The Top Benefits of Being a WELL Accredited Professional: Is It Right for You?

Is a WELL accreditation 100% necessary to get ahead in the healthy building industry? Not necessarily but it definitely helps!

The WELL Building Standard is reshaping the built environment by focusing on human health and well-being. As interest in healthier spaces continues to grow, the role of professionals with expertise in this area becomes even more crucial.

But what exactly is the WELL AP credential, and how can it benefit your career in architecture, design, or real estate?

What is the WELL AP Credential?

The WELL AP credential signifies a professional's expertise in the WELL Building Standard and their commitment to advancing well-being through design.

By earning this certification, professionals demonstrate their knowledge in promoting environments that support physical and mental wellness, such as air quality, water quality, and optimal lighting.

To become a WELL AP, individuals must pass the WELL AP exam, a comprehensive test that covers various aspects of human health and the built environment.

For professionals in architecture, interior design, real estate, or construction, the WELL AP credential can be a valuable asset.

Benefits of WELL AP Certification

Becoming a WELL Accredited Professional offers several advantages that make it a worthy investment. Here are the top benefits:

Global Recognition:

The WELL AP certification is recognized worldwide, making it a valuable credential for professionals looking to work in the international arena.

Increased Career Opportunities:

With the WELL AP credential, professionals stand out in a competitive market. Employers in green building, real estate development, and wellness-focused industries actively seek out candidates who have this certification because it demonstrates a deep understanding of how to create spaces that prioritize health and well-being.

Competitive Advantage:

In a crowded job market, the WELL AP credential gives you a competitive edge. As the demand for healthier and sustainable environments increases, having this certification demonstrates your ability to meet these modern design challenges.

Commitment to Health and Sustainability:

Earning your WELL AP certification shows your dedication to sustainable design and human wellness. For professionals passionate about making a positive impact on people’s lives, this credential affirms your expertise and commitment to creating healthier environments.

The Importance of Human Health and Well-being in the Built Environment

The built environment directly influences wellbeing, whether it’s through air quality, lighting, water, or the materials used in construction. Poorly designed spaces can lead to a range of health issues, including respiratory problems, stress, and even poor mental health.

The WELL Building Standard seeks to address these concerns by setting guidelines that help create environments that support well-being.

From optimizing air filtration systems to ensuring adequate natural light, the WELL standard provides a framework to improve the quality of life for occupants. As a WELL AP, you'll be at the forefront of this movement, contributing to healthier buildings and communities.

Becoming a WELL AP Professional with the International Well Building Institute IWBI

If you're considering becoming a WELL Accredited Professional with the International Well Building Institute, here’s what you need to know about the process:

Eligibility and Exam Requirements

The first step in earning the WELL AP credential is passing the WELL AP exam. This 115-question multiple-choice exam is designed to test your knowledge of the WELL Building Standard and your ability to apply its principles in real-world projects.

The exam covers various topics, including air and water quality, light, thermal comfort, nutrition, and other key wellness elements in the built environment.

The test is administered by GBCI (Green Business Certification Inc.) and can be taken at Prometric testing centers worldwide. Yes, there are quite a few different entities involved here, including the International Well Building Institute but stick with us!

Certification Cost and Maintenance

The cost of becoming a WELL AP includes both the exam fee and any preparation materials or courses you choose to take.

Once certified, WELL APs must renew their credential every two years to stay current. This involves completing continuing education requirements to ensure your knowledge stays up-to-date with evolving standards and practices.

Career Opportunities and Market Demand

In today's job market, professionals with expertise in green building standard and the wellness certification process are in high demand. It's already a global movement, so passing the WELL AP exam can open up new opportunities across various sectors, including real estate, architecture, interior design, and corporate wellness consulting.

With businesses and developers increasingly focusing on creating healthier workspaces, residential communities, and hospitality environments, the demand for WELL APs continues to grow.

Whether you're working on office design, residential real estate developments, or hospitality projects, the WELL AP exam credential enhances your professional profile and boosts your career prospects.

Conclusion

While preparing for the exam and maintaining the credential requires an investment of time and resources, the benefits—ranging from enhanced career opportunities to improved earning potential—make it well worth the effort.

If you're passionate about designing healthier, more sustainable environments, the WELL certification credential denotes expertise like nothing else out there right now!

The role of sleep in healthy buildings & workplaces

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charlie morley / sleep / healthy sleep / healthy buildings / workplace wellness / cognitive performance

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Welcome to episode 46 of the Green & Healthy Places podcast in which we discuss the themes of wellbeing and sustainability in real estate. 

I’m your host, Matt Morley of Biofilico Healthy Buildings and in this episode I’m talking to none other than Charlie Morley, a bestselling author and teacher of mindfulness, lucid dreaming and all round sleep expert whose latest book deals with resolving trauma affected sleep through a set of practices called ‘Mindfulness of Dream & Sleep’.

Charlie, who is as you may have guessed my brother, was “authorised to teach” within the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism by Lama Yeshe Rinpoche in 2008. Since then he has written four books, delivered retreats in more than 20 countries, spoken at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities, as well as the Ministry of Defence Mindfulness Symposium and The Houses of Parliament. 

Our conversation explores the connections between my world of healthy buildings and interiors, and Charlie’s world of healthy sleep. We discuss sleep hygiene, the physiological impact of sleep on our bodies not to mention our brains, pre-industrial age sleeping habits vs todays, the power nap as a productivity tool, how to create restorative spaces or sleep pods in an office or educational environment that people will actually use, and the role of meditation and restorative deep relaxation practices in improving rest.  

https://www.charliemorley.com/ 

Charlie Morley instagram

Full transcript courtesy of Otter.ai

“Unless you are part of the ‘sleepless elite’, which is less than one percentile of the world’s population, who can do very well on five hours or less sleep, almost everybody in the world, needs seven to nine hours per 24 hour period - this is still the golden standard of sleep. ”

— charlie morley

Matt Morley

When thinking about sleep the building blocks of creating a healthy night's sleep in terms of how much we need, the risks of poor sleep hygiene and what you've described as the ‘sleep delusion’, how does one evaluate and measure a good night's sleep?

Charlie Morley

So the measure of sleep is inherently subjective. How do I feel upon awakening? What are my energy levels the next day? What is my cognitive ability the next day, so we can look at it like that.

They've done some interesting tests where people who are very high achievers are only getting kind of six, or five or six hours sleep, great social lives etc who say, this is all I need, I work perfectly well on six hours sleep, but then you put them into a brain scanner, or you give them cognitive ability tests. And although they say they feel optimal performance, their brain shows significant sub optimal neurological performance.

Now, that's one of the scariest pieces of research I came across, because it shows that even if you think you feel fine, in fact, a state of sleep deprivation has been so normalized by ourselves and by society that are natural, I feel fine state is actually one of suboptimal neurological functioning.

Sleep and cognitive performance in the workplace

So what's the next step, you force these people into position where they have to have one extra hour of sleep per day, it can be a nap during the day or an extra half an hour at night, but you get one extra hour per 24 hour period. Their cognitive performance went through the roof, the descriptions they have is like it feels like have access to a superpower. They're social lives, become more vibrant, their interpersonal relationships get better, or their performance at work gets better, just through one extra hour. So yes, it is subjective. But also there are very objective measures that show seven to nine hours for most people is 17 hours will allow us to function optimally. And crucially, just one extra hour per night can do massive, massive benefit to everyone.

Matt Morley

And how do you see then in terms of integrating an element of tech so that you're able to literally see the sleep quality over the course of the evening that otherwise we're over the course of the night that otherwise you might not? You might have a sense of how you slept, but you don't really no? Are you buying into this? Do you think there's there's real value in it, or were we being sold product and service that frankly, we've managed pretty well without all these years. And we're, in a sense trying to create a desire that, that we don't necessarily need to own these things.

Sleep trackers for health metrics

Charlie Morley

So at the moment, one of the higher end sleep trackers called the AURA ring, who sponsored a sleep science study that was part of even the aura ring, which is really the top end of the market is still only 60 to 70% accurate, which means is a crucial 30 to 40% of the time where it's just getting it wrong. And that's that worrying, let alone most people have a much cheaper version, the kind of, you know, the wrist based ones that hook up to your iPhone and stuff like that.

So if sleep trackers are benefiting your sleep, if they are making you feel more refreshed, if they are leading to more healthy relationships with sleep, then continue to use them. For a lot of people, they lead to a real neurosis around sleep. So take them with a big pinch of salt. I mean, in my new book, The first chapter is about becoming your own sleep tracker. So in the morning, taking most of how do I feel upon awakening? What are my energy levels throughout the day? Yes, what time do I go to bed?

What time do I wake up any dreams, I can remember, becoming your own sleep tracker to create a baseline is far better than that than the level of tech we've got at the moment. However, there is something on the market that we use when we do this sleep science studies called the Zed max or the Z max. Now that's about $600. And that's like a mini EEG machine. That's very, very accurate. So give the technology five years when we can get the technology of the XEmacs into an aura ring or into the to the app on your phone. And then sleep tracker data will be very, very accurate. But at the moment, we're just a little bit behind. So yeah, I wouldn't take don't take it too seriously.

Matt Morley

So if we then jump into establishing exactly what's going on during a night's sleep, you have what you've described as light, light sleep, the dream phase, and then deep sleep. So sort of the top line concepts for each of those three, and how is the sleep connecting with our health during the rest of the day? Like what are the processes going on? Sure. So there's

Charlie Morley

Actually two there's the gateway in and out either side to the hypnopompic and hit sorry hypnogogic hypnopompic. So stage one of sleep is called the hypnagogic state and is experienced by most people. Less is asleep stage proper, more a state of drowsiness. So you can still hear the sounds of the room, you can still feel your body in the bed. brain goes into deep alpha and theater, the brain looks almost indistinguishable to a brain that is in hypnosis.

So every time you fall asleep, the gateway into sleep, whether in a nap in the middle of the day or at night, you go through this natural state of hypnosis. And it's actually in that state that we can do a lot of really beneficial stuff for asleep because it's in the hypnagogic state that we can practice ns a nonslip, deep rest to us, humans term, or yoga nidra practices or my term hypnogogic mindfulness, which are the states of deep relaxation that happened just before we enter asleep.

So we have the hypnagogic state, really good for you, deeply relaxing, but a state in which people who have stressed out sleep will spend a lot of the night you know, you're kind of tired enough to be in that drowsy state, you can't quite pass the threshold. Eventually, though, with normalized sleep patterns, you'll move from hypnogogic into light sleep, light sleep is named for the quite untechnical reason that it's just quite easy to wake people from, you know, back in the early days asleep science, they would register the depth of sleep just by poking someone and saying their name.

So light sleep as it sounds, you're easy to be woken from it, you are now blacked out, you can't hear the sounds in the room. Unless they're loud enough, you can't feel your body in the bed. But you're yet to be dreaming. Light sleep is really good for procedural memory integration. So sleep is all about memory. That's why there's a direct link, as we know, with our with our mum, between sleep and Alzheimer's, and sleep and memory. So let's say you're learning to drive a car, it's light sleep, that you'll be processing the memory of how to do this, the stick in this and the the gears and all of that, and the pedal in the gas and everything that will be happening in light sleep procedural memory, whereas if you were in a car crash, that would be processing dreaming sleep.

So dreaming sleep is about processing emotional memory, memory reconsolidation, especially traumatic or stressful memories too. So we have the hypnagogic state stage one, then light sleep for procedural memory and learning, then we move into deep sleep. Deep Sleep is very, very interesting. This is where the brain is almost entirely switched off. So your brains never fully switched off. But if you look at the brainwaves of the waking state, they're very close together ticket ticket ticket ticket, if you look at the brain wave of someone in deep sleep, this will delta wave is dominant brainwave, and are very far apart.

I know people can't see me, but I'm making slow deep waves, signals with my hand. So in deep sleep, the brains almost entirely switched off, very unlikely to be dreaming very little happening in the brain. Apparently, but actually, if you look at the neuroscience of what's happening, loads is happening. Deep Sleep is when cerebral spinal fluid is flushed up into the brain. And it actually removes toxins from the brain a bit like imagine he had a fruit smoothie, and he drank all the fruit smoothie, but there's still kind of the remnants of the fruit smoothie in the bottle. And then if you put a bit of water in that bottle and shook it up, you could get all the remnants of the fruit smoothie out, right.

That's what's happening in deep sleep, the cerebral spinal fluid is flushing through the brain. And the blood capillaries go big, small, big, small, big small, which creates this kind of flushing motion. And that directly flushes out amyloid plaques, which are what cause Alzheimer's and many other forms of dementia.

So also a human growth hormone is released. So I know you're really into your fitness. If you have like a big workout during the day, like you're you're kind of working out you're lifting weights in the gym. Unless that night you get enough deep sleep, your muscles will not grow, there'll be massive reduction in muscle gains. And the same goes for losing weight.

So if you spent your whole day dieting, but then at night, you don't get enough deep sleep, you will lose weight based on the calorific deficit of not eating that much. But you won't actually make changes to your metabolism that leads to long term weight loss. So deep sleep so so important for memory for toxins flushed out for changing the body in any way we want.

We have that period of deep sleep, and then we'll move into dream. So dream actually comes at the end of the cycle, we think of dream as being a very active sleep state. And it is but by the time you get the dream, you've been knocked out for at least 6070 minutes. And if you put those together that makes up the 90 Minute sleep cycle, the cycle continues throughout the night. What changes is the amount of time you spend in each one until you get to the last two hours or you're almost in full dream for like two hours.

sleep for human performance

Matt Morley

Okay, so I think that's really given us the kind of foundations between these connections between sleep like what's happening at night and how are we performing? How are we feeling, how we cognitively how we functioning during the day so effectively that is the basis of sleep as a form of maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

Charlie Morley

“Yeah, there is no biological process that is not adversely affected by insufficient sleep - anything less than seven hours per 24 hour period, yet we don’t teach kids about this in school, we have a sense of almost pride that we can get by off of a lack of sleep. It’s crazy. ”

— charlie morley

Certain parts of America lost an hour because the daylight saving. So like 1.6 billion people do this every year different times, but based on your countries, but on that day where people lose one hour of sleep, the next day, American Studies have shown as a 22% increase in cardiac arrest the next day, just by robbing people of one hour asleep. That's 10s of 1000s more death, because of one hour lost sleep. There's also a massive increase in traffic accidents the next day, when you take one hour of sleep.

Conversely, when the clocks change, and you gain an extra hour of sleep, there's a 22% decrease in heart attacks the next day, and a 15% drop in traffic accidents. Now, when you roll that out in 26 countries around the world that have these daylight savings, that is millions of people live longer, or live shorter lives based on robbing or giving them one extra hour of sleep.

Sleep health in a historical perspective

Matt Morley

Yeah, that's powerful stuff. If if we can take a step back to a slightly sort of, let's say, a historical perspective, just to understand the connection between pre Industrial Age sleep cycles, modern sleep cycles, and the potential benefits in accepting and embracing the idea of a nap, a siesta, or sleeping again, after the amount, number of hours you managed to get during the night. So when do you draw the line between how things were before the Industrial Age? And how things are now? And is that necessarily have the optimal version of our sleep pattern?

Charlie Morley

Sure. So I'm sure many of your listeners have heard about this. heard this before. That before the Industrial Revolution, so about 200 250 years ago, most people in Western Europe slept very differently. They didn't sleep all in one, they would obviously this depends on seasonal fluctuations. And a lot of research was done in England, actually, especially the British Isles, where it can get dark as early as 4pm in the nighttime, in the wintertime, so people get asleep within about two hours of sundown.

So because candles are really expensive. They're made of whale oil, only the wealthiest people could have these candles and kerosene was difficult to come across, or whatever they use back then. So people get asleep within about two hours of sundown. So it could be 6pm 8pm. But like early, right asleep for about two, three hours. And then they would wake up again, like fully awake, pubs would reopen.

People would have these like tobacco circles, you kind of sit around and smoke, people would go into the field and milk their cows, they believe the quality of the milk. If you milk them at this time was better people would have sex they felt you're more fertile. That actually true. There is a fertility booster at that time. There are hundreds of these records is oh, there's even a 15th century prayer manual from Portugal, full of prayers especially to do in the second sleep. Sorry, between the first and the second sleep.

So you get this reference the first and second sleep. The way it actually came about was a crime researcher was looking at records in courts and other crimes were committed after the first sleep basically the middle of the night, you'd get your three hours sleep you got Rob someone's house and then go back to bed again. It was like perfect crime. Right. S

o this is how it first came into, into public awareness. Now is that the best way Oh, sorry. And then you would go back to sleep after two hours until sunrise. seasonal fluctuations. So you'll still be averaging about like 678 hours sleep but Krushi with a two hour gap in the middle. Fast forward to the modern day, the most common form of insomnia. In western societies, the most prevalent form is not sleep onset insomnia, which is where you just can't get to sleep. It's actually sleep maintenance insomnia.

Now, here's a description of sleep maintenance, insomnia, the ability of the subject to fall asleep upon first awakening. Within two to three hours, the subject awakens again, feeling fully awake and conscious for up to two hours. The subject is then able to fall asleep again till morning. That is flippin exactly the same description as the pre industrial sleep cycle.

So could it be that there are millions of misdiagnosed insomniacs, who aren't actually insomniacs, they are showing from an anthropological point of view a much more natural sleep cycle than the rest of us who are trying to blackout for eight hours. Does it mean that blackout of eight hours is not the way to do it and we should all be having that nighttime waking No, not at all, perhaps is a chronotype thing perhaps type thing. But it is important for people to know, if they do have that sleep pattern, you're probably not insomniac.

And actually just knowing that it's okay to be awake in the middle of the night moves us out of the fight or flight sympathetic response that keeps us awake and allows us to fall asleep. And secondly, there are a lot of people who have that sleep pattern, but they don't know that there's a second period of sleep waiting for them in the wings. So they don't stay awake for two hours, they just get up and Assad do there is another four hour sleep waiting for you.

But you have to allow yourself to slip back into it. Interestingly, the term insomnia was first produced in print as a, as a kind of a coined term in the New York Times in 1901. It was called the new fangled malaise of insomnia, within 30 to 40 years of us changing the way we sleep, we suddenly have this term insomnia cropping up. So very, very interesting. So no, I wouldn't say we should be sleeping like that. But if you are sleeping like that, it may not be such a bad idea. It may be just the way your body is, is working. And the main thing to know is there's nothing wrong with it. You know, nighttime wakefulness is not a pathology. For some people. It's just the way they're built.

Matt Morley

We introduced the idea of bi-phasal sleeping or perhaps sleeping for X number of hours during the night, and then catching up at another stage during the day. And interestingly, that's one of the connections between your work in healthy buildings / workplace wellness and you work, right. So when I'm looking at, say, healthy building concept of trying to create spaces within a building that are designed to foster wellness, and wellbeing for people spending eight to 12 hours of their days or nights, if it's a residential context, or if it's an office environment, then it's a place where they go to work and to be productive.

With the leading healthy building standard, that's called the WELL Standard, they have an entire concept around MIND. And one of the features there is the idea of restorative opportunities and, and nap policy.

So we're starting to see the way sort of trickle down effect from the top whereby the certification systems that are becoming increasingly common now in the world of real estate are encouraging and completely accepting the concept of a nap being a healthy part of a workday, it might sound confusing for some people, but it's out there.

But for sure, it's already happening. It's already coming. Now, once you have that policy as a as an employer, you then need to offer some kind of a space where that happens. So yeah, that might be an area where I'd say okay, well, I'm going to try and introduce some, some natural elements, biophilic design, I'm going to think about light, I'm going to think about the thermal qualities of the temperature in there and think about the acoustic isolation.

When you think about what I know you've turned sleep hygiene. And so the restorative environment in which one goes to sleep like what are your your key touch points there? Like what are the essential elements that we need to think about when we're creating an environment, whether it's at home, or in a potentially office space, where it's congenial to having a 20 or 30 minute nap during the day?

Restorative spaces in the WELL standard

Charlie Morley

First of all, before I answer that, I just like to say, that's so good to hear that that's part of, you know, you building regulation and part of what businesses are thinking about.

“Apart from any kind of philanthropic aim that the business might have, your employees will be 30% better at anything they do after 60 to 90 minute nap. That’s the science. That’s a fact. ”

— charlie morley

It's like if you want to make more money, give your employees a nap because they will make better deasl. They make better trades, they'll have better interpersonal relationships. It is very good for your employees. Yes. And also you will make more money. It seems crazy. They aren't implementing this. I did a thing at Deutsche Bank at Deloitte. I was telling them you will make more money if you do this, and hasn't been implemented. Not that I know. But really anyone listening?

The science is there. This isn't hippie dippie stuff, your employees will be better at whatever they do after a 60 to 90 minute nap. So rant over next bit. I would say when you people sleeping in public is a really vulnerable thing to do. So actually, your question is not so much about the bedroom at home, but actually sleeping in public, which is very different sleeping and public. I would save for Start, you need something that's lockable, if possible, something that's lockable.

So I know the are these great sleep pods in I believe it's Munich Airport, you can rent them for like an hour, a pop, and these little kind of micro pod beds, but they're lockable. And it's really important that that it's not just quiet and dark and all the sleep hygiene II stuff. But they're lockable. And a lot of the traumatized populations I work with, like veterans and people with C PTSD. simply placing a lock on your bedroom door can increase sleep quality by up to half an hour, an hour a night. Because there's something about humans, we need to no one's going to come in, we're in this deeply vulnerable state of rest.

So I would say they need to be not only private and a correct temperature for sleep, and yes, dark and quiet if you can, but also lockable. There was one rest port I went in, and there is a difference in arrest port and asleep port, where my legs were exposed, there was kind of a big bubble thing over most of my body in my head, but my legs were exposed, very difficult to fall asleep. And one of those, you know, my feet, people could brush by they could do something to them, I wasn't able to fully sleep.

So yes, it would be enclosed, it would be lockable, it would be private. Just to say that those rest pods, you know, there is a difference between NSDI non sleep deep rest and napping. Non sleep deep breath has loads of benefits, too. So even if you can't provide a full private, lockable, even just a space for rest and mindfulness like they have in the Google offices in London are really, really good.

Recharge rooms in tech offices

Matt Morley

Yeah, it is often the tech companies that are approaching the and saying, Well look, we want to create a space in a sense, in your terms, clearly that they will then actually be breathing a multifunctional space where there can be some of that depressed slash napping going on. It can also be a space where it's congenial to restorative practices, whatever that might be taking some time out of your day, perhaps to meditate perhaps to do your prayers, or just simply take some time by yourself.

And in fact, there's often the term the quiet room, or a restorative space where the idea is really just to take some time away from your key tasks to recharge, to go back. And then I think within that there's perhaps a subgroup too, which is the the nap pods or sleeping pod? The issue there with my sort of design head on is okay, you got to think about hygiene.

Now, post COVID, you got to think about ventilation. If it's lockable, and it's an enclosed space, then the best thing to have their own fans and and suddenly, you know, the prices do go up. But I think there's there's real value in that. So we've established you mentioned temperature just to dig into it. So thermal comfort typically is actually cooler than we think, isn't it in terms of the ideal sleeping temperature.

Thermal comfort during sleep

Charlie Morley

I can't remember the exact temperature ideal to seven temperature. First of all, they differ from men and women. I remember a brilliant chapter in a book called The The Descent of Man by Grayson Perry. And the title chapter was air conditioning is sexist. Now you see that the title chapter anyway, I'll come on straight to that chapter. He's absolutely right, the average the default setting of air conditioners across the world are set to the male preferred temperature at room temperature. And women need it about up to one to two degrees warmer. So actually, air conditioning is sexist.

So the first thing your points would need to be would you need to adjust it because women would want a slightly different to men. Basically, if you're in bed, and you can stick your foot out from the blankets or out of the duvet, and it's warm enough to keep it outside your rooms too hot. Your bedroom should be pretty cool, but not cold. But if you stick your foot out, it should feel cool. And your nose should be cool. You know this is cooler, the better many people with sleep problems, they just have the room too hot, it becomes the Princess and the Pea.

You know they pile up loads of blankets and and they get really really hot and you can't you know sleeps about thermo regulation. Remember the we used to we now know actually that human beings used to even hibernate for long periods of time where the deep sleep state would go for a massive percentage. And you could actually move into these almost hibernation states for days or weeks. And of course, what's hibernation about thermo regulation? So yeah, temperatures, pretty important.

Matt Morley

There is a there's a really interesting book was published recently by the Harvard Chan School for public health by Dr. Joseph Allen, in which he discusses exactly that point around the sexual or sort of the differences between the two sexes in terms of body temperature and therefore thermal comfort within a space and it seems that a lot of the regulations that were still in place or to have guidelines in the US and in fact, even in older buildings how the HVAC aircon systems have been programmed, referring to some data that was plucked from sort of 1980s office buildings were so slick as well. What was happening in 1980s, it was male dominated, they were probably wearing a suit.

And there's now just much more sexual, let's say equality. And therefore, as the man in the three piece suit or in a shirt, a tie, and a jacket is completely different to me sending in a normal summer dress. So some of the solutions around that seem to be around, ultimately creating almost sort of microclimates within or having clusters or microclimates where it's adjustable, if they're getting there with the HVAC and aircon systems, it's sort of within the next five to 10 years, it seems like that would be in a really smart building. So like sort of high performing building where they're able to adjust and allow each individual occupant to have some say over the temperature in their space, just by you know, the kind of airflow that's going on within that.

So yeah, another crossover between Your world and mine. Let's talk about mindfulness. Again, it is something that's part of the healthy building concept, the idea that a allowing time within the day and allowing a space within an office environment, for example, where meditation or mindfulness practice and perhaps breathwork, and can take place is positive, again for productivity, but also for worker well being. So how do you integrate mindfulness and meditation with sleep?

Because obviously, once once we're asleep? There's, in theory, for most of us, at least, there's no active meditation or mindfulness going on, right until you get to like next level, Tibetan Buddhist practice of dreaming. Yeah. But before that, yeah, how what's the connection between mindfulness and improve sleep quality, so that if someone's perhaps practicing or finding time during the day, they're also able to have a positive impact on the sleep at night, which is, I think your another gain, isn't it?

breath work and deep relaxation for rest and sleep

Charlie Morley

Yeah. So mindfulness has a whole wealth of benefits. As far as sleep goes, actually more than mindfulness, it's about regulation of the autonomic nervous system through the breath, and through deep relaxation. Those are the two things that you really find affecting sleep. And it's all based on this thing called parasympathetic drive.

So there's a system within the autonomic nervous system called parasympathetic drive, which is, think of it like a battery, which is charged up every time you do anything relaxing during the day, you charge up this parasympathetic drive battery. Now the reason most people tend to sleep slightly better on holiday than in their working day is unless you're screaming kids and stuff, on holidays, you're probably doing more relaxing things. So every time you do anything relaxing the day zap, you get a little charge to the parasympathetic drive. If you spend at least half an hour a day doing something really, really relaxing, that moves you into a deep parasympathetic emphasis, such as yoga nidra, slow, deep breathing, coherent breathing, other forms of non sleep deep breaths, you're spending 30 minutes charging up that parasympathetic drive.

Now what happens is then when you go to sleep at night, even if you charge it at 11 o'clock in the morning, or 10 o'clock in the morning, that battery will store the drive until you choose to go to sleep at night. So when you fall asleep at night, the brain kind of downloads that battery power from parasympathetic drive, allowing you to fall asleep quicker and stay asleep longer.

This means we need to completely reconfigure the way we view sleep. Sleep is not about oh, it's half an hour before bedtime quick put on some sleep hygiene tips like not looking at my phone, going wearing my fancy red sunglasses, all this kind of stuff. It's like That's too late dude. Like if you if you've got high levels of stress or trauma, but again, who hasn't got high levels of stress off last two and a half years we've been through as a global society. Sleep good sleep begins during the day.

How much time can you spend charging up that parasympathetic drive battery, and that's where periods of mindfulness but especially slow deep breathing, and NSDI, non sleep, deep breaths, kind of the hypnogogic, mindfulness practice, those really, really work to regulate the nervous system and help you sleep well at night. So that's the link mindfulness is good, because it can help create a habit of mind that sees not getting perfect sleep as more okay, but as mindfulness creates, fosters an attitude of okayness with myself and compassionate acceptance if it's taught in the right way. But the link between just standard mindfulness and sleep is quite tenuous. The link between non sleep deep rest and slow deep breathing and sleep is very, very direct, because it's based on this parasympathetic drive.

Sleep quality for productivity in the workplace

Matt Morley

So then you you see that there is effectively a short term benefit. That is, if you like he's reaping those benefits. Well, first of all, the person in question so the worker the occupant, and indirectly, the, the employer, that's more than that. So the people who are then that they're producing for once they go back into their work environment and are just sort of recharged and fresher and able to do more or get through the rest of the day without hitting X number of coffees.

But then that same building Brunt that same worker gets their own slightly more medium term benefits later on in the day, that's an entirely private matter once they end up trying to get to sleep that also suggests, you mentioned sort of the three hours, I think there's often, you know, there's practical considerations, of course, around when you work out an exercise, right. But when I see people exercising at 9pm, and the best hours of sleep seem to be between about sort of like 11 and 1am, right. There's just it's a crunch between the late workout, getting to bed and getting good quality night's sleep. So it's that would then suggest if, if at all possible exercise should happen lunchtime slash middle of the day.

Charlie Morley

It depends what the exercise is. So for it again, this is about the sympathetic and parasympathetic system. So for example, lifting heavy weights, like you're doing a big weight session actually can lead to such a parasympathetic hit off with this deep tiredness that comes out was it could be reasonably beneficial or at least neutral to do in the evening. However, as we both do a lot of martial arts like Thai boxing, kickboxing, something really fight or flight II like Krav Maga at 10pm, you want to go to bed at midnight? Yeah, you're going to be while you're going to be in that state.

So it's not so much the exercise, but the type of exercise the effect that has on your body, and you can feel it after your workout. Do you feel deeply relaxed? Do you feel that sense of calm? Or do you feel it's kind of jittery? You know, you've still got your pre workout shake in your system or something like that. So it's kind of subjective and personal. But generally, exercise is really good for sleep. But yeah, if you can do it within like three hours of your preferred bedtime, that's best. Sorry, I would do it not, not over three hours before your preferred bedtime. That's best.

Matt Morley

Cool. Plus, I think we can carry on for a while yet, but we're gonna wrap it up there. So if people want to follow along, see more of your work, or reach out with any questions or buy the books like where is that all happening online?

Charlie Morley

Yeah, my website, Charliemorley.com

I'm also on Instagram So check it out.

Biophilic design in the WELL Building Standard

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

The verdant rooftop courtyard of Montoya co-working and event venue, Barcelona, Spain, exemplifies a biophilic environment as outlined by certification standards like the WELL Building Standard. This approach addresses health and wellbeing issues in urban environments by integrating natural elements to improve overall quality of life.

What is the definition of biophilic design?

Biophilic design is about combining nature, sustainability, and well-being interiors by integrating the natural world 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. Biophilic design principles emphasize integrating natural elements into designs to enhance well-being, sustainability, and the human-nature connection.

Biophilic elements play a crucial role in enhancing well-being and sustainability by incorporating natural elements into architectural and interior designs.

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 patterns, colours, textures, materials, fabrics, and natural elements - 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 and sustainable design principles, 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.

To gain in-depth knowledge about integrating biophilic principles into WELL-certified projects, consider enrolling in a biophilic design course or an online course. These courses provide comprehensive guidance on incorporating nature into architectural and interior designs, focusing on residential spaces, workplace environments, and public spaces.

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. We also help clients implement biophilic design principles effectively in their projects. Consultants can benefit from biophilic design online resources to stay updated with the latest trends and practices.

Does the WELL standard favour biophilic design with natural elements?

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. The WELL standard encourages designers to incorporate biophilic design to enhance these benefits.

What credits can biophilic design principles 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 by integrating natural elements.

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!

To enquire about our services as biophilic design consultants for WELL certified projects, contact us here.

Wellness Architecture for Healthy Buildings

The ‘Green & Healthy Places’ podcast series takes a deep-dive into the role of sustainability, wellbeing and community in real estate, offices, hotels and educational facilities.

Pati Santos is the Founder of The Good Thing, a new architecture practice focused on health & wellness in London, UK. Pati worked with world renowned landscape architects Lily and Charles Jencks for many years where she developed an interest in environmental psychology and biophilic design, eventually certifying in the WELL Building Standard and setting up her own practice.

wellness architecture with the good thing

Pati Santos is the Founder of The Good Thing, a new architecture practice focused on health & wellness in London, UK.

biophilic design & the well building standard

Pati worked with world renowned landscape architects Lily and Charles Jencks for many years where she developed an interest in environmental psychology and biophilic design, eventually certifying in the WELL Building Standard and setting up her own practice.

green buildings / healthy buildings

We discuss the distinction between design components and operational policies within the WELL system; the role of natural and toxin-free materials in creating green and healthy buildings, the potential of timber in constructing urban buildings, the connection between sustainability and wellness within a client's brief, the benefits of circadian lighting systems, the new WELL Health & Safety Seal as a response from commercial real estate to the Covid crisis and the shift toward healthier, greener homes equipped for both work and exercise.

to discuss collaborating with Biofilico on your next wellness interiors or biophilic design project, potentially with Pati as well (!) please contact us here