Studio, Greece
Kengo Kuma & Associates, Japan
M Moser, China
Nomadic Resorts, SA & NL
Stefano Boeri Architetti, Italy
United Network Studio, Netherlands
Oficinas Lumen, Barcelona
Founded in 1981 by Enric Batlle and Joan Roig, the Barcelona-based architecture studio Batlleiroig is all about tackling the climate emergency through a synergistic fusion of city and nature in the built environment.
The practice combines urban planning, landscaping and architecture, with recent projects showing a clear tendency towards biophilic design, sustainable real estate and occupantwellbeing in particular, often through the lens of greater contact with nature.
With over 140 staff members, this is one of the most influential architecture studios in Barcelona, and indeed Spain. They caught our attention for their ambitious plans for the LaMercedes urban regeneration development by Conren Tramway as well as the Net Zero Emissions Entegra office building, both in our home city of Barcelona.
Going beyond merely ‘sustainable’, Batlleiroig design buildings and indeed precincts that incorporate natural elements and have a deep respect for the advantages of using nature in real estate, be that through materials, plants, aesthetics or environmental protection measures. They emphasize the use of natural materials like wood, bamboo, and stone, all of which adds up to a lightness of touch and an undeniable ‘joie de vivre’ in many of their projects.
Bjarke Ingels Group, Denmark - starchitects and biophilic designers
BIG hardly need any introduction nowadays thanks to their attention-grabbing, headline-worthy approach to architecture. Their recent completion in Singapore, the 280m tall biophilic CapitaSpring tower (see image above) that proposes a new type of vertical urbanism, is just one of countless such examples.
The studio completed its first hotel project in September 2022, the Hôtel des Horlogers for Audemars Piguet in the Swiss Vallée de Joux, the design here blurs the boundaries between the surrounding landscape and the contours of the building, creating spaces that seamlessly integrate the indoors and outdoors, a nod to biophilic architecture if ever there was one.
Their 49,000m2 Sluishuis project outskirts of Amsterdam, has been billed as a ‘floating’ neighborhood with public roofscapes and riverwalks that offers a residential vision of life over water, a form of ‘blue nature’ (as opposed to ‘green nature’ in forests and parks)
CookFox StJohn’s Terminal, Google building
CookFox, USA - nature inspired architecture
CookFox are a giant in the world of “integrated, environmentally responsive architecture” as they call it. They are also world-class biophilic architects, leading the way in integrating biophilia into residences and workplaces.
From their base in New York they leverage two decades of experience and a 130+ strong workforce to deliver projects that aim to “elevate the human condition and urban environment through beautiful, innovative, and sustainable design”.
Calling cards include the 2.2 million sq ft One Bryant Park tower, the first skyscraper in the world to achieve platinum LEED certification, and the forthcoming 1.3 million sq ft Google office tower in Manhattan called the St. John’s Tower.
As a studio, they have also made a name for themselves designing offices for healthy building powerhouses such as the International WELL Building Institute headquarters and Skanska headquarters, both in New York.
GG Loop, Netherlands - creative biophilic designers
The architectural and design firm, GG-loop, is a biophilic design inspired creative team in the Netherlands. The team of about 20 has been together since the beginning of the practice in 2014 and rally around the cause of architecture deepening the connection between people and nature through biophilic design.
Recent large-scale projects include Echinoidea, a pavilion in Milan, and Freebooter, a residential development in Amsterdam.
The studio's vision is to raise awareness on the importance of biophilic architecture to both professionals and the general public to fight the current climate condition.
Heatherwick Studio, UK - biophilic design experts in London
Thomas Heatherwick’s eponymous studio is an architectural design practice and workshop in London, UK.
Their key concepts are improving lives through the built environment, especially through slow living and a connection with nature in urban environments thanks to biophilic design.
The team of over 200 have a strong stance on sustainability, the integration of nature, and a sprinkle of magic dust aimed at sparking a reaction of delight.
Recent large scale projects include 1000 Trees in Shanghai, China and the Eden in Singapore as well as collaborations with Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) on the Google Campus in London.
K Studio, Greece - designers working with biophilia
Based in Central Athens, the K Studio is a practice of 60+ designers that has evolved a unique, nature-infused aesthetic that fits neatly into the category of biophilic design, without being defined or limited by it in any way.
From the bohemian chic of Scorpios on Mykonos island (see pic above) to more minimalist villas, and the Casa Cook resort properties around Greece, their range is impressive for a modestly sized studio.
Greek culture and a sense of place remain a constant in their architectural and design output, meaning they dial up materiality, keeping things pure and elemental whenever possible, yet always with a touch of nature.
Recent large-scale projects include the Marina Kaplankaya and the refurbishment of the Mykonos airport, suggesting they are on their way to becoming one of the country’s leading design studios with a bright future ahead.
Kengo Kuma architects, Japan - one of the world’s leading biophilic architects
Kengo Kuma & Architects (KKAA) have offices in Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai and Paris. With over 170 staff and over 360 projects completed, today they are one of the most significant modern architects not just in Japan but on the global design stage.
The team explores the relationship between buildings, nature, humans and technology, and incorporates natural elements into their designs. This approach, combined with a strong emotional component and undeniable influences from Japan, aims to provoke a serene, harmonious state of mind in occupants and visitors.
Projects are currently underway in a plethora of different countries covering use categories as diverse as museums, restaurants, offices, education, exhibitions, residential, factories and hospitals. A few highlights include the biophilic mixed-use development Welcome Milano in Milan, Italy (shown above).
M Moser & Associates, China - biophilic office design experts
M Moser & Associates is a global firm with over 1000 employees, they are workplace design specialists and maintain a number of ‘Living Labs’ where they experiment with new design solutions before introducing them into their projects for clients.
The team have a strong stance on sustainability, meaning they combine biophilic design in their architecture and interiors as a way to promote occupant wellbeing whilst also keeping one eye on reducing their impact in every way possible.
Recent projects of reference include Shui On WorkX, a biophilic office space in Shanghai, the Dyson Global HQ in Singapore, Nestle offices in Jakarta and the Diageo offices in Shanghai.
Nomadic Resorts, eco architects in South Africa, mauritius and Netherlands
Nomadic Resorts defy most conventions and definitions. They span across a range of disciplines, from masterplanning of entire nature-inspired resorts, to architectural design with biophilic influences, botanical landscape design and interiors.
Via offices in the Netherlands, South Africa and Mauritius they deliver projects with a sustainable edge, each inspired by their location, landscape and natural context.
Their expertise covers bamboo construction as well as treetop living, tented camps and avant-garde resort concepts that push the boundaries of how far sustainable resorts can push the concept of environmentally friendly hospitality. They are committed to sustainable development and fulfilling the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals.
By incorporating concepts such as low carbon engineering, regenerative landscaping and permaculture, they bridge the worlds of eco tourism, green building sustainable design. Their client list includes giants such as Six Senses Resorts and Spas; Soneva Group; Banyan Tree and &Beyond.
Stefano Boeri Architetti - designers of the bosco verticale vertical forest
Defining this architecture studio as the designers behind the Bosco Vertical vertical forest building in Milan, Italy is to put this multi-faceted team in a box that they outgrew many moons ago. In fact they are an international operation with offices in Milan, Shanghai and Tirana (Albania) from where they deliver research and practice in urbaism and architecture.
With over 20 years of experience, the infamous tower did at least help solidify their reputation as leading thinkers on urban sustainability and biodiversity, as well as social housing, urban development and regeneration projects.
Their multi-disciplinary approach engages with landscape architects, engineers, social scientists and agronomists showing that biophilic design can and should engage a wide variety of experts in order to succeed at scale in urban regeneration for example.
Present in the PRC since 2014 their office in Shanghai has delivered projects such as the renovation of the former Shanghai Stock Exchange and with the Nanjing Vertical Forest - the first Vertical Forest in China - current in construction.
Their Tirana office meanwhile is responsible for developing the General Local Plan and the strategic vision of the city, known as “Tirana 2030”.
Other assignments include the masterplan of Doha’s New Port and the development of the “triangle of Maspero”, a complex of towers and public facilities along the Nile waterfront, in downtown Cairo.
https://www.stefanoboeriarchitetti.net/
UNStudio - architects and urbanists big on sustainability
With offices in Amsterdam, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Frankfurt, Dubai and Melbourne totaling over 300 employees, UNStudio is now a full-service architecture and design powerhouse.
Founded in 1988 by Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos, they now deliver architecture, interior architecture, product design, urban development and infrastructural projects around the world.
UNStudio see themselves as having to anticipate the future, in particular in terms of sustainability and their environmental impact. They consider social and ecological sustainability upfront while aiming for what they call ‘attainable design’ - projects that are both financially and socially feasible. Their commitment to sustainable architecture is evident in their projects, which incorporate innovative design features and sustainable practices.
Major projects of note include the Erasmus Bridge, Arnhem Central Station, the Mercedes-Benz Museum, the Doha Metro Network, Raffles City Hangzhou and the Hanwha HQ Remodelling.