what are Biophilia and Biophilic Design?

definitions of biophilia and biophilic design for hotels aand residences

The Wardian biophilic design residences in London’s Canary Wharf, a development by EcoWorld Ballymore

Biophilic design concept - the key principles

There is a tendency to over-simplify biophilia as meaning plants or greenery in general and therefore biophilic design as simply bringing plants into an interior space, effectively as decorative objects.

There is a grain of truth in that but I’d classify biophilic design a little more precisely as a way to bring the outside world in to re-establish our connection to nature even when enclosed in a built environment.

The biophilia hypothesis

That concept of a connection to nature starts to outline the logic behind biophilic design, essentially the biophilia hypothesis that states we are inherently connected to mother nature, the elements, animals and the plant kingdom due to our shared evolutionary history.

Lest it needs reiterating, Homo Sapiens has really only had a bit part role in nature’s billions of years of history, we have to keep that in perspective as the world does not, despite appearances, actually revolve around us.

We do not have any ownership rights over the planet, quite the opposite in fact. We may currently be the dominant species but this, like everything from a meta historical perspective, is likely to be temporal. Our time will come, eventually.

Once we have established that nature ultimately runs the show, the biophilia hypothesis can be seen from an entirely different perspective. The further we disconnect ourselves from the natural world the greater the risk for our health and the future as a species. On this basis, a couple of plants on your desk at work is not the solution.

health benefits of biophilia

When I talk about the health benefits of biophilic design I typically divide the answer into mental and physical wellbeing.

how can hotels use biophilic design?

There are some interesting studies that address the potential role of biophilic design in hotels such as the one done by Bill Browning entitled Human Spaces 2.0 - Biophilic Design in Hospitality. That is very much a reference point.

In that study Terrapinn Bright Green did a fine job of putting some hard data to biophilia’s claims of adding value to the guest experience, driving room rates higher and increasing ‘linger time’ in hotel lobbies, all tangible deliverables in terms of a design strategy.

The biophilic design Sky Lounge at The Wardian residences in London UK, a development by EcoWorld Ballymore

biophilic design in real estate

That research team took some of what we know from the world of biophilic design in residential real estate development around how access to nature increases property values, whether it be proximity or views of green nature (parks, gardens) or blue nature (ponds, lakes and seas).

Dwell time in a lobby increases when there are views of nature (direct biophilia) but also when there are representations of nature such as landscape murals, dense indoor landscaping and so on (indirect biophilia).

A prime example of this is the lobby area of The Wardian Residences in London’s Canary Wharf, a veritable bonanza of biophilic design for a luxury residential target market. Yes there are many plants in the mix but this development also uses natural stone such as marble to great effect, as well as nature motifs on carpets, wallpapers and murals.

Does biophilic design help heal hospital patients quicker?

This is the research study that so many people refer to, delivered by Roger Ulrich. did patients recover quicker when they had a view of nature than when they were looking out onto a brick wall from their hospital bed? YEs.

I think there are so many different variables within that, perhaps it is worth taking it with a pinch of salt and corroborating it with other studies that draw similar conclusions. No t to discount the work of Ulrich, far from it but we need more such data to build up a truly bullet-proof case for biophilia’s impact on healing and recovery times.

Direct biophilia vs indirect biophilia

It is also important to define the difference between direct and indirect forms of biophilia - direct forms of biophilia would be a view out onto a park, or in this case, a living green wall.

Indirect biophilia can be a representation of natural forms through patterns, textures, colour, images and so on, often with nearly as much impact on our mental wellbeing as direct forms of nature in fact, which opens the door to a far wider range of biophilic design solutions for an interior space.

Biophilia and community

A vertical garden wall that produces edible salad leaves can have a far larger role to play than merely decorating a hotel or office building’s lobby. because you're effectively creating a design feature with community benefits as the leaves can be contributed to a local charity for example, or used in the hotel kitchen for guests as a 0km herb garden.

It can also be a way to build local community ties for a corporation by inviting kids in to learn about the vertical farming process, whilst still all the time delivering a great biophilic feature. This type of solution with multiple benefits has a very bright future ahead in our opinion as it gives biophilia a wider purpose than pure aesthetics.

Restorative nature

Garden walls can be a great way to create a calming, restorative space, be it in a health clinic, hotel lobby or workspace. It's been shown to help with concentration levels as well. . The study that I did in London showed that it helped with reducing anxiety and creative brainstorming sessions, people just felt me it was a conducive environment to that sort of work.

biophilia and indoor air quality

Living plants have another purpose, for example, helping in some small way in terms of indoor air quality, improving the quality of the indoor air that we're all breathing.

Usually here we refer to the famous NASA study where they tested 10 different species and worked out that a number of them were able to take out the bad stuff, take out the co2 and pump oxygen back into the air, even in a spaceship. So if you focus on those, you’ll need lots of them to have a really tangible impact but again if you're dealing with scale, then the solution is to go big on your biophilia for maximum health benefits, no better way to do that than with a vertical garden wall!

In addition to ventilation filters, this can really make a difference, as do natural fibres and fabrics in an interior space that do not contain VOCs for further improvements to the indoor air. See more on that here.

The 1 Hotels example of sustainable luxury

The 1 Hotels brand has redefined the sustainable luxury hotel segment from our perspective. They really went big on sustainability by integrating biophilia and biophilic design into the DNA of their hotel concept from day one, combined with a health and wellness angle. This gave them a People and Planet approach that aligns perfectly with our value system, it’s more than skin deep too, this goes all the way through their operations policies to help shape the guest experience form the ground up.

biophilia and sustainability

If we go back to where we started, with biophilia being a love of and innate connection to nature, it follows that if we do not respect nature in our work as biophilic designers, real estate developers or hoteliers, we are effectively shooting ourselves in the foot. If you’re not doing things in a sustainable way, using sustainable design and construction practices for example, then anything you do that has a negative impact on nature is to avoided at all costs, otherwise we are merely greenwashing.

biophilic design and moss walls

In spaces that have no natural light, how do we work with biophilic design? Can we ever use plants in this context? Often, the solution here lies with preserved moss, possibly combined with a wall panel such as cork bark. We can also use patterns and textures that reflect nature here, organic fabrics, wabi sabi finishes, anything that fits into an organic design approach that does not require natural light. By layering detail upon detail in this way, we can create great results even in a lower ground space, when needed, proving that biophilic design comes in many different guises!

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An introduction to biophilic design and wellbeing interior concepts

What is a green building vs a healthy building?

The real estate industry has increasingly shifted away from thinking exclusively about 'green buildings' and 'sustainable real estate' in what has been a quiet revolution over the last 10-15 years towards building occupant wellbeing and human health, extending the concept further to give a mix of Planet (green buildings) and People (healthy buildings).

What role do smart buildings play?

Aligned with that, we are increasingly looking at smart buildings too, so 'healthy, green and smart' are becoming the holy trinity of high performance real estate today in other words.

Thinking about a workplace, home, building, or an entire community that is healthy, green and smart means we have three possible levers to play with. Let's leave the smart slightly to the side for now.

Biophilic design in wellbeing interiors

When we're thinking about wellbeing interiors, there's been this massive shift towards appreciation for integrating nature into an indoor environment, a concept now typically referred to as biophilia, which is really just our innate connection to to the natural world and how increasingly urban environments, come with their own risks because we end up disconnected from where we came from.

Biophilic design brings the outside world back in. I started doing gyms and then branched out into coworking spaces, business clubs, offices and now entire buildings. The focus there is combining elements of both eco-friendly and sustainable interiors that are conscious of how an indoor environment’s materials, fabrics, plant count and so on can also affect occupant wellbeing.

What's fascinating is that the natural and organic are inherently healthy, just think about diet for example. So natural positioning for a brand or office interior in a Silicon Valley tech company is a fundamental piece of their workplace wellness and employee engagement strategies. Not not just doing less harm to the environment but actually giving something back to your people, to your employees who are spending their days there.

What are the benefits of biophilic design in the workplace?

Besides making just about any interior space more pleasant and uplifting, biophilic interior designers can make a workspace more productive for workers, helping with concentration with views onto nature, be it direct or indirect, living or a representation of nature in other words. Both work, as it turns out!

Biophilic spaces also foster feelings of vitality and by being connected to nature during the work day the research shows it promotes overall positivity. We also look for data, tangible results that highlight the impact of such biophilic design interventions, it’s not enough to rely o aesthetic improvements alone, we’re after functional health improvements here.

What data or science is there behind biophilic design’s benefits?

That's where the tech piece loops back in, increasingly all of this needs to be data driven and/or scientifically backed, delivering functional health benefits. One area of particular interest is indoor air quality, previously this was wrapped up in the wide-ranging healthy building certifications such as WELL Standard and Fitwel. Now though, we’ve seen dedicated air quality standards coming onto the market such as RESET AIR. This is a real sign of the times and holds the key to more widely available data around indoor air quality.

When you're dealing with a workplace, we don't have a standardized system of rankings for how healthy a space it is. The green building movement did make some progress in that sense, with certifications like LEED and BREEAM and various others all around the world starting the process off.

how do smart building certifications fit into this?

More recently we've had smart certification systems come into the market; I tend to use WIRED Score. They go in and make sure that everything within that building or workplace is future-proofed so that you can effectively integrate tech into your facilities management system, opening the door not just to high connectivity but also energy efficiencies, invaluable building usage data, and so on.

Air quality monitors produce data every hour that can be analyzed online and set-up to send alarm notifications whenever there is a change in air quality in a particular space, for example if something doesn’t look right in a particular meeting room because it has been full of workers for four hours straight and the ventilation system has started to play up. Technology gives us a real time view of the health credentials of a space, no matter its function.

Yes, there is a modest cost to all of this but once you're set up I think you then get into discussions around providing support for your occupants, guests or customers. You’ve made health a priority. Another tangible output is often productivity rates and less low-level anxiety.

Work doesn’t need to be about putting hours in at your desk in a specific corner of the office, it's about how much can you produce and what type of space(s) do you need to do your best work, adding value to the company’s bottom line in the process?

Does biophilic design have its own wellness building standard?

Biophilic design is a part of building standards such as LEED or BREEAM for example, there are components within them that give credits or recognition for integrating elements of biophilic design so rather than being a separate standard it appears as a feature, or a design strategy that we use to not just tick boxes on a standard’s check list but to deliver tangible aesthetic enhancements to an interiors space.

So in a sense, biophilia sits between the two worlds of green and healthy buildings, with wellbeing interior design on one side and sustainable design on the other. In other words, if I create a biophilic office or biophilic gym for example for a project pursuing LEED or WELL, it would secure points for both standards.

what about wellness lighting?

There has been real revolution in lighting systems over the last few years, and so there's a few different ways of looking at it one would be to say, okay, how can we, first of all, reduce energy expenditure with the lighting? That’s the easy part, we've been doing that for a little while now.

Then it becomes, ‘how can we enhance wellbeing through our lighting choices?’ That’s where smart lighting systems, exposure to natural daylight, even color therapy come in. It’s all about the spectrum of light we use, that affects our energy levels basically.

From a biophilic design perspective, I take inspiration from ancestral health practices, with a brighter blue-white light in the mornings and into the middle of the day, then softer, more amber hues or yellow and orange with no blue at all after dark. That means no TV and no bright halogen overhead lights please otherwise it disrupts sleeping patterns, that then results in decreased energy levels the next day, and we all know what feels like.

We see hotels engaging with that concept but workplaces are only really just catching on. How many of us have spent entire days in offices with intense blue-white halogen lights above us from nine o'clock in the morning until nine o'clock at night, then you go home and guess what, it's hard to switch off despite being tired!

If it’s dark at 5pm in winter, consider a task lamp on your desk combined with a softer uplighter on a wall or a standing lamp with a dimmer option. We want energy levels not to drop but we also need to protect the quality of our sleep once the work is done. It’s not that complicated really once you work it out.

how do you apply your knowledge to residential projects now?

I'm often dealing in quite large-scale projects, so it might be an eight-story mixed-use real estate development in London, an entire hotel or various fitness rooms and gyms in a health centre. When I have scale, I'm part of a team working alongside engineers, architects even interior design studios. Over the last year though I've been at home and so my challenge has been to take some of this big picture thinking and apply it to my own little world of a home office environment with wellbeing interiors and biophilic design principles.

I've created a home gym space as well as a home office in fact, applying the knowledge gained from commercial or hospitality projects and converting them into a residential context. What happens when you apply those ideas to your home environment where you now spend a lot more time than you did before?!

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Wellbeing Interiors Q&A with Matt Morley

Matt Morley in a rare seated moment at the MONTOYA creative co-working space in Barcelona, Spain

What was your career path into wellbeing interiors and healthy building consultancy?

I spent almost 10 years working for a real estate developer, so from a head of marketing role I eventually moved over into a Real Estate Creative Director role in-house for a development called Porto Montenegro. We built an entire town on the Adriatic coast, basically. I

I’d be called in to work with an architect, financial analyst and the operations department to design and launch new business concepts such as co-working offices, outdoor gyms, business clubs, retail stores, beach clubs and so on.

‘Give me a space and a budget and I'll create the concept for you!’

How did you end up combining nature, health and real estate interiors?

That was where I learned my trade, in a sense, but in parallel with that I was developing this interest in natural fitness, connecting with the outdoors both during exercise and through interior design.

The difference between how I felt when I was exercising in nature vs an uninspiring indoor gym became ever more clear. The same goes for office environments, so I started bringing in plants, using a standing desk and using various healthy design strategies to improve the spaces I spent most time in

Your way in to biophilic design was a combination of real estate knowledge, interior fit-out experience and a passion for nature, in other words?

Yes, although I wasn’t using the terms ‘biophilic design’, healthy buildings or wellbeing interiors back then, it was far more instinctual. In retrospect, that’s what made it all feel so urgent, my energy levels were so directly affected by the spaces I spent time in. I just didn't feel healthy in certain homes, offices or gyms. What could I do to change it?

I started hacking away at the subject, gradually realising that there was a whole school of thought largely led by the US around how to actually do wellness real estate and wellbeing interiors in a more structured way, as evidenced by the WELL Building Standard for example.

How did that lead to you setting up a health & fitness consultancy for hotel groups?

I set up my first company, Biofit, specializing in creating green and healthy gyms and wellness spaces. I now advise hotel groups and corporates around Europe on creating innovative fitness facilities and wellness activity programs for guests.

That was followed in 2019 with my second company, Biofilico, with a much broader scope, really going back to where I was before, creating a range of interior concepts but with an eco and wellness twist.

We also offer healthy building certifications and expert advisory to project teams on larger development projects or corporate offices.

What about this relatively new term of ‘Wellbeing Champion’, what does that involve?

More recently I’ve started playing the role of a Wellbeing Champion on bigger projects alongside developers, architects and HR teams, representing the voice of occupant health in other words and promoting strategies that can positively impact the wellness benefits of a building or interior.

What career path do you recommend for those who want to work in wellness interiors?

I had my own very particular way in to wellbeing interiors, there are others who have done very well having migrated across from a building engineering background, a sustainability consultant background and of course architects. All of them have a passion for working with nature though,

My particular angle on wellbeing interiors is through environmental design and the lived occupant experience combined with a strong real estate and corporate sustainability strategy perspective, that’s my magic sauce if you like!

What different responses are you seeing in the world of workplace wellbeing now post-COVID?

It’s quite hard to generalize at a country or regional level, possibly even at an industry level. I tend to think more in terms of brand culture and how a particular brand or organization applies their culture or mission and values to their response.

What I am seeing is more creative businesses such as fast moving tech startups and generally more youthful dynamic company cultures, and especially those linked to health and wellness, have all been early adopters of new more flexible approaches to working from home and flexible hours in general, where it’s about results rather than hours clocked up in front of a screen.

Contrast that with more traditional businesses that are pushing for return to the office no matter what.

From my perspective, there have to be some concessions at a building level. A structured approach I recommend goes beyond tactical, knee-jerk reactions such as ‘do we need plexiglass screens in between desks now’ or do we need more cubicles.

What about ESG in real estate? Is that relevant here?

Right, so the savvier companies are adopting an ESG strategy approach: Environmental, Social and Governance. Investors, pension funds and the like are all looking for ESG credentials in the businesses they back, creating pressure from above.

Then from below, HR teams are saying they want a healthier work environment for staff now. Bring those two together post COVID and suddenly we’re talking about indoor air quality in C-suite boardrooms in a way that wasn’t imaginable just two years ago.

Now everybody wants to know about indoor air quality and how an office environment can connect to a corporate ESG or CSR strategy.

It's been a really difficult year on so many levels and yet there does seem to be this amazing opportunity to slingshot off the back of all of this to a healthier built environment in the near future.

ESG reporting has just gone right to the top of the agenda and so if there is a silver lining to all this, for me it's that there are so many opportunities now to if not reinvent but certainly upgrade the the workplace environment in particular but also our homes and gyms, health centres even retirement homes.

How do you help workplaces evaluate or measure wellbeing interior interventions?

It’s typically a combination of qualitative and quantitative data, something like indoor air quality, for example, is very much quantitative, so installing air quality monitors around the workplace.

You can do a deep dive analysis of what's going on today, make a number of changes, effectively applying various biophilic design principles oriented towards improving the purity of the indoor air that we're breathing, things like changing the ventilation fan filters, removing any nasty materials and fabrics or upgrading certain pieces of furniture and replacing them with more natural alternatives.

Is it all about interiors and furniture or do building management policies have a role to play?

It’s definitely worth thinking about things like an eco-cleaning product policy and green procurement strategies so that going forward, anything that's coming in or bought for the workplace has been approved and signed off in terms of being chemical free and not off gassing nasty stuff into the indoor environment.

From there, you set up your indoor monitors and off you go, you've got data being produced on an hourly basis with a monitor on each floor and each key work zone that then gets analyzed in the cloud and you're set up for life.

How can an employee workplace survey help with wellbeing design?

Employee satisfaction within the workplace, done anonymously, can help us in identifying some of the softer stuff such as noise pollution, thermal comfort, bad odours, and so on all of which ca affect concentration levels negatively and therefore they damage the business in terms of productivity.

Open-plan offices are certainly not dead but clearly there are different types of work going on in the workplace that require different environments, such as solo deep work where you need to really zone in and focus, or more collaborative meetings that are all about engaging with others and bouncing ideas around creatively.

What type of a space does that require and how can biophilic design foster or promote the right outcomes?

You have also created a number of office recharge rooms in the past, what is the concept there?

In a sense this also answers the question around performance metrics for wellbeing interiors in the workplace. I did a project in London’s Canary Wharf to create a biophilic workspace or creative meeting room right by the water called The Wardian Case - Vitamin Nature space.

It was full of plants and we did a scientific research questionnaire with the University of Essex, and it was all about productivity, concentration levels, stress levels and a feeling of vitality.

Everybody spent at least an hour in the space, and we found across the board, positive responses on productivity, stress levels and concentration.

Office recharge rooms that use biophilic design are a really interesting way to convert a small space or unused office space into somewhere that can help with mental wellbeing during the work day, especially for creative workers.

Post COVID there's a real need for a focus on mental health in the workplace, making Biophilia a real trump card to play because connecting with nature has this amazing calming influence. It's instinctual!

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Is Biophilic Design about Sustainability or Wellbeing?

Can Ikigai home office by Biofilico wellbeing interiors

What is biophilic design?

The concept biophilic design can be a confusing name but actually it's very simple. In fact I'd argue there's perhaps nothing simpler because it's effectively our innate connection to the natural world.

So 'biophilia' = love of or connection to nature. If nature has been our partner in evolutionary history over the last, wherever you want to start from 200,000 years or a billion years, depending on how you look at it, we should just pause there for a second.

We're now in 2021, industrialization began a couple of hundred years ago, that marked a profound change on our evolutionary path that has meant we're increasingly disconnected from our partner in evolutionary history, Mother Nature. It's hard to underestimate the impact of this diversion in our respective paths.

My argument is that the further we move away from the natural path the more at risk we put both our own physical and mental wellbeing and also it turns out, that of our host planet as well.

What role do green buildings / healthy buildings have in biophilic design?

This is where biophilic design connects with sustainability and environmentally-friendly thinking.

If we accept the premise that we're endangering our relationship with the planet, biophilic design is a way to rectify in some small way, that disconnect between our living environments that previously were just natural spaces, and the reality of living, working and playing in a dense urban environment.

Our home or office may well be in a high-rise, city centre building, yet how can we still maintain that connection to nature, that has been proven to be so fundamental to our mental and physical wellbeing?

Biophilic design in a workplace for example, is not just about sustainability, a green building strategy to give something back to the planet; by bringing the outside world in biophilic interiors are also about wellbeing design for the office. Healthy buildings are all about making our real estate as positive as possible for our own health.

Healthy interior design and nature

Our work and home environments can and should be healthy places to spend 8-12 hours a day, it's that simple, anything less simply isn't good enough any more.

The closer you can get to a natural indoor environment, be it in a workplace or residential context, the healthier that space is going to be for you mentally and physically.

Think of biophilic design as as a hybrid solution that combines elements of healthy building or wellness interior principles, with green building concepts.

Whereas we've had 25 years of green buildings and sustainable real estate development, over the last 10 years there's been a shift towards wellness real estate and workplace wellness design that connects to the environment. It's a subtle but important shift in perspective.

Biophilia is interesting, indeed biophilic design is interesting because as an expert consultant I straddle those two worlds. You often get people who are specialists in green buildings or healthy buildings, my approach combines elements of the two.

Organic design in biophilia

The first key concept then is 'organic design', finding ways to integrate natural elements back into our offices and homes. That can be real life nature but it can also be representations of nature, artworks, sculptures, natural materials or other ways to give you a visual connection that isn't actually a living photosynthesising plant!

Wellbeing interiors in biophilia

Secondly, it's about using nature to create wellbeing interiors for offices and homes, which involves for example, focusing on ways to bring the indoor air quality in line with what one would find in a forest, beach or mountain setting - as pure as it can get in other words. Definitely not what it's like in downtown London, LA or Shanghai on a busy. Monday morning.

A Wellbeing Champion for healthy materials

As a Wellbeing Champion on a project, we also consider the selection of sustainably sourced natural materials as a central part of wellbeing interiors and biophilic design.Healthy materials like these don't off-gas or contain any nasty chemicals, that in turn will damage the air quality and pose a low-level health risk for building occupants. Typically the more natural and organic matter a fabric or material contains, the cleaner and healthier it will be.

Movement and fitness in biophilic design

We were born to move, that's part of our evolutionary history so how can biophilic design prompt small amounts of almost unconscious movement into our workspaces into our daily life?

Whilst we are in the office there's some clever things we can do there that don’t necessarily involve designing a gym, ‘active design’ involves strategies to help prompt people to be just that little bit more active in their workspace. For example standing desks, walking meetings, engaging stairwell design to create a viable alternative to the lift, a mix of work areas that might even include a room for stretching and yoga or meditation, if not a few weights and a barbell!

Nourishment in biophilic design in the office

This can be as simple as using displays of fresh fruit and vegetables as prompts, as a way to encourage people to think, eat, drink, healthy. Consider how to encourage water consumption, low-sugar fresh fruit juices and eve vegetable juices as a way to maintain energy levels throughout the day rather than reaching for a chocolate bar or Diet Coke.

Wellness lighting in a healthy office design

A lighting system it can be a smart system that is in tune with our circadian rhythms which is basically our 24 hour cycle. So, for example things like in winter after dark, it’s best not to use glaring white, blue or gree lights ss you might find in say a hospital emergency room.

Instead we’re trying to find ways to smooth that path to complete rest with softer more amber tones to improve your sleep quality at night, and certainly not disrupt your sleep while still giving you enough light to be energized and deliver on your work i the latter half of the day, or if working late i the office.

So just really taking inspiration from the natural world, and finding ways to integrate that into the workplace experience.

What is the role of a biophilic design in real estate?

Biofilico creates environments that are promote productivity while reducing low levels of stress and anxiety during the work day, primarily that's done through the workplace environment interventions described above but what I'm seeing is, if you take a slightly more health oriented approach it can also be applied to other sectors.

At the moment we’re looking at later life residential concepts for example, so almost like upscale retirement homes where actually it's all about health and living well. Private health clinics, I'm looking at now, as well, and definitely residential, where I'm able to apply the same principles are the same. We all want to live well, feel good and be healthy, right?

So where do we spend most of our time? In our residences, workplaces and for some of us more than others, quite a bit of time in the gym as well! Those are my three sectors of interest.

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FURTHER READING:

World GBC Health & Wellbeing Framework for green & healthy buildings

Biophilia in healthy buildings

The role of biophilic design in healthy interiors

The real estate industry has increasingly shifted away from thinking exclusively about 'green buildings' and 'sustainable real estate', this has been a quiet revolution over the last 10-15 years towards building occupant wellbeing and human health as well, not replacing but rather extending the concept further. This then gives you a mix of Planet (green buildings) and People (healthy buildings).

Healthy, green and smart buildings

Aligned with that, we are increasingly looking at smart buildings too, so 'healthy, green and smart' are becoming the holy trinity of high performance real estate today in other words. Thinking about a workplace or a home or a building, or an entire community that is healthy, green and smart.

Benefits of Biophilia in real estate

For me at least, within that space of sustainability and wellbeing in buildings and interiors, there's been this massive shift towards integrating nature into an indoor environment, typically referred to as biophilia, which is really just our innate connection to to the natural world and how increasingly urban environments, come with their own risks because we end up disconnected from nature, so biophilia or biophilic design brings the outside world back into our urban, indoor environments.

Biofilico started doing gyms and then branched out into co working spaces and business clubs and offices and now entire buildings, but really the focus there is combining elements of the eco friendly and sustainable, a consciousness about the impact we’re having on the planet, from the materials to the types of fabrics that we're bringing in, and how many plants are in there, and so on.

Nature = healthy interiors

What’s fascinating is that the natural is often the healthy too, so if you think about diet for example, the more natural and organic your ingredients the better the nutritional value. The same concept can be applied, in an abstract way, to our office and home environments.

You're seeing all of these Silicon Valley startups going big on biophilic design in their workplace wellness and employee engagement strategies for that same reason.

A lot of it's about giving something back to staff, not just doing less harm to the environment but actually giving something back to the people, to your employees who are spending time in the workplace every day by making it generally more pleasant and by implication a more productive for them to work in.

This approach helps with concentration levels too, it's been shown that if you can reconnect a little with nature during your work day rather than sitting in a white box all day long, then it actually helps to restore energy levels, it gives feelings of vitality.

Biophilic design research - health benefits

There's a lot of research out there around the positivity that a biophilic interior in your home or office can engender and so now we're seeing this happy balance in interiors today.

We’re looking for the science and the data to back all this up. That's where tech comes back into the discussion as we need to deliver functional benefits, so not just form and aesthetics but functional mental and physical health benefits.

Like any good interior design it all needs to look good whilst having minimal impact on the environment, plus we are aiming for tangible improvements in emotional and physical wellbeing for the occupiers of the space in question, be it an office, a home or even a gym.

Well building certifications

In the same way that you have your star ratings for hotels, when you're dealing with a workplace, there hasn't really been any standardized system in terms of ensuring that there is adequate consideration taken for workplace wellbeing, or generally creating a healthy environment for workers.

The green building movement did that to an extent, via certifications like LEED and BREEAM and various others all around the world. Then came the wellness certification rating systems such as WELL, FITWEL and RESET. More recently we've seen the emergence of smart building certifications, the one I use is WIRED SCORE.

They really go in and just make sure that everything within that building or workplaces is set up so that it is future proofed so that can you can effectively integrate tech into your facilities management system, a lot of it then goes into the FM facilities management, and you're then looking for efficiencies in terms of how a building is operated so that you're reducing energy expenditure at lower times of usage, when there's less occupancy in a space, whether it's an office or hotel or, or an entire building and creating a more touchless environment so that most things can be done and delivered via an app or via technology instead of old school manual options.

What is indoor air quality in the context of a healthy building?

Indoor air quality data comes down to your air quality monitors, Biofilico is certified in RESET AIR - a protocol for installing certain types of high-grade monitors in certain locations around a building or interior space, ensuring the data is delivered to the RESET cloud for ongoing analysis, you then have a lot of alarms that go off if anything looks unusual, you can overlay that data with occupancy data and start to see if there's something happening in this meeting room because they've been in there for four hours without a window open and there’s a problem with the ventilation, for example.

Wellness tech is now allowing us a real time view of the healthy credentials of a space. Yes it requires a modest investment upfront on behalf of the building owner or the tenant, but really once you're set up you provide support for your guests, customers, occupants or residents, giving them reassurance that you're taking their health to heart and that it's a priority.

When you look at the costs of staffing and rent, a minor increase in healthy interior enhancements can really make a tangible difference, especially to productivity rates. People are breathing fresher air, they're more likely to be do quality creative work. It's no longer about putting hours in at your desk in a specific, dedicated corner of the office, it's about how much can you produce and what quality work can you produce around the building, , moving between areas as needed to adapt to the type of work you are doing at any one time during the work day.

Biophilic design in building certification standards

Biophilic design is less an alternative than an integral component of the green building and healthy building movements. So if you're looking at LEED or BREEAM, there are components within them both that give credit or recognition for integrating elements of biophilic design, such as landscaping, gardens, views of nature, plant walls, and so on.

Biophilic design is a strategy that we use to not just tick boxes but to deliver value and enhancements to a space and what's interesting about it that is straddles both worlds, the green and the healthy, wellbeing design and sustainable design. So that same strategy can be applied to both of those two different types of certification standards and you gain credits for both.

Lighting strategies in healthy buildings

There's been some real revolution in lighting systems over the last few years. How can we, first of all, reduce energy expenditure with the lighting? That's the easy part, we've been doing that for a little while, then you say okay how can we enhance wellbeing through smart lighting systems and really you get into color therapy, there, playing with the light spectrums on offer at different times of day to connect with our innate circadian rhythm.

So thinking about, say, a brighter blue white light. In the mornings, which is when the sun is high as we're getting up to the middle of the day and then towards the end of the day, a softer, more Amber yellow or orange hue, and removing all the blue white lights later at the end of the day so we're not disrupting sleep patterns.

How many of us have spent days in offices with these intense blue white halogen lights above us from nine o'clock in the morning until nine o'clock at night, then you go home and it's hard to switch off! A different type is more appropriate after dark, especially in winter.

How does Biofilico apply these concepts to a home setting?

A typical project might be an 8-story mixed use real estate development in London or the health and fitness offer for entire hotel. At a larger scale, I'm part of a team and there's mechanical engineer consultants, architect studios and interior design teams involved as well..

Recently though, we’ve applied this thinking to Can Ikigai in Barcelona, Biofilico’s home base, with a home gym set-up, a biophilic home office and a wabi-sabi organic interior concept design. This has meant applying some of the knowledge that we have from healthy buildings and wellness in the workplace to a residential context.

Contact us for help with your office, home, hotel or gym project

future of Workplace wellbeing interview with matt morley

We recently participated in a webinar on the future of workplace wellbeing alongside The Yoga Agency and Yinshi Meditation as well as the Founder of Planet Organic / Beluga Bean, Renee Elliott.

Here is an extract from that webinar with Matt’s thoughts on workplace wellness, biophilic design and active design in healthy buildings.

For those of us working in the wellbeing space we have seen that Covid-19 has bought wellbeing into the spotlight for many businesses. Why do you think this is?

MM: From my perspective at least, COVID has merely accelerated a process that was already underway, in what was admittedly a rather patchy, yet undeniable ‘quiet revolution’ towards healthier, greener workplaces that respect the Triple Bottom Line of people, planet & profit. 

In the broadest of terms, the US, Australia, Canada, Singapore and to some extent the UK were seen as world leaders in this. Like I say, these things start as a niche and slowly become more mainstream, we just leapt forward by several years basically.

Indoor Environmental Quality - or IEQ - is a fundamental part of the healthy workplace concept, those of us engaged in this field have all studied it in-depth and more importantly implemented strategies to create, maintain and monitor purified, high quality indoor air with adequate ventilation rates long before the world switched on to the risks of getting it wrong, airborne virus transmission is one example but high levels of CO2, particulate matter or Volatile Organic Compounds all have their own detrimental impact on our health. 

Essentially then, at least in terms of creating a baseline for IEQ, it’s about three fundamentals: 

• the mechanical system or HVAC

• the building and fit-out materials present in a space that can off-gas harmful chemicals that reduce IEQ

• a facilities management policy around enhanced, eco-friendly cleaning schedules

Have you noticed any trends in terms of what different industries are doing to prepare the workspace for peoples return 

MM: Innovative tech companies were already way out in front on this as they are often cash-rich and place such priority on their knowledge workers no matter where they are in the world  - an example would be the green, leafy and cutting edge Amazon offices all over the world 

Where they led, others followed, so more generally now a lot of small-medium size start-ups looking to attract and retain top talent into their workforce in a highly competitive job market recognize that having an uplifting, positive space can make a real difference.

Then we have companies with an inherent connection to nature, perhaps via their mission statement or product line, an example there would be HERO organic foods in Switzerland for example, basically the natural version of Danone, they are now doing biophilic nature-inspired offices that reflect their company values on one level but also are designed to help raise productivity, concentration and happiness levels amongst their staff, whilst keeping them safe.

The current phase that I’m seeing is akin to a trickle-down effect that has been 10 Xd by COVID to a far wider spectrum of companies who now see an urgent need to upgrade their offices in light of recent events.

What do you think are some of the longer lasting impacts of covid 19 in terms of the way we work?

For those businesses looking for a standardized process backed by scientific rigor , there are a number of well regarded certification programs out there now, from Virus Response, to Air Quality specific, to those such as the WELL Certification that cover not just a workplace’s Air quality but also its Water, Nourishment and nutrition, the quality of Light within the offices, Fitness and movement, thermal and physical Comfort, as well as Mental Wellbeing

So just as sustainable building certifications tell us when a building has eco-friendly credentials, increasingly the leading workplaces are talking about their wellbeing standards as well.

Before it was a nice to have but Covid changed that.

What can businesses do to improve their physical environment/office space and why is it important.

First and foremost, again, it has to be indoor air quality, please please please let’s get that right! You may need some outside help to implement a solid plan in larger organizations but your staff will thank you for it and now is the time! 

Additionally, I’ve been talking about biophilia and biophilic design for 5-6 years now but it feels like this concept is finally ‘having a moment’ as more and more workplaces are catching on post-pandemic.

Essentially it’s about bringing the outside world into our built environment to harness nature’s mental and physical health benefits, for example a plant wall can do amazing things in terms of air purification. 

No matter how modest a space, a nature themed recharge room for having a quiet moment alone, doing some deep thinking, or a little light stretching can make the world of difference to the workday, especially in offices with limited natural light and no outdoor green spaces nearby.

For me, biophilic design combines elements of sustainability and wellbeing via its nature-first approach to materials, colours, sounds, textures and even scent. 

It’s not just putting plants on desks, the deeper you go into the principles behind this idea the more it gives back and the greater the impact can be on that Triple Bottom Line I mentioned earlier. 

In the end, we’re looking to boost productivity and concentration while reducing anxiety and stress amongst employees and, just as importantly, respecting the environment in the process. It’s a win-win.

What advice do you have for those in the audience in HR of Office management roles who have the responsibility of caring for other peoples health and wellbeing ?

I’ve touched on Indoor Environmental Quality, specifically the importance of establishing high quality indoor air and then monitoring it on an ongoing basis - data is key otherwise you’re operating blind! 

We then have the wonders of biophilic design, whether on a small or large sale, whether promoting access to nearby nature via walking meetings outdoors, or by bringing more nature indoors, it’s all good.

I’d add to that a real focus on physical and mental activity opportunities facilitated by the organization, even if only a discount or voucher system for nearby fitness studios or meditation centres if there Isn’t space or budget to host something in-house every week.

It’s the thought that counts and ultimately, if budget allows, having it there under-utilized (“my employer cares”) is still better than not having it at all (“my employer doesn’t care”).

Also, consider boosting your community-oriented CSR practices that help staff and the organization itself give back - they have been shown to foster immense feelings of purpose and satisfaction in the giver, not just the receiver. 

Additionally, consider the lighting in an office, uplighters / standing lamps and desk lamps with warmer, amber hues can be especially helpful in the darker winter months as an alternative to those harsh overhead blue-white lights that are detrimental to sleep quality, which in turn impacts worker performance the next day.

What can employees/individuals do to stay healthy during this transition back to normal?

In terms of personal agency, taking matters into your own hands rather than relying on organizational level change, it would have to be Active Design also known as ‘incidental movement’ during the day - it’s about being active at work, which is different to working out at work!

• So mindfully choosing the stairs not the lift

• Perhaps using a standing desk rather than a chair for at least part of the day

• moving between deep work spaces and more collaborative zones in the office, or going to a colleague to chat instead of sending an email 

• using a bike to get to and from the office

• consciously making yourself walk outside at lunchtime for a bite to eat

• proposing a walking meeting with another colleague instead of opting to sit together in a small enclosed office, and so on….

Contact us here to discuss your workplace wellness project

reset air quality standard - real estate - core & shell

What is a healthy building?

A healthy building definition is important to establish first and, for us, a building can only be considered “healthy” if it has a proven, positive impact on the mental & physical health of its occupants, whilst also doing no harm to the environment. We simply cannot accept that a building is good for People but harmful to the Planet, we must combine the two.

Imagine a people-focused building designed for maximum wellbeing benefits that also had a detrimental effect on the planet around it. The cross-over between green building concepts and healthy building concepts is obvious.

The rise of the healthy building movement over the past decade provides a new lens through which businesses can assess their performance and we are proud to be able to play a part in this process.

See our 9-point guide to healthy buildings here.

What is a smart building?

‘Smart’ is now right up there alongside ‘healthy’ and ‘green’ when it comes to desirable characteristics of a modern building.

We need data and information in order to monitor and optimize a building’s performance; ultimately ‘smart’ in this sense is effectively about ‘high performance’ buildings that are digitally connected with smart technology built in.

The leading smart building standard / certification for us is currently WiredScore, check them out here. They define a smart building by these four factors:

• an inspirational experience

• a sustainable building

• a cost-efficient building

• one that is future-proof by design

What is Indoor Air Quality in a healthy building?

Indoor pollutants such as CO2 have a negative impact on cognitive function and performance. the best solution is source control - nipping the problem in the bud, by not bringing harmful materials into the space that carry chemicals, VOCs or off-gases.

For that, we need building materials and fit-out materials that disclose their chemical ingredients, ideally with a healthy product accreditation to back up their claims.

One of the main culprits in this sense are Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) or chemicals that off-gas at ambient temperature from building materials such as particle board, glues, paints and carpet backing. 

Particulate Matter PM2.5 and PM10 are made up of dust and synthetic materials decomposing around us from furniture, fabrics and so on.

For RESET, Carbon Monoxide is only relevant for projects where combustion is present. As reference, CO reduces the amount of oxygen transported in the bloodstream, making it potentially lethal.

Sensor technology cannot cover every pollutant, other air quality sensors do exist but they are prohibitively expensive, so as the market for high-grade sensors steadily democratizes over coming years, new pollutants will be incorporated into the standard.

What is RESET for smart and healthy buildings?

RESET stands for “Regenerative, ecological, social and economic targets”. It is a healthy building standard and certification.

The company was started by architects in Shanghai in 2001 adopting an eastern perspective based on a 5000 year history of health and regeneration, rather than the explicitly green / sustainable approach promoted in the west.

Unlike other green building or healthy building standards, such as LEED, WELL or FITWEL, RESET AIR does not insist on any set, prescribed paths towards achieving high quality indoor air results.

Their approach is simply to leave the door open to innovation, how each project gets there is up to the project team. It is the destination that matters most in this instance, RESET do not concern themselves with prescribing the journey.

In their terms, this is a biomimetic approach, that takes its inspiration from nature and the biosphere’s 3.8 billion year history. They talk our language in other words!

What is the RESET Air for Core & Shell indoor air quality standard?

You’ll find that RESET AIR for Core & Shell, whether for new or existing buildings, is basically all about ongoing monitoring and analysis of high quality indoor air quality data, delivered to the RESET cloud via a network of professionally installed, pre-approved air quality monitors.

We are concerned primarily with particulate matter (PM2.5), Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and Total Volatile Organic Compounds (TVOC) in the outdoor air and the supply air including recirculated air that affects the building in question.

The data will be communicated back to building occupants as a way to raise awareness about this important healthy building theme, that has never been more relevant than in the post-Covid world.

Nota Bene: the intent here is different to that of RESET Air Commercial Interiors; in this case we are not focused on the quality of ‘mixed air’ that occupants inhale inside the building, for example in office spaces or communal areas.

Again, we are concerned exclusively with the quality of the air being delivered through the building’s HVAC system.

What affects the air quality of air in an HVAC system?

Clearly there is a world of difference between a remote coastal or countryside building and one in the middle of a megalopolis such as Shanghai.

Factors to consider here are location as well as a building’s orientation, the general climate, the age of the structure and HVAC system equipment, use type, and zoning calculations.

Daily averages are calculated based on hours of occupancy and international standards for Indoor Air Quality (‘IAQ’).

Qualifying projects must remain within these limits for a full three months in order to be certified, although there are a certification statuses available before then too (see separate article here on that).

• Particular Matter / PM2.5: Less than 12 μg/m3 (75% reduction. NB: When outdoor PM2.5 is ≤48μg/m3, indoor levels can be no more than 12μg/m3. When outdoor PM2.5 is >48μg/m3, filtration at the level of the air handling unit must remove 75% of PM2.5 at a minimum.

• Total Volatile Organic Compound / TVOC: less than 400 μg/m3

• Carbon Dioxide / CO2: less than 800 ppm

• Temperature: Monitored only as this impacts PM2.5 and TVOC

• Relative Humidity: Monitored only as this impacts PM2.5 and TVOC

What are the air quality Data Provider requirements?

Data is collected and transferred to te RESET Assessment Cloud online. For this reason projects have to use certified RESET Air Accredited Data Providers that connect to the RESET Assessment Cloud.

This may sound complicated but it isn’t really as some air quality monitor manufacturers such as Awair are also accredited data providers, so you deal with both steps in one purchase effectively.

Data is to be communicated to building occupants on an hourly basis, perhaps via a digital display in reception, a smartphone app or webpage. RESET want this information to be as visible as possible, not hidden away and hard to find!

What air quality monitors are accepted by RESET AIR?

Direct read or hand-held instruments may be good for a walk-through survey or in detecting a specific pollutant but they have been deemed unsuitable for RESET as the standard requires high quality and constant air quality data in order to detect trends and patterns over time in a specific, fixed location. A lab test is good for a deep-dive but will only reflect a specific moment in time.

RESET provides standards for the deployment, location and installation of monitors that have been classified as Grade A (reference grade) or Grade B (commercial grade) only, excluding the increasingly common consumer Grade C.

It is RESET APs (accredited professionals) that are responsible for the monitor deployment plan, RESET then acts as the neutral stakeholder capturing data in the cloud. 

As all monitors will gradually drift over time and need to be cleaned / recalibrated, the occasional follow-up site visit is required to inspect the monitors, again by a RESET Accredited Professional.

In order to certify for RESET Air for Core & Shell, projects need to demonstrate the mechanical (HVAC) system delivers air to occupants in line with the performance targets. For this to happen, we need a baseline established via outdoor air quality monitoring.

Indoor air quality monitors are then “paired” with the outdoor air monitors and the aggregated data can compared. This is the crux of the Core & Shell standard. Understanding this point is fundamental.

How do air quality monitors need to be installed for RESET AIR Core & Shell?

RESET Air accredited monitors that report PM2.5, CO2, Temperature and Relative Humidity need to be positioned within 5 metres / 16 ft of an air intake in a location that is pre-filtration and pre-mixing. Read that line again, it is really important!

If a building has 10 stories or less and one air intake, it only needs one outdoor monitor. That same building with more than one air take, needs still just one monitor but located wherever the air quality is deemed to be worst.

Taller buildings with a single air intake again need just one outdoor air monitor but if it has multiple air intakes then the monitor must be positioned at the highest air intake (or centrally if they are all on the same level).

Indoor monitor deployment meanwhile are based on a project’s total air volume. Mechanical systems that are not designed with constant air volume must calculate air volume based on the highest capacity airflow possible in the system.

To achieve Core & Shell certification a minimum of 30% of total air volume must be monitored.

These indoor monitors need to cover the usual suspects of PM2.5, TVOC, CO2, relative humidity and temperature.

Monitors should be installed post-mixing, post-filtration (or simply post-filtration if there is no mixing in the HVAC system in question). They should also be installed prior to dampers that limit airflow to a duct. The outdoor monitors have to be paired with an indoor monitor, this is essential.

Thee are the steps a RESET accredited professional will follow:

1. define project boundary

2. deploy outdoor monitors

3. calculate total air volume

4. calculate 30% of total air volume

5. deploy and pair indoor monitor locations to outdoor monitors

6. deploy additional indoor monitors if necessary

Contact us to discuss your RESET air certification project or other indoor air quality queries.

Interview for 'Future of Workplace Wellbeing' webinar

Matt Morley on the Future of Workplace Wellbeing

FREE webinar registration link: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/7716129787897/WN_AHVNM-q-SKCVoJzk5mfi6A

Matt, can you describe what you do in regards to workplace wellness in a sentence?

I can try! It took me a long time to get there but basically I’m about creating green and healthy spaces, so I combine design and operational strategies to help make offices geared for wellbeing and sustainability.

What will you be discussing at the upcoming Future of Workplace Wellbeing seminar?

It’s already shaping up to be a really promising line-up and I’m delighted to be contributing my thoughts to the panel. I’ll likely focus on tangible improvements that can be made to the work environment itself, in order to offer practical inspiration to HR teams, Brand Managers and Office Managers concerned about the now imminent return to work.

One thing’s for sure, there has never been a more pertinent time to make office upgrades of this kind, employees are quite frankly looking for signs of understanding from their employers now that we have all grasped the risks associated with spending so much time in close contact with colleagues.

The benefits still far outweigh the risks in my view but every office needs to adapt to the new reality. Debate about how to create a safe and healthy workplace is here to stay.

Which workplace wellbeing trend gets you the most excited at the moment?

I’ve been talking about biophilia and biophilic design for 5-6 years now but it feels like this concept is finally ‘having a moment’ as more and more workplaces are catching on post-pandemic.

Essentially it’s about bringing the outside world into our built environment to harness nature’s mental and physical health benefits; so while I may be known for creating the world’s first biophilic gym back in 2017 those same principles can be applied to any type of indoor space, and ultimately we spend most of our time in our homes and in the office, so it is there that we’er seeing the most innovation at the moment.

How does biophilic design connect with the future of workplace wellbeing in your view?

For me, biophilic design combines elements of sustainability and wellbeing via its nature-first approach to materials, colours, sounds, textures and scent. It’s not just landscaping or putting plants on desks, as some might think, the deeper you go into the principles behind this design philosophy the more it gives back and the greater the impact can be. Recently i’ve been geeking out on innovative bio-materials from fruit skins and algae for example!

So why is this important? We’re looking to boost productivity and concentration while reducing anxiety and stress amongst employees and, just as importantly, respecting the environment in the process. It’s a lot to think about, I recognise that but it is absolutely within reach for most offices.

What are the intended outputs of this particular workplace wellbeing strategy?

Pretty quickly I realised that data illustrating the benefits of biophilic design was going to be key when pitching this concept to a CFO or CPO so in 2018 I carried out a research study with the University of Essex and EcoWorld Ballymore, a real estate developer with a biophilic residential building in Canary Wharf.

We created a ‘Vitamin Nature space’, or recharge room, and invited local professionals in during their lunch hour, or for a team meeting or workshop and the results were so encouraging!

There is this innate connection in all of us to natural spaces, it’s an evolutionary thing, just think of the hundreds of thousands of years of history in which our ancestors’ survival depended entirely on their understanding of edible plants, wild animals, dangerous insects, the seasons, weather cycles and more.

Arguably there is nowhere better to bring some of this biophilia back into our lives than in soulless office interiors in a dense urban environment.

What workplace wellbeing project has had the biggest impact on you recently?

I have an ongoing advisory role with Black Mountain Partners in London, a real estate development fund currently re-launching a Grade A heritage building overlooking London Bridge with a gym, restaurant, rooftop bar and, crucially, eight floors of offices.

For this long-term client I manage their Placemaking & ESG, so i’m working very much at a strategic level with the CEO to align the fund’s activities with ESG, both at corporate and building level.

ESG fundamentally influences not just how the business is run and the team is managed but also impacts the work being done by architects, engineers, interior designers and facilities management.

On smaller scale consultancy projects I’m often alone, doing both the strategy and the creative implementation at office-level, or I’m working in partnership alongside a local interiors team (as was the case for the Hero natural foods office project in Switzerland).

For Black Mountain Partners though, I don’t touch any of that directly but I do get to work with the biggest names in the business; it’s a high stakes game!

What’s your workplace wellbeing practice of choice?

It would have to be Active Design - it’s about being active at work, not so much working out at work (although that certainly does no harm if the opportunity is there!) instead it’s about using the stairs not the lift, adapting to a standing desk rather than a chair, moving between deep work spaces and more collaborative zones in the office according to the task in hand rather than being locked in a private office, using a bike to get to and from the office, walking outside at lunchtime for a bite to eat, and so on.

Contact us here to discuss your workplace wellbeing project

RESET Healthy Buildings (podcast interview)

Green & Healthy Places podcast 019:

RESET healthy buildings standard

Regenerative buildings monitored for health: the RESET standard

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

Green & Healthy Places with Matt Morley

Welcome to episode 19 of the green and healthy places podcast in which we explore wellbeing and sustainability in real estate and hospitality.

In this episode we talk to Stanton Wong in China, President of RESET, a data-driven business that harnesses technology to monitor buildings from a health perspective.

We discuss the differences between the concepts of ‘green buildings’ in the West and ‘healthy buildings’ in Asia, the surge in interest in air quality post-pandemic, how the materials used in building construction and fit-outs connect with indoor air quality, how to create biomimetic indoor spaces that behave more like an outdoor spaces and the importance of high-quality data collection around Air, Water, Energy and Waste use in benchmarking healthy buildings.

Stanton is a seriously bright guy with a background in computer science and he’s now at the helm of an organization that just seems to be in the right place at the right time. So there is a lot of solid content in this conversation!

GUEST / Stanton Wong, President, RESET

• RESET main site

• RESET AIR standard

See our 9-point guide to healthy buildings here.

HOST / Matt Morley

• Founder of BioBlu sustainable yachting

• Founder of Biofilico wellness real estate & interiors

• Founder of Biofit Health & Fitness

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FULL TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS COURTESY OF OTTER.AI - excuse typos!

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Matt Morley

Stanton awesome to be with you here today. Let's jump into it. Why don't you give us a quick intro to your personal background and your career path to becoming president of reset.

stanton wong

Hi, Matt, thank you very much for having me. I'm My name is Stanton. I'm currently the president of reset. In terms of career paths, it's been a little bit windy, but I think it makes perfect sense on why I'm here right now, I am a computer science major. So I have a tech background. My first jobs are all computer science and software development related. I was visiting Shanghai, which is where one of our offices are in. That's where my mother's from. So I was visiting Shanghai I met Ray for and then I really liked what they were trying to do, they were essentially trying to look at how technology can affect and figure out how to monitor and learn about building behaviors. So I joined in from the technology side, and then tried to help build the product around it. And gradually, I took on more responsibility until I'm now the president.

Matt Morley

I've been going through this process myself, as I mentioned to you, of you know, studying your RESET AIR professional qualification and it's one of the things that's really come through is that data driven approach. But you know, another thing that's been immediately stood out for me was was some of the content with the study materials around the difference between green and healthy.

So you kind of have this dichotomy in the market at the moment, there's green buildings, and there's healthy buildings but in some of the pieces that you've published online you mention how with China's 5000 year history of Regenerative Medicine, perhaps, you know, sort of a different terminology or different way of thinking about that?

stanton wong

Yes, s we came from a Western background, our company, our initial thinking was around provided a service for green buildings, that's traditionally what we've talked about. When we were pushing the idea in China, it was not very strongly received because traditionally, the environment, the concept of ‘green’ just wasn't part of the consideration whereas health and wellbeing in general was.

So once we started talking more about what a healthy building is, for occupants inside, there was a lot more interest in understanding what that meant. So when we started doing a few more talks and presentations, we realized that at least in China, the concept of health is a much stronger sell in terms of a concept then, then it is green.

Matt Morley

And you've also introduced the idea of this wonderful word biomimetic. So you describe the RESRT approach has been biomimetic which is essentially if I've understood correctly inspired by natural evolution?

stanton wong

Yeah. So this word really started when we were exploring how we wanted to approach air, I want to give a bit of a background First, we didn't actually start with air quality, per se, we were starting with healthy building materials. And when we were doing research into materials and just the data behind it, we were building calculators that would basically look at the TVOC data from certifications of materials and try to calculate how much TVOC off gassing would occur within a certain space. At depending on materials we used, we realized that no matter how many versions of calculator we went through, they were never accurate. And then at the exact same time, we were discovering that there were air quality monitor manufacturers that were developing monitors that were within a price range that felt very reasonable.

And so we transitioned to looking at what would air look like, if we were just wanting air quality? Will we get better data? So that's, that's how it started.

Then the biomimetic part is from a concept that our founder Rafer Wallace introduced - he grew up in an area that was next to a lake and in a forest. We were thinking - we spend so much time indoors, how can we create an indoor space that felt more like an outdoor space?

Outdoor spaces are constantly changing, depending on what's happening around, right, so trees are constantly sensing the temperature, the humidity, the birds are sensing everything, you hear the birds, depending on what's happening with the weather, you're getting a lot of feedback. But in an interior space, typically it feels a lot more dead because your mechanical systems aren't automated. Mostly it’s someone clicking a button to make the ventilation start or stop. That's kind of what the traditional indoor spaces like.

“We asked ourselves, how can we create an interior space that felt more like an outdoor space by getting data that’s collected to mimic or automate certain aspects of interior spaces to be more similar to outdoor spaces?”

— stanton wong

Matt Morley

Which then kind of connects you with my favorite subject of biophilic design? Which is exactly the same concepts. How can you do that through the physical space and the materials and perhaps the sounds or the senses that you're, you're playing with in that room?

As I understand it, then you've got this air quality situation in Shanghai, that's obviously one of the worst in the world. And that's clearly a huge background piece to all of this that's going on. Right. So you're then from materials, you switch into air and start focusing more on that and create what is effectively a data standard and certification piece around air quality, which is your first step forward into this into this world still, would that be fair to say? Okay, but then like, what comes next like beyond that? How are you then? Because materials are coming back round? That seems to be like your next product or service coming to the market?

stanton wong

Yeah, so So I think what we've discovered for ourselves in the past couple years is that the direction we want to take is data driven and performance driven. So we want to look at what can data give us to help empower better solutions.

We haven't focused on solutions, what we want to do in the future is highlight more of the different solutions that are being implemented. Our focus is to standardize the data collection aspect, so that projects can be compared against each other, we can leverage larger sets of data to understand how different projects performed compared to others.

Basically, we want to do a lot of benchmarking. So air quality is where we started, we're going to go into materials.

But from a continuous monitoring perspective, we want to go into water, energy and waste. So with water and energy, I think it's relatively simple. It's really just continuous monitoring, instead of having a monthly paper trail of how much energy or water was used, we want to have a continuous data collection and the reason behind that is because we actually had clients asking about how does our air quality and A track system compare against our energy usage. And once you have that data layered on top of each other, you can start comparing and seeing how can we potentially save energy while maintaining good air quality.

“good air quality doesn’t mean you have to clean the air 100% all the time, it’s about maintaining a certain level of air quality. ”

— stanton wong

stanton wong

So for example, if you have an empty office space, you don't need to have fresh air systems on 24/7, you only need to turn that on when there are people in the space and the CO2 levels are getting higher. Same for Particulate Matter (PM2.5 / PM10) filtration - it only needs to kick in when higher levels of PM are detected.

So for energy or waste or water, there's probably something that can be compared. So we're interested in setting a standard for collecting the data initially. And then we will do research into how we can cross reference it some more.

Matt Morley

So and then sort of basic terms, obviously, you've got the type of the HVAC system, which is the middleman between the indoor air that we're breathing in a building and the type of outdoor air that's coming in. So we touched on it briefly at the beginning, but I did just want to ask about location - how much of a role is that playing?

If you're in central Shanghai, and you've got another one of these dark clouds floating around? Surely there's got to be so much more work to do to ensure good quality baseline indoor air quality? Or is it just something that these h HVAC systems can handle As long as they're fully equipped and specced for that type of work?

stanton wong

Yeah, so this is a really good question. What we've discovered is that traditional HVAC systems, the online ones, they're not a very good fit for this kind of situation. So I'll give an example. One of the reasons we started separating Core & Shell from Commercial Interiors is because there is two different roles. One is the central hvac system. Core & shell is the property owner controlling the central HVAC system that includes fresh air systems. And then commercial interiors is typically tailored to the actual tenant or occupant space. The in the occupant space, you want the air to be clean no matter what but you don't actually have control over the central HVAC.

Typically you ask the landlord need more fresh air or something, they'll help you figure something out. But it's not instantaneous, they have to configure something, it's not automatic. So what we've discovered is at least for Pm 2.5, there's now a lot of single units that you would install in your occupant space, like in the ceiling.

Matt Morley

where the recirculation ones right with Yeah, having the portable ones you don't want the like the portable carry around once you want them installed in the ceiling.

stanton wong

Correct. Because we want it to be automated, we don't want it to be something where people are pressing to turn it on and off, it should be more natural. And when it's installed in the ceiling, you can have the tubing have the intake be on one side and the outtakeon the other side so that there's actually more circular motion, air motion. So it cleans the air better than a unit that's sitting on the ground and just trying to clean the air around it.

Matt Morley

Which is what we're seeing, almost this kind of like this sort of knee jerk reaction to? Yeah, I'm seeing it in crazy places, right, you know, go to the physiotherapist. And clearly they haven't got enough ventilation in there, you can see that the H vac systems really just not doing what it needs to be doing. And they've got like one solitary floor fan, if you want to call it that trying to do the work of the system.

“The pandemic has generated a lot more interest in air quality. Previously, air quality was invisible, aside from temperature and humidity. Nobody says ‘oh the CO2 levels are high in here’ - you might feel dizzy or sleepy, even if you don’t have any numbers to back it up. Air monitors help you understand more about the air you breathe. ”

— stanton wong

stanton wong

So obviously, if you optimize it perfectly, it doesn't prevent file transmission 100%. Because if one person comes in with the virus, and they cough on somebody, the building can't do anything about that. But at least you're maintaining a system that lowers the chance of virus virus survivability, and improves immune system like human immune system so that you're at the strongest to defend against it. So, so that's something that we've been playing with, and we're trying to figure out how to make that more available. But um, generally, I think, with the pandemic, a lot more people are aware of the importance of air quality, and are looking into how they have how they can have more control over it.

Matt Morley

What would be the other possible sources beyond outdoor air and airborne viruses within an indoor environment that could cause pollution, or that might be damaging, or lowering the quality of the air in, let's say, an office building?

stanton wong

Yeah, I think the most common is the building material choice. So where we started was materials. And materials is not where you would generate PM2.5 but rather VOCs, that’s the big issue. So a lot of offices have a period where they're flushing out the air, right. And the assumption is that most materials will off-gas all their VOCs within a week or two, and then you're done. The unfortunate thing is, it depends on the material. And it depends on the temperature in the space.

So for example, if certain adhesives if they're not high quality, it's possible for them to off-gas for a long, long time, or certain varnishes as well. At the same time, if, for example, it's a really hot day, it's 40 degrees in door, when the sun is shining, and before the air conditioning turns on, that can affect how stable the varnish is, and lead to off gassing. Even a year or two afterwards.

“If you don’t make good interior material choices, it’s very possible that you’re in a space that’s relatively toxic, especially if there’s not enough fresh air coming in to dilute those VOC’s in the air”

— stanton wong

Matt Morley

And so we're talking about varnishes, glues, paints, possibly the carpet, fabrics used, or even the stuffing inside furniture such as sofas and things. These are all potential sources of volatile organic compounds, right, which is correct, we mustn't be just like, distracted by the organic word. These are negatives, not all of them are harmful, but some of them are. And if those levels rise too high, then the impact of that on us is or will be some of the symptoms then of a typical, like sick building that we might recognize, but not have known the sources of.

stanton wong

If you're getting headaches, or you're feeling like your throat is uncomfortable and itchy. Those are very simple and basic symptoms of breathing air, that's not great. So, yeah, those are those are probably the most obvious ones. With a lot of vo C's you're going to smell it as well. So a lot of when you're entering a newly referred, newly furnished space, you're going to smell something a lot of like, in China, at least pregnant women. Once they smell that they're immediately telling them they're their company that they're not working in the office. So because they know that that can have actually long term detriment to their baby as well. It's possible and it's not a risk they want to take so is a lot of these effects from air quality is much more longer term and it's not obvious right away.

Matt Morley

So if we were, let's say if you if you were to take a project that was in a rural location, then or say you're in the middle of the sea, you might think that the indoor air or the Yeah, the outdoor air quality coming into the building passing through the the air conditioning system would be well, what could be better, right? But then materials. If you've if you've stuffed that, that indoor space, whether it's a residential building or commercial building with materials that are bringing in off gases, or that are producing off gases, then you're, you're potentially creating a situation whereby the indoor, the outdoor air quality is really quite good. It's fresh air, there's there's no industrial use nearby, etc. But you've got a reduced quality of indoor air because of the off gases being produced by your furniture, glues and paints and vanishes.

stanton wong

Indoor air is almost always worse than outdoor air because of the way we've built our world. The indoor air issue didn’t exist for our ancestors because we didn't have such enclosed indoor spaces.

Even for example, in China, most families are very used to the fact of opening windows every day, they want to bring in the fresh air, obviously, now we have the Pm 2.5 issue. But previously, the idea was you want to dilute the air, you want to bring in the fresh air, right? Because indoor, there's an indoor buildup of potentially chemicals or other things if you don't know what's going on. So the the most simple way is just opening windows bringing in fresh air diluting everything. VOC's are not a problem outdoors. Because it's been completely diluted.

Matt Morley

And I know you guys are really big on on the quality of the monitors in place. In fact, a lot of going going through this process of becoming the sort of accredited professional, a lot of it is like how good is your is the monitor? And what grade is it and how is it deployed? And where is it deployed? And I found that going so deep into that was fascinating. But it then raises the questions like there's just this hit, there's been this huge surge in, let's call them consumer grade monitors, right. And I'm standing here with one of these, these these Dyson, air cooled fans that constantly sends me readouts that don't seem to make much sense, and I can never quite work out what's going on. So let's let's cut through all the marketing talk, right? Like realistically, these these consumer grade monitors and fans that we have on our desks or in our bedrooms? Is there any merit in that? Is there? Is there value in it? Are they is it really just a marketing ploy? Or how do you see it from an insider perspective? Hmm,

stanton wong

I think there's two different things to consider. One is the accuracy of the monitors. And then the second thing is, it really is about where it's playing. So for example, the Dyson one, right, and a lot of filters, like filtration, air filtration units, they have a monitor on it. The issue with that is it's only like the way air filtration works as it cleans the air around it first. And if the fan is not blowing hard enough, it's still only going to clean, you know, the closest air around it. So when I'm recommending my friends to a solution for air quality at home, I asked I tell them to buy a separate air quality monitor, put it on the opposite end of the room from the filter. And so that's how you determine whether or not the air quality in the room is actually clean. If you're using the monitor, if you put the monitor right next to the filter, most of the room is actually not at the level that you're expecting.

So that's one thing. The other thing is consumer models are actually very good at giving a basic trend of understanding what's happening, the thing that they're not very good at is the accuracy between the units. So what we've seen a lot is if you buy five consumer units and you place them all next to each other, it's very possible that two of them are reading a little bit or quite a bit off from the other three. So it's not balanced in that way. But all of their trends are probably going to be very similar. So they're going to all peak at around the same time. They're on a dip at around the same time. But their numbers are not going to be quite that similar. That's that's something that we've seen.

So if you're in an office space where you're trying to illustrate that you are leveraging air quality for either automation or you're trying to show that you have high quality data, you want to use something that is more consistent with numbers of reports. So that's why we've been doing testing - our tests are really just asking manufacturers to give us five different monitors have the same make. And we tested over three weeks to a month and see how they perform in different situations. And even even Grade B ones that we've tested multiples of them have failed the first test, and we have to send them back with a report telling them what's wrong. And then they have to fix the factory calibration process. So before it gets shipped, if it's not properly calibrated, properly stored before shipping, then it's very possible that the numbers will just get wacky, because sensors are not, they're not completely stable yet.

Matt Morley

So something we haven't mentioned thus far is just is that the approach that the researcher takes is very much more about it seems to me the destination than the journey, you're non prescriptive, you're not saying you must do X, Y, and Z in order to secure air quality, you're really focused on the quality of the monitors how they're deployed, how they're maintained, how they're installed, where they're located. And then really, it's all goes into a cloud based data storage system where you're constantly monitoring the quality of the air in the space. And your focus is very much on that, right? Rather than saying, well, you must use only natural materials in your space where you must use this type of ventilation system, you've chosen to focus very much more on the data outputs, right? That's kind of your key differentiator.

stanton wong

You're completely correct. So we're based in China, And so in China, we have to take into consideration Pm 2.5, that's of a common issue. If you're in certain parts of Europe, if you're in a more rural area, that might not be a that might not be something you need to care about. So you don't need as many recirculation units that are filtering the air instead. Well, and the other thing to think about is also like co2 levels, there's no way to prescribe exactly what a space needs, because the density of different offices are different. So if you're in a space, like if you're in an area where land is relatively cheap, you're going to have an office space that's significantly larger than a city center. So the way that you design, your H, exosomes might be completely different.

stanton wong

So instead of saying that you have to have a certain type of solution, we recommend that you have the data to figure out what is the most optimal solution for your kind of space, because it doesn't make sense to spend so much money to have something that doesn't really make a difference. I'll give an example, in in China, because of COVID, they had a rule where all h vac systems had to run a, I think it was 100% fresh air capacity. That means bringing in so much fresh air that there's not enough time to heat it in the winter, or like to cool in the summer, it's just so the indoor spaces feel very uncomfortable. But you got all the fresh air right. And so that's not a proper solution for a situation like that. Instead, if you had co2 monitors, you would understand how much fresh air to bring in. So you can maintain a system that is more energy efficient, and produces all the effects that you need. So that that's just an example. But um, our concept is if you have the data, you know how to create a solution for the project.

Matt Morley

So that might suggest then that you would so let's look at the process then of going through the reset err certification, because that might not necessarily involve an MEP consultant, for example, if your data coming out within those three months is immediately good, right? So if everything's working fine, but so what point might you expect? What's the team? What's the resource going on? Like? How does that process go from from a project, making a request to become part of the of the standard and take the certification and like, who might they need on that team to make that happen?

stanton wong

So our recommendation is almost always start just by monitoring, just one monitor in your space is better than having nothing because it gives you it first brings awareness to the air quality data, because that's never been that's not something that's talked about. In in the US, for example, ASHRAE doesn't have very much content around continuous monitoring. It's all spot testing one time test. And then what do you do with that data? That's the information they have.

So continuous monitoring, using this data to figure out what to do is still relatively new. Even if you bring in MEP experts, a lot of them don't know how to approach this. That's really the big biggest issue that we're encountering right. Now it's that, yes, you can get the data you can monitor. But what do you do after that, if you have a good space, and the air quality is already good, it's it's not very complicated, you just get certified. You install the monitors, you go through the process, which includes three stages.

The documentation, which is you demonstrate, you show where you're going to install your monitors the site audit, which is we verify that they're installed properly, in the right place. And then the data audit, which is a is a continuous audit of the space forever, you get the certification after three months, but we need to continue tracking the project. Because if you stop, then we assume that something has happened, and you lose the certification. So we're not one of those. We're not a one time sort of certification, it's more of an operate operational certification where we're tracking the whole time.

Matt Morley

Yeah. And then you get into and then you can imagine, it might provide peace of mind. It might provide transparency for, let's say, a commercial building, owner, landlord who, through their facilities, management wants to communicate their tenants that look, we're doing everything, everything's good, you've got good indoor air quality, is we have nothing to hide equally, it can raise an alarm, right. And at that point, you can imagine the project then whether it's MEP, or it might be that they have a materials issue, or there might be off gases going in. And so your data will be able to give some sense of where the problem is right, based on whether it's co2, whether it's m PM, 2.5, PM, 10, or some other point that's creating issues, right. So you'll be able to get pretty close to get sniffing out where the problem is.

stanton wong

Yeah, our best case studies are best stories are all around how quickly people found out what the issue was. So I'll give to one is a commercial interiors case like story. There is a project that was that has that was passing every month, right, they've already got certified everything. And all of a sudden, one month they failed. They looked at the data and saw that on, I think the 16th or 17th of a certain of a month, all of a sudden the tvoc numbers went up and it stayed up.

So to see if it spikes and drops, not a big issue because perfumes alcohol, all that stuff can affect today's TVOC sensors. So Friday afternoons, typically, a lot of offices will have a high spike of TVOC, because it's happy hour. But if TVOC goes up and it stays up, that means something just got installed, that is permanently off gassing, like a significant amount of TVOC. So we looked in the data we told we helped, we asked the tenant, what do they install or add to the space on that day, and they found out that they installed the whiteboard. And the glue used for the whiteboard was off gassing TVOC heavily. So they removed it, they scraped off all the glue, and then the TVOC went back normal. So that's an example of like having the data to figure out what went wrong.

Another example that was really was, um, TVOC You know, office building can affect other tenants, because a lot of the eight fax systems are all connected. So there is a there was a newer building in Shanghai, and they only allowed construction teams to come in at night to work because some of the other spaces already occupied. They noticed that on an on a certain afternoon that TVOC and pm two and five were spiking on one of the floors, they had monitors in the H vac systems. And so they sent a security guard over and they found two workers trying to catch up on some of the work that they had to do. And then obviously, they kicked them out. But they did this within half an hour of seeing the data spike. So it's just it's little things like this, it's if you first of all, their team is starting to leverage the data, which is something that they probably wouldn't have done before, if they didn't have the data. And with the data, you can make really quick response time. So you can solve a lot of issues.

Matt Morley

It's an important point to mention also the idea of no you actively promote the communication of that data, right? you encourage like maybe having a display screen in reception, or by the elevator. So as people come in, they get some sense of where we're at on the day, right? So if you really, the data isn't managed and stored in your cloud and it stays there. It's very much kind of this positive feedback loop right where it's constantly coming back through to each project that then communicates that to the the occupants themselves. I think that's key because they're There is often that sense of things taking place at some strategic level, but then the occupants maybe not engaging with it or worse, you know, having an air more air quality monitor on their desk and taking, trying to take ownership of it. But it's poor data. And it's, you know, it's just not it's not reliable, right. So you're trying to put, like a building level system in place.

stanton wong

Yeah. Speaking of the monitor on the desk, one of the impetus for starting the standard, or making the standard official was also a legal case where somebody said that they brought a monitor into the office and said, the air quality in this office is crap, right. But then the office obviously had nothing in place to fight back, they had no data, they had nothing that they could show, right, so they had to settle. But um, that's by making it official, you're showcasing that you've installed monitors in the right places, they're not installed in some closet, which is still things that we see where the data is faked. And having a third party verify just means that everything is legit and aboveboard.

Matt Morley

I love it. I'm a real fan, I really encourage people to check out the cert and honest piece of info is that it's very reasonably priced. It's not a prohibitive cost, whereas some of the other certs can can really come with quite a heavy price tag. And, you know, I love the fact that you've, you've priced yours to make it much more accessible to a wider audience. I think that's I think that's key. And in a sense that it invites a longer term relationship, which, which I think is also fundamental. So it raises the question like, what's next, like what's coming in your, in your pipeline over the next one to two years? What are you working on for the future?

stanton wong

Yeah, so the first thing that we're trying to do right now is to flesh out our suite of standards. So we I mentioned that we're already doing air, I mentioned that we're going to be doing water, energy and waste waste is interesting, because it hasn't been done before with continuous monitoring. What we're imagining is to have IoT scales that will monitor how much weight gets put into a trash bin. And then once that trash bin is lifted, and the weight is removed, that gets stored into a system. So you're tracking how much waste is being generated every day from a weight perspective. Obviously, it's not a panacea, it doesn't give you all the right information. But it gives you a starting point to understand how much is being how much waste is getting created. And if you want to take it a step further, it would be separating the bins and tracking each bin separately.

So for example, a bin would be for recyclables. And another bin might be for organics, every every region has their own kind of separation strategy. So we're not going to set one in stone. But we're going to make it available that people can select different strata, like different organizations try structures for this. And hopefully making this data visible make it so that there's more awareness to how much waste is being generated. So that's the initial concept. For all four of these, the long term goal is to create a benchmarking system that allows you to compare projects between projects. So we're, in the long term, we're not looking at setting specific standards globally.

In terms of thresholds for what the data level should be, it's gonna be probably something that's collaborative, with a local group, because for example, let's just say air quality, temperature and humidity is different for every region, right? If you're in the tropics, versus if you're in a colder area, the numbers are gonna be very different. So what you're targeting might be very different as well. You might not like the optimal humidity and temperature might not be exactly the same for different areas. So we want to work with the local region to set the thresholds for that.

Our focus will only be on making sure that you're collecting the right data or the most accurate data. And so we're our focus for our standards will always be around that. The other standards that we're going to be doing as materials and again, our our mo our focus is going to be on collecting data. So for materials, every project has a list of materials that is actually installed in the space. We want for every project in the future to have that list. And we start scoring that list based on how much information in regards to health or carbon or safety of each material is collected.

So we're the scoring system is not necessarily going to be initially based on how good the material is because once you see it you'll you'll realize whether or not it's good, because that's the stuff you're installing to your space in We want you to do the research of the materials that you're aware of what you're actually putting into your space. So the scoring system is based on how much do you understand what's actually going in? Are you actually collecting that information? Do the materials that you select actually have any of the information that you're looking for, and materials that are actively trying to collect more information for these aspects will be will be more noticed. So we want to incentivize materials to really care about the health aspect, the carbon aspect, that kind of stuff.

Matt Morley

Yes, we were very much part of a wider infrastructure, which includes product health certificates, or healthy environmental product declarations, things like that, right. So that, yeah, there's then that middleman that's sourcing the materials that have already been through that that rigorous process of securing certifications for the for that individual product that then gets installed within a wider fit out with a green procurement policy that then secures the right kind of standards for materials and indeed, knock on effect, air quality. So it's really this sort of Tetris puzzle, right, then you're sort of encouraging that, that network of players to come together to do the work to collaborate and then measure and monitor those results over time?

I think it's, it's great. And it's exactly what we needed for the industry. I think you've got to, yeah, some amazing, amazing growth years ahead of you. So Best of luck. Congratulations with that, where can people find you what's the best way to reach out and follow along for the work that we set are doing.

stanton wong

So we're constantly updating our website. The website is reset dot build, r e s e t dot v UI LD, there's no.com dot build is the end of it. And that's probably the best way to follow us. We also have a newsletter. So if you scroll down to the very bottom of the homepage of the webpage, there'll be a link, there'll be a link to follow our newsletter. And if you have any questions, info at reset dot build is the go to email. And if you want to email me directly, it's Stanton at reset dot build.

Sustainable interior materials - NUO wood

Sustainable materials for interior design - NUO wood veneer

What makes a sustainable material?

We specify healthy materials in an interiors fit-out for green buildings, focusing particularly closely on flooring, wall coverings and furniture.

This strategy incorporates elements of sustainability, biophilic design and healthy interiors to ensure that the materials going into a space are non-toxic, do not off-gas over time and will therefore not have a negative impact on Indoor Air Quality.

We specialise in sourcing circular economy, upcycled and marine- or plant-based materials for healthy interiors as well as sustainably sourced natural classics such as bamboo, wood, cork and rubber.

Inevitably, there are often some hard choices to be made, no material in our buildings has zero impact on the environment once we factor in production and transport but there is now a world of options that do far less harm than you might think and indeed some such as upcycled and Circular Economy materials that are genuinely doing good, either for the planet or the people it comes into contact with when in use.

Is leather a sustainable material?

We have covered the debate around leather justifiably being called a sustainable material elsewhere (see our podcast here with Moore & Giles leather), the argument goes that it is a byproduct of the colossal meat industry anyway and no cattle are raised and killed just for their leather.

When tanned in a certain way, for example using a byproduct of the olive industry, rather than the toxic chemicals that are usually involved in this process, we think this is a fine solution for high-end interiors - our problem is the low-end, mass market end of the spectrum, that is where things have gone badly wrong.

It remains a delicate subject and in an ideal world real natural leather would be a prestige fabric coming only from the few pasture reared, grass-fed and chemical-free cattle that had lived long, healthy lives in nature, once the world’s consumers had given up on their addiction to cheap, low quality beef. Therein lies the problem.

The new sustainable materials NUO wood

So. while we wait for scientifically grown meat to develop into a viable alternative, we look to a range of leather-life fabrics and materials that can supplement our creative resource library.

Here we will look at NUO a German made newcomer on the sustainable material scene that uses sustainably sourced wood.

Their timber logs are cross-cut, debarked and steamed, then processed into veneer sheets of 2.5m x 1.5m dimensions,. These sheets then have a fabric glued to the back before the real magic happens when the wood is laser cut with a fine engraving like detail detail to create a soft material with the flexibility and malleability of leather.

What can this sustainable material be used for?

Whenever a fabric has been proven for use in the automobile industry, we know that it can handle hospitality uses, residential or indeed luxury yachts. That is the case with NUO as it has been used in door panels and seat shells as a ‘soft wood’.

As sustainably sourced wood is one of the best natural materials available to us as sustainable interior designers, we are especially pleased to see that NUO appear to be working with the utmost respect for the forests their raw material comes from. This is key. Get that wrong and it is hard to argue in favour of real sustainable material credentials.

NUO also has some interesting acoustic qualities, it is fire protection class B1 and adapts well to upholstery uses in sustainable interior design projects.

Contact us to discuss your sustainable material project with us.

Healthy buildings and RESET Air quality commercial interiors

Smart Healthy buildings with RESET AIR for Commercial interiors

What is a healthy building?

A healthy building is a smart building that, while respecting the planet wherever possible, places most emphasis on human health and wellbeing of occupants.

Factors include indoor air quality (IAQ), visual comfort, light quality, acoustic performance, active design, thermal comfort and cleaning protocols - it requires a combination of multi-sensory design and healthy design strategies.

See our 9-point guide to healthy buildings here.

What is indoor air quality?

Indoor pollutants such as CO2 have a negative impact on cognitive function and performance. the best solution is source control - nipping the problem in the bud, by not bringing harmful materials into the space that carry chemicals, VOCs or off-gases.

For that, we need building materials and fit-out materials that disclose their chemical ingredients, ideally with a healthy product accreditation to back up their claims.

One of the main culprits in this sense are Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) or chemicals that off-gas at ambient temperature from building materials such as particle board, glues, paints and carpet backing 

Particulate Matter PM2.5 and PM10 are made up of dust and synthetic materials decomposing around us from furniture, fabrics and so on.

What is RESET Air standard for Commercial Interiors?

RESET is about continuous monitoring, analysis and transparency around indoor air quality that specifies monitor standards, deployment processes, maintenance and reporting requirements.

The RESET AIR Commercial Interiors certification can be applied to both new and existing buildings, it should be distinguished from the Core & Shell version of RESET Air.

The Standard covers particulate matter PM2.5, Total Volatile Organic Compounds ( TVOC), CO2 and CO for 80% of occupants in regularly occupied space types, that data is then reported back to those occupants as a way to raise awareness around indoor air quality, the air monitor data is uploaded onto the Assessment Cloud and analysis on an ongoing basis.

RESET do not dictate a specific way of achieving these performance targets, instead they focus specifically on the quality of the data. So project teams have to define the space types included in a monitor deployment plan, with a narrative of how they arrived at that decision submitted to RESET.

What are the RESET indoor air quality performance targets?

• PM 2.5 from <35ug/m3 (acceptable) to < 12ug/m2 (high performance)

• TVOC from < 500 ug/m3 (acceptable) to < 400 ug.m3 (high performance)

• CO2 from < 1000 pppm (acceptable) to > 600 ppm (high performance)

• Temperature: monitored but no specific targets

• Relative Humidity: monitored but no specific targets

• Carbon Monoxide: < 9ppm acceptable (only applicable to spaces with combustion)

What about the air quality data?

RESET have an algorithm for daily averages based on hours of occupancy in relation to the performance targets above. These results must stay within the acceptable limits constantly for three consecutive months in order to be awarded the initial certification.

Projects have to use an accredited Data Provider that reports in to the RESET Assessment Cloud. That data is then communicated to building occupants via a smartphone app or graphic signage for example. The aim is transparency and dialogue around this subject, between facilities management and occupants / tenants.

How to choose the air quality monitors?

RESET make this relatively easy in that only certain suppliers are allowed, based on quality standards and regional coverage. The monitors then need to be mounted 3-6 ft from the ground, at least 16 ft from an operable window and at least 16 ft from an air filter or fresh-air diffuser, as well as being hard-wired to a permanent power source.

All of this has to be incorporated into the monitor deployment plan created by the project RESET AIR Accredited Professional or ‘AP’.

Other important information in the certification process

• A project boundary must be physically distinct from other interior spaces in the building. Once defined it must remain consistent for all subsequent calcs.

• The total number of occupants is based on where each occupant spends the majority of their time

• Full certification requires 80% of occupants or more to be covered by the monitors, Partial Certification is just 30% of occupants covered

• Create a list of regularly occupied spaces (more than 1hr per day) based on function type within project boundary, excluding transition spaces such as corridors

• Deploy one monitor in each regularly occupied space type so that in total they cover the total number of occupants for Full or Partial certification purposes (based on their usual location within the office and a monitor having a range of up to 5,382 sq ft (unless a proof of uniformity test permits an extension to 10,764 sq ft)

• A detailed monitor deployment plan has to be submitted to RESET for review

Contact us to discuss your healthy building, indoor air quality or RESET certification requirements.

Healthy materials: Moore & Giles sustainable leather

The role of leather in sustainable interior design and healthy buildings

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

wellbeing & sustainability in real estate and hospitality

In episode 18 of the Green & Healthy Places podcast we take a deep dive into the world of wellbeing and sustainability in real estate & hospitality.

talking sustainable leather

Today I’m chatting with Beverly McAuley, Director of Education & Sustainability for Moore & Giles leather in Virginia in the US, a leading proponent of high quality, sustainable leather with four olive-tanned leather products in their range and many more such innovations in the pipeline.

Circular Economy

We discuss the state of the leather industry today, how Moore & Giles view leather as a waste diversion strategy from the meat industry and how they now use a Cradle 2 Cradle, plant-based die that is a byproduct of the olive industry to create a Circular Economy tanning process.

Quality natural leather has a long life and improves with age unlike so called eco or vegan leather that is basically a completely different material, likely PVC or vinyl layered with chemicals.

Welcome to episode 18 of the Green & Healthy Places podcast in which we take a deep dive into the world of wellbeing and sustainability in real estate & hospitality.

GUEST / BEVERLY MCAULEY , DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION & SUSTAINABILITY FOR MOORE & GILES LEATHER

• http://mooreandgiles.com/

• https://www.mooreandgiles.com/leather

HOSt / MATT MORLEY

• https://biofilico.com/

• https://biofit.io/

• https://sustainableyachtingbioblu.com/

======================

TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS COURTESY OF OTTER.AI - excuse the typos!

Welcome to Episode 18 of the green and Healthy Places podcast, in which we take a deep dive into the world of well being and sustainability in real estate and hospitality. I'm your host, Matt Morley, coming to you from the World of Wellness, real estate and interiors.

This time I am chatting with Beverly McCauley, Director of Education and sustainability for moore and Giles leather in the USA, a leading proponent of high quality, sustainable leather. We discussed the state of the leather industry today, how more in jails few leather as a waste diversion strategy from the meat industry, and how they now have developed a cradle to cradle plant based dye that is a byproduct itself of the olive industry to create a truly circular economy, tanning process. Quality natural leather has a long life and improves with age. Unlike so called eco or vegan leather that's basically completely different material, likely PVC or vinyl lead with lots of chemicals. So there's real food for thought in this conversation.

Thank you so much for being with us today. I really appreciate your time. As an intro, I just wanted to take a little step back to set the scene because I know you're you're an ambassador for the ILFI living future Institute, you have your own nature based retreats. And I know that mindfulness meditation is a part of your your, So you've got a number of interests, you're also Director of Education and sustainability for Moore & Giles . So what's the career path that's led you to where you are today? And how do you balance all these different interests?

Balance is a great word and always a challenge. But, you know, it's been interesting, I have a degree in design, interior design. And quickly after college many years ago, I learned that I really enjoyed learning, I just wanted to keep learning and quit quickly moved into being a representative for various natural products throughout my career as a resource to my clients. So that's that's the way I've always liked to be in my job in my career. On the flip side, my personal life, I've been a nature freak, since I was little, that's where I found my peace. That's where I found my inspiration, and always would prefer to be outside versus not. And so through the years, I kept finding that my interests had these different lives. So the nature based retreats, the meditation, you know, it all centered around health and wellness, and then several years ago, really made that connection between nature and health and wellness. And then this position, career wise, has just been that final puzzle piece to really make it all come together. So now all of these experiences and pieces of me are put together in this really great puzzle where I can bring people together through my love of nature, and connect people to it and support it through action. And through educating folks and trying to lead the way as much as possible in this industry to help people make wise decisions when it comes to the environment and our planet.

President that sort of leads us neatly into second question then around the actual more angels business today and and its structure and products. So you've got this passion and interest and an understanding of nature and natural products and who you are today as directors and sustainability and education. So can you just describe to us the various products or services and and the business structure of Moore & Giles today.

And the business structure basically, you know, we are a leather company. We bring leather into the United States from various tanneries around the world is pending on their forte you know their their product. We also have a bag and accessory division as well that we host from our same headquarters in Virginia. Yeah, so we, we have over a Gosh, several 100 different products, colors, we inventory more leather in the US than any other supplier. And we have, you know, when it comes to sustainability, thankfully, and probably have led the way in the industry, and will continue to do so. So just keep trying to push that push that envelope and help the industry to become more and more sustainable.

Okay, and the main, the key point there then is, is that leather is effectively a byproduct of another industry. So be the byproduct of the beef industry, we can see what we like about that what's good or bad about the beef industry. But your main sort of foundation of the argument is that this is happening anyway. And there's leather would presumably just be left to be thrown away.

That's absolutely the case. It's so funny. I found myself you know, I've been selling or working with leather for 16 years, over 16 years. And I, you know, we would continually say it's a byproduct, it's a byproduct. And then I started realizing a lot of people don't really understand what that means. The leather industry is not the meat industry, the leather industry exists to divert the waste from the meat industry. Okay. So if the leather industry didn't exist, the hides that are produced by the weight waist or by the meat industry would go into the landfill, it'd be it would be a huge environmental issue. There are, gosh, 300,000 plus or minus hides annually, that would be added, I mean, added to the landfills around the world. So the leather industry really is an answer to an otherwise hazardous environmental issue. So that, you know, that's that's the first thing that I think people aren't aware of, and don't really realize they still I get clients who will say or people who will say, well, don't you kill, kill the cow for the hide, and I will tell you, no cow is killed for its hide. Same would go for sheep, you know, people eat lamb as well. Everything that we provide is a byproduct. In other words, everything that we provide is diverted waste, and it's tanned to be converted into something useful, and functional, and, and gorgeous and long lasting. So yeah, that's, that's a big a big learning curve for folks. And usually, once they get past that, it's a lot easier to look at, look at and consider leather. And the other thing that is kind of a byproduct of that is, you know, people ask about animal welfare. Again, the people tanning leather are not the farmers raising the cows, or the meat industry, rendering those cows. However, over the years, a lot of the tanneries have been able to come together and help create legislation to better the animal welfare down that supply chain to the farmer. So that's kind of an interesting, you know, they didn't have to do that. But but that has happened. It's been a positive influence from the leather industry backward toward the, the farming

with more drugs and prioritize certain certain suppliers that have, for example, set a certain level of environmental standards over others because it's so big, the industry is so huge for you. How is how is the business selecting those that it chooses to work with, versus those that it perhaps doesn't deem appropriate to work with?

You know, tanning leather is been in industry for 1000s of years. I mean, it's just been around for so long. So there's this huge history behind it right. And within, you know, the last several decades, it has been imperative for tanneries to innovate, or die. I mean, if they don't do the right thing or change, they're not going to last very long. Thankfully, we have long standing relationships with our tanneries. So it's more likely for us to work with a company for a long time and work with them, if need be, to help them move forward and be innovative than to just pick up new tanneries every year and drop the other one. So the tanneries is important to us then, therefore, to work with tanneries that are well respected, good to their community good to their people, doing the right thing. You know being reached compliance and you know chemically and environmentally doing the right thing. So a lot of the tanneries we work with on their own without us having to say anything, or doing some really great things, environmentally. And then when something comes along, but is even better that I'm sure we'll probably talk about, like all of tanning, we go to those tanneries and we feel comfortable saying we'd love for you to try this, let's work together and collaborate to make this happen to to once again, keep pushing that forward.

And so just just for those of us who are perhaps less familiar with the structure of the industry as a whole, then the role of the tannery, and then the ultimate sort of the the brand, the company that turns it into a product, in this case more on trial. So the others, you're then buying the skins, the tannery is sourcing the skins, applying that some energy use in that process. And can you just talk us through the details of how that works, because it's not entirely clear to me at least.

Sure. And, you know, I'm sure there are variations around the world. But in general, the farmer I'm just going to go all the way back, the farmer raises the cow or the cattle for the meat and dairy industries. At the end, if a cow is a dairy cow at the end of its life, they're not going to bury it in the backyard, you know, it's going to go to the meat industry. So ultimately, the meat industry by product is then purchased. And sometimes there's someone in between in between there, I'll tell you, that sells it to the tannery. But, you know, some of our tanneries know the farmer where the cow was raised up the hill, just because they're in such close proximity and these little villages in Europe, and some of them get hides from other places and have them trained in but at any rate, the hides come into the tannery, the tannery is the manufacturing process that takes that hide and tans it so that it's no longer basically no longer decomposing, it converts it into leather. So hide isn't really leather until it's been tanned until it's been tanned it is considered a hide or skin. Once it's tanned, then it goes through those processes at the tannery that to make it you know the product that you wear or you sit on, you know, they do all of the finishing processes. At that point, it's been brought over to the supplier like ourselves, who then you know, inspect stores and sells the product. We are somewhat unique with our tanneries and that you know, like I said before we will collaborate and create products with them, just for us or just for our clients. But they do all the the manufacturing process portion.

So the more jobs would be both in one sense, a middleman that then supplies the finished hides to say interior designers or architects who are doing interior fit towels, what have you. But also, in some instances, you create products yourselves such as the furniture bags.

That's true. And we do we sell we're a wholesale company when it comes to our hot the hides of leather. And we sell to a pollsters we sell to furniture manufacturers, you know, those industries as well.

Okay, and so you mentioned the olive green and it's probably the the product that sort of most leapt out from from the research that I've done online just because it just seems Yeah, sort of a fantastic combination of, of ideas and natural products. So obviously, you're very proud of that. Were you involved in its process? I mean, can you just sort of give a description of exactly how you're using olives as as another byproduct to tan? Right? The leather aim itself is a byproduct, right?

Yeah, so it is so cool. And it this process totally is what re energize me with within the industry got me excited about seeking the role I'm playing now and kind of was that person puzzle piece that connected everything together that I mentioned before. It's the product itself is called a living leader. Okay, that's who makes the product and it's actually it's not the all of itself. It's a byproduct from the olive industry. So it's using a byproduct of Tana byproduct best of both worlds totally plant based. So basically it's the fallen all of leaves from the olive trees or when they prune the olive trees you know for production just like you would prune an apple tree because if you don't, it's not going to render good apples. It's those all have leaves but it also uses I i I'm always learning more and more just the waste from the industry. So when Press the olives to make olive oil, that kind of the more solid waste, you know, that comes from the olive pieces, if you will, that can be used, I mean, all of these different portions of the of the olive industry, the byproducts. And that's an important word when it comes to this process are used to tan leather. So rather than taking something from nature, like tree bark or plant oil or harvesting an actual and growing trees and cutting them down to use, this is just product that would otherwise be burned into the atmosphere, or go to waste in some way. So it's a really great circular model.

And this was one of the one of the products that you then took forward for a healthy material certification, right. And that is all right.

So we took we we have four and growing, I think we might add a couple more this year, all lefthand products within our line and within those several different colors and textures. The beauty of this process is it doesn't you're not really limited. So you can have all these different textures and colors and possibilities really a lot of a lot of really great possibilities. We took our end products and went for declare labels for those on the tanning and to live in leader product that is used for tanning these leathers is Cradle to Cradle gold and material health platinum. Which is also unheard of in the in the tanning industry. So that's it's just really, we feel this process will turn the tanning industry on its ear. There are a lot of great things happening with the typical way people tan leather and have for many years. But this is just kind of that next generation. You know, this is we're seeing into the future here for this product.

For those who are perhaps some familiar, you've dropped quite a few terms. I'm sorry, but I mean, those standards, I mean, the red list is is pretty much the gold standard. It is it's pretty demanding in terms of the chemicals that it does not want to see anywhere near your product, but then to also have or aligned with Cradle to Cradle, which is perhaps more of a sort of a circular economy approach to things would that be right?

Yeah. So if you think of, like the things I mentioned, a declare label is like a nutrition label for a product. So that will take into account that the chemicals used, as you mentioned, super strict. So to achieve a declare Red List free label is the highest standard out there right now. And we have that on all of those products. And then when you go to Cradle to Cradle, that's just what it says. So cradle the beginning of your product to the beginning of the next product instead of what used to be termed cradle to grave, which was the beginning of the product to the end of the product. In this case, there is no end so that that tanning product has the Cradle to Cradle award. Once you're finished tanning the leather and you have this leftover residue from the tanning product, you can literally you compost it, it can be used as fertilizer, for those same olive trees, you can call posted in your backyard compost, it is not harmful at all. So it's it's pretty exciting stuff. So that deals with kind of the end of life and material health, environmental health through the whole process, that kind of thing. And then the Platinum material health rating is actually a piece of the cradle to cradle. So you could just go for a material health rating, it could be used to kind of scale up to that Cradle to Cradle award. But it is one of the one of the five factors considered and cradle to cradle. So in the plant and the material health rating that's looking at the chemicals at that stage, so making sure that there's no chemicals involved that are considered hazardous or chemicals of concern

that are Is there anything that's less than and taking that approach may seem quite optimistic that it's real innovation within the industry? Is there anything that you're not able to do or that there's certain things that the more traditional craft based sort of the old way of doing things, only that you can only do that way or you you pretty much able to match it by doing this sort of fully eco approach.

You know, when mineral tanned or chromium tanned leathers came along and that's 80 to 90% of our leather in the world is tanned with, with chemicals, basically minerals. That opened up a huge world of accessibility to options from the vegetable tanned leathers before it. So oftentimes people use a combination of the two, just to have a different hand or you know, product at the end of the day. But vegetable Tam products were very limited. And that tanning process, you know, has its own concerns here or there. The nice thing about this, all of tande products that we have, this process is like the best of both worlds. And even better, really, because with edge 10, you're taking something from nature, versus You know what, what I mentioned before this, but this you can have softness, which you can't have with vegetable tanned leather, it's really more firm, like a shoe soul or something, or belt. You can also have color variation, texture variation, all these possibilities that you would have with the with the mineral tan leather, or the chromium tanned leather. Without the chemicals. So there aren't, we're not seeing a lot of, of issues, I think the main thing is jewel to things, you know, it's new. So every time a tannery will make a new product, it's, you know, about finessing it to get the right and results in that again, aesthetically, really. And then getting people on board to understand why it may be a little bit more expensive sometimes, because it's new. And it's small batch. If you think of the first small batch of brewery, you know, microbrews, or whatever, you know, that was, especially in the United States, you know, there was a handful now they're everywhere, you know. So it's, it's just a matter of gaining popularity and understanding. And I think that's probably the biggest challenge is that at the moment,

you do have these there's obviously some degree of scale. Is it purely on? What would be the factors that you identify them? Because you have for example, you supply to say automotive to Marine, which I presume is sort of high end stuff and aviation events like private jet? What are the what are the differences between say that and something that's going into, say, residential, commercial interior usage? How do you? How do you distinguish between those levels of quality or refinement?

Right, I think you know, in many cases, it's about the function that you're needing, especially when you when you break out some of those specific types of markets, the function that you're needing and then the preference. So for instance, in aviation, due to a lot of the requirements on the business aviation side of things, I mean, they, you know, beat up those, there's a lot of use, and they were looking for consistency, so patina, that you would get with a natural leather is probably out of the question. So you're needing something with a little more finished with some pigment in it, it's got to meet some strict testing typically for you know, abrasion or flame retardants or whatever. So there are certain types of products that that are better for that however, I have used on private aviation, as an individual's private aircraft all of the things that we've used in the residential market before again, it was their personal preference and what they were okay with so we can crossover with with any of these markets just fine. It's just really a matter of what is the function you're looking for? What is the look that you're looking for?

durability is an interesting word because it strikes me that leather is perhaps one of the products that rather like wine, ages well and with time almost it develops that path no develops more character in a way so how do you can contrast that with say, the arguments for what's loosely termed eco leather or vegan leathers which as I understand it, without having dug too deeply into it, they are not in fact leathers at all, is that right?

Correct. Oh my gosh, I could talk to you for hours about that, but I won't I promise. vegan leather is not possible. I this is maybe important taste but you cannot be pregnant and not pregnant at the same time. I kind of say the same thing. So in order to be a leather you have to be from an animal. So you can't be vegan and leather at the same time. Most the majority of the products that are out there that are you Using that terminology, it's such a shame, to me, it's just a marketing technique to make people feel like they're making this really great decision, you know, when in actuality they're choosing PVC or polyurethane products. So most, the majority of the products that are out there claiming to be vegan leather are fo products in the past called fo leather, we've also you can also refer to it as vinyl. These products are persistent in the environment, by using something like that it's not going away, you're creating this process, chemicals that are on the red lists that are chemicals of concern. So it's, it's just so not the better decision when it comes to environment and health. Also, what you get with a product like that is you have to replace it more often. So it's not going to wear it over time. So you know, to your point, with a leather lasting so long, and being this heirloom quality product, how often have you heard someone say, Man, I can't wait until I can inherit my grandmother's vinyl couch? Not many, not often do you say? Well, I want that that plastic chair, I can't wait to I have that handed down to me, that will likely never be handed down to you, it will be in a landfill somewhere forever and ever. You know. So as I said, I could speak to that for a long time. But leather lasted Outlast and out wears and it's just so beautiful for a longer period of time, so not only do you get a nice product in the beginning, but as you replace this other product, you're multiple times you're building up this landfill waste again, and causing more chemical processes to happen because you're you know, continue to buy it you continue to have it made all these other products while the leather still sits and the leather has not needed to be replaced. And it's just overall in the life cycle of the of the product. It's really important to look is it a circle or a line? That's the simple way I like to say to my clients, are you looking at a like a timeline? Like here's the beginning here's the end, then what happens at the end? Or are you looking at a circle can this thing be reused? Can it be used for a longer period of time and cutting down the waist.

And in terms of maintenance and and looking after one's leather I noticed that you recently bought out as an anti microbial spray that I guess is is a sort of reaction to or response to what's happening around COVID but in terms of what one could or should be doing to look after one's leather in let's call it in sort of home or or commercial environment in furniture to make sure that it is able to do that to make sure that it can live that nice long life and in the ages. Well Are there any tips? I mean, you guys are experts in this what do you normally recommend?

Sure it the number one thing you can do with your leather is best it just that's the main thing. Yeah. Oh my gosh, I need to dust my plants. But you're right it it will absorb and collect that dust after a period of time and that can kind of cause it to to dry out just like our skin. You know if we never loo foot or use a washcloth or did something in a shower to clean ourselves. Our own skin doesn't look that great after a while so just dusting you know people are we're seeing people get a lot better with patina and natural leathers which is great that's you know, you're speaking our language because we love the natural leathers and the way they patina and age and they become part of your story they become part of your character. You know, if you have a natural leather chair and you spill something on it, yes, you'll see it immediately and just don't just be call and take a deep breath because in a few days you know blot it up and that's great. But it will work its way through the fibers and it will will release its it will mellow and then what you have after that is either you won't even notice it was ever there or it becomes part of the patina but it's so much more mellowed out. I like to use this as an example. I have a client who was we were kind of talking about the same subject one day and maintenance and how people get all worked up over patina. Just live just live in your leather. And he said I have this chair and he has three kids. And he said and I was just my chair. He said you know you can see kind of a spot on the back where I sit from just the oils from his head. You You know, the arms were his hand said that, you know, over the years, he's had it for a long time. He said in one day, my kids were talking. And these are kids that are like college late high school age. And they were kind of fighting over who gets the chair. And he, he asked, Why in the world are you guys fighting over this chairs, just my chair. And the daughter said, Dad, when I see this chair, I see you. And I want this because I want you in my life, you know. And so it was a very touching moment during that unexpectedly during that presentation. But it really says so much about how leather is inherently part of us and can become part of our story. So when you do find that you need to clean a product, there are products that we carry that that you can use, typically a damp rag, mild, soapy water, something simple, it doesn't have to be anything else, that the Eco shield that we've brought on, you're right COVID threw us off for a loop last year. And what we saw was a reaction of like, bleach everywhere, people spraying harmful chemicals, and alcohol based solvent based products that not only are they not good for the leather or anything you're using it on, but they're also not good to be inhaling. I mean, we're all inhaling this stuff. So we took our time and tried to find a safe alternative, a safe product. So the way that eco shield works is it kills mechanically, not chemically, so there are no toxic chemicals within it. It's been deemed rewarded safe for food contact surfaces, it's been used in school districts, it's been used in airports, it's continued continues to work for up to 90 days. So you know, that antibacterial stuff we've been putting on our hands for the last year, like every five minutes, it only works when it's wet. And that's true of so many other things. So that's why I have to reapply it all the time. Because, okay, I touched this thing, let me put this stuff on, okay, that killed that now I go touch another thing, oh, guess what, I gotta use it again, this product, actually, you just apply it once. And then you just reapply it after about 90 days, because over time it will wear off, scratch off, you know, that sort of thing. But it doesn't, it keeps working at the same heightened level by just killing on contact any of these microbes. In fact, it draws it down. So if I were to put it, spray it lightly on my desk, it would draw down the microbes from the air and atmosphere, kill it on contact is pretty cool stuff.

Looking ahead, then to your your projects for for sustainability and education of the next year or two. What do you have in the pipeline? what's coming next?

Well, you know, we're looking at every aspect of what we do internally at our headquarters from and we've created a conservation team at the headquarters to get all of the departments involved and looking at what are we doing and how can we be doing it better. And so that's, that's kind of fun, we do have an onsite garden at our headquarters and we grow food, it's all employee driven. We grow grow food and supply, you know, not only the people within the office as they need it, but if people within the community are you know, in trouble and they need they need some little extra help we have we have that availability there. We're also looking at Malta several several different things with within our headquarters that I'm excited about. We're also always looking at reducing waste, we don't have a lot of waste at our headquarters, even when we cut samples and there's a little waste or trim or hide. We we sell that for pennies on the dollar to people who will make something from it. But we're you know, we're kind of looking at that process. And hopefully we'll have something maybe exciting to share before the end of the year, hopefully sooner rather than later. We also are working with all of our tanneries again to understand the certifications and awards and the measures that they're taking because there's a lot and there's they should be proud of them. It's pretty cool. So we're gathering that information. And I know that we are having like I said before a couple of new products made through the olive tanning process and also looking at what other you know, how can we continue to grow and push that envelope to lead the way within the tanning industry and also within our you know the building industry. History in general design architecture, how can we make decisions that will make a larger impact more quickly than just me having my little compost here at home? I mean, that's great, right? But if we can detect this on a larger scale, we could we could really create the difference that needs to happen.

Well, it's great stuff. I look forward to seeing developments over the next few years, no doubt. So to follow along, obviously, Oren giles.com will link in the show notes, in terms of putting out publications, people getting in touch, what's the best route in?

Well, I would say, if you're interested, you know, if you're interested in our bags, and accessories, by all means, go to mooreandgiles.com. If you're looking for more information about our leather hides, in general, as a designer, you can go there and go to the top of the screen and click leather for designers, or you can go to more and styles.com forward slash leather. And, you know, people are more than welcome to reach out to me just like you did, Matt and ask any questions you like, about leather in general or, you know, sustainability, what, what we're doing, what we're aware of, and then I can also put people in touch with the representative for their area if they're, if they're within the industry.

Good on you. Well, I mean, thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure.

sustainable interior material - maize veneer

Turning heirloom maize into a sustainable interiors material - TOTOMOXTLE

What makes a sustainable fabric or material?

Specifying healthy materials in an interiors fit-out is an essential component of creation of green buildings, with special focus on flooring, wall coverings and furniture.

For us, a sustainable materials or ‘green’ procurement strategy incorporates thinking from the fields of sustainability, biophilic design and healthy interiors to ensure that the materials going into a space are non-toxic, do not off-gas over time and will therefore not have a negative impact on Indoor Air Quality (a human angle) whilst also minimizing damage to the planet in the process.

Considerations include ‘circularity’ (where does it come from and where does it go at the end of its life), ‘upcycling’ (for example yarn made of ocean plastics), and ‘bio-based’ options such as ‘marine-based’ or ‘plant-based’ materials. There are then sustainably sourced classics such as bamboo, wood, cork and rubber that remain central components of this philosophy.

Inevitably, there are often some hard choices to be made in any discussion around sustainable fabrics and materials. Humans always have a tangible impact on our environment with buildings, there is no way around that, we can however aim to do less harm in the process, at the very least!

In this regard, we council factoring in extraction, production and transportation in any true analysis of a healthy building material to get to a true Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).

A sustainable interiors material made of Mexican corn

Totomoxtle is a project by London-based Mexican designer Fernando Laposse using the husks of heirloom Mexican corn.

Laposse is known for experimenting with the loofah fruit and cochineal insects so is clearly pushing the boundaries of what is possible in sustainable interiors materials!

His maize husk project caught our eye with its purples, reds and cream colour palette, a far cry from the now dominant beige corn used in industrial tortillas, this is all about heirloom corn at the base of Mexico’s gastronomic heritage.

In this sense, industrial corn production, especially that destined for corn syrup, has a lot to answer for. Heirloom maize is in fact a heterogeneous product!

How sustainable is this innovative material?

Laposse goes deep into the sustainability theme here as there is a regenerative agriculture angle at play restoring traditional farming practices as a way to drive revenues to struggling farming communities.

The merciless pressures of big agriculture have driven standardized uniformity via pesticide use and imported GMO corn seeds that have left artisanal maize varieties neglected. Profits for local indigenous farmers growing heritage crops has dropped at the same time.

Since 2016, Tototmoxtle has operated in partnership with the community of Tonahuixtla, a small village of Mixtec farmers and herders in the state of Puebla, reintroducing native seeds as a first step towards restoring some semblance of traditional agriculture crops.

The veneer remains a niche product that has not yet found large-scale distribution so is more of a statement of intent showing what is possible.

Having a social mission behind a material that is inherently sustainable looks to be the Holy Grail for the coming years, we hope to see many more such products coming to market that help support communities while giving back to the land, not just taking from it.

Contact us to discuss your sustainable interiors project.

Healthy Buildings: RESET Air quality certification statuses

What is a healthy building?

Healthy building design focuses on indoor air quality (IAQ), visual comfort, light quality, acoustic performance, active design, thermal comfort and cleaning protocols - it requires a combination of multi-sensory design and healthy design strategies.

What is RESET Air healthy building standard?

RESET stands for “Regenerative, ecological, social and economic targets”. Unlike other green building or healthy building standards, such as LEED, WELL or FITWEL, RESET AIR does not insist on any set, prescribed paths towards achieving high quality indoor air results.

Their approach is simply to leave the door open to innovation, how each project gets there is up to the project team. It is the destination that matters most in this instance, RESET do not concern themselves with prescribing the journey.

Applicable to a wide variety of project types, both commercial and residential, RESET leverage the latest data standards that help assess air quality data from reliable sources (almost 20 accredited air quality monitors at the last check).

There are more than 500 RESET Accredited Professionals around the world, assisting as consultants in the RESET certification process for clients and generally championing the RESET indoor air quality program within the real estate industry.

New modules on Materials, Energy, Water and Circularity are in the pipeline to join the Air module that was launched first.

What are the RESET Air certification statuses?

These statuses are a response to the need for greater levels or phases that a project passes through on its path to healthy building certification with RESET.

RESET ENTRY STATUS

A short-term certificate for those with at least one month of continuous monitor data, this was a way to address concern around airborne pathogens in the indoor environment, post Covid-19.

This helps building owners to make a quick decision around improving their air quality in their property.

This status does not require the same calculations on occupants in each space, as one single monitor can be enough to help understand if there are any immediate air quality problems with an indoor space. However the project must use a RESET accredited monitor installed in line with the standard and an accredited data provider.

RESET CONNECTED STATUS

A project with accredited monitors and data provider platforms installed, tapping into the power of the RESET Cloud but not necessarily going forward into full RESET certification.

A way to access the data and used for purposes such as stakeholder / tenant engagement, benchmarking and so on.

Project deployment quantity calculations are recommended but not obligatory. One monitor may suffice here but data is ongoing, not just a 30-day timeline as per ENTRY status.

RESET PRE-ACCREDITED STATUS

For projects with a RESET AP on the team and have created a monitor deployment plan using the standard, calculating how many monitors are required and in which locations, along with a pre-deployment plan that has been approved by a RESET Auditor, making it the Approved Deployment plan of record.

This status reflects the amount of work that has gone into the pre-deployment phase, perhaps even before a building has been constructed. Ideal for design phase projects prior to physical installation.

RESET ACCREDITED STATUS

All steps for deployment and installation have been completed, with data now bing collected through an accredited data provider, just waiting to see the data results. So it is a project 100% ready to go generating high quality data.

RESET CERTIFIED STATUS

Projects that have met all the monitor deployment criteria and the data they provide has passed the performance requirements after a minimum of three month of data.

Multiple stakeholders are likely engaged in maintaining this status as it involves both the building owner and ongoing maintenance via facilities management and tenants.

Contact us to discuss your indoor air quality enquiry or indeed RESET AIr certification.

ESG Community - supporting Social Enterprises

ESG - procuring from local social enterprises

boutique real estate esg

For our real estate development fund client in London we implemented a comprehensive series of social enterprise partnerships as part of a community outreach program, many of these changes also have a positive impact on creating a healthy office whilst creating goodwill amongst employees and financially supporting those in need, both directly and indirectly.

Handwash and soaps come from The Soap Co, manufacturers based in East London of vegan, cruelty free, natural and certified plastic-free products that also create jobs for the blind (hence the subtle use of braille in their branding), disabled or otherwise disadvantaged.

These products are of high quality, have minimalist packaging so look perfectly at home in corporate work environment, whilst still subtly communicating their social purpose. A perfect balance between form and function.

ESG plan - ethical coffee supplier for the office kitchen

Fairtrade, organic coffee is supplied by Cafedirect, an award-winning B Corp business owned and led by smallholder farmers via seven supporting partnerships in Peru and Africa.

Cafedirect were the first to become Fairtrade certified back in 1994 and have developed home compostable packaging solutions. A London Fields-based social enterprise we were proud to support.

ESG plan - ethical water supplier for meeting rooms

Mineral Water is now supplied by BELU that give 100% of net profits to WATERAID to support the provision of clean water and hygienic toilets to disadvantaged communities around the world. BELU are also carbon neutral, use 100% recyclable packaging, lightweight ethical glass that is 35% lighter than normal and use recycled plastic bottles.

ESG plan - ethical office fruit supplies

Office fruit boxes are supplied by Fruitful in Croydon, in biodegradable packaging - a company devoted to making healthier workplaces, donating any food waste to local food charities such as zoos and nurseries, as well as planting one tree in Africa for every box delivered.

ESG plan - ethical office stationery supplier

EthStat is an ethical stationery cooperative that gives away 100% of its profits to charity and has developed an ethical, environmental supply chain of everyday office products. They are fully carbon neutral and have banned the use of all single use plastics in the business. We were pleased to support them with a regular office supply purchases.

Contact us to discuss how we can help you implement an ethical procurement plan for your business.

A guide to RESET Air Residential - healthy building standard

The Biofilico guide to RESET AIR Residential healthy building standard

RESET Air Residential in summary

RESET approach the subject of indoor air quality with a long-term perspective and therefore have created a healthy building standard for residential projects that specifies continuous monitoring rather than a one time only test.

This healthy building standard for residential projects specifies air quality monitor deployment, performance, maintenance and reporting. It can be applied to both new and existing interiors, whether single home or multi-family.

What is the goal of the RESET AIR Residential?

The standard sets out to continuously monitor particulate matter / PM2.5, as well as Total Volatile Organic Compounds / TVOCs, CO2 and CO in all regularly occupied space types.

This data must then be communicated to the residence’s inhabitants as a way to raise awareness and promote engagement with the theme.

Daily Indoor Air Quality IAQ targets are set to measure performance, in addition to zeroing in on the monitors themselves, their installation, the data they produce and ongoing calibration.

This healthy building standard is all about good data in other words!

Indoor Air Quality Certification

RESET Air recognizes that hours of occupancy, cooking areas, sleeping and entertaining all have a direct impact on indoor air quality within a home, which in turn should influence the air quality monitor deployment plan in their view.

For this reason, the certification is non-prescriptive, with space types includes or excluded based on a rationale provided by the ‘Reset AP’. Targets are given for average indoor air quality for PM 2.5, TVOC and CO2, as well as Carbon Dioxide (in spaces with combustion only) while Temperature and Relative Humidity have to be monitored but no specific targets are given.

High performance targets are also provided as global benchmarks in excellence for indoor air quality, specifically for PM 2.5, TVOC and CO2.

Indoor Air Quality Performance Targets

• PM 2.5 can cause respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. It is not to exceed 35 g/m3 or 12 g/m3 (high performance).

• VOCs include formaldehyde, benzene, toluene and styrene, with long-term exposure a risk for liver and kidney damage, amongst other things. The targets are not to exceed 500 g/m3 or 400 g/m3 (high performance).

• CO2 affects productivity and comfort, causing headaches and cognitive issues so should be limited to 1000 ppm or 600 ppm (high performance).

• Carbon Monoxide results from combustion and can cause dizziness, unconsciousness or worse, so levels should not exceed 9 ppm.

Data is sent to the RESET Assessment Cloud for analysis and daily averages calculated from hours of occupancy should not exceed performance targets for a total of three months in order to receive the initial certification… but that is just the start!

What data providers and air quality monitors are required?

Only accredited data providers can report data to the RESET Assessment Cloud, with hourly data uploaded for occupant’s to see on an ongoing basis, for example via screen display or smartphone app.

Our friends at AWAIR offer monitors and the data upload as well, making them a sensible solution.

Only calibration grade (A) or commercial grade (B) air quality monitors are accepted, not consumer grade monitors (C).

These monitors need to be installed on a wall, in a central location within each designated space type, 3-6 ft from the ground and at least 16 ft from an operable window, a minimum of 16 ft from air filters or fresh-air diffusers and hard wired to a permanent power source.

Finally, a Carbon monoxide detector has to be within 5 metres of bedrooms.

How to calculate monitor deployment

This is a key deliverable for the RESET AP (professional consultant on the project) and requires that they:

• define the project boundary

• identify regularly occupied spaces (more than 1hr each day), with sleeping areas individually itemized / treated separately

• deploy one monitor for each space type and one in every sleeping area

• deploy one CO detector within 16 ft of each bedroom (this could be in a corridor between multiple bedrooms), if there is a source of combustion, or is adjacent to a parking garage for example (monitors should also comply with local code)

• ensure a monitor range of 500m2, i.e. no single space type larger than 500m2 can use a single monitor, that is the maximum range for a single unit

Contact us to discuss your indoor air quality project requirements

Marine-based Circular Economy materials

How can we use sustainably sourced marine materials in our homes, offices and buildings in order to reduce their environmental impact and boost their wellbeing benefits?

Our sister company BioBlu specialises in sustainable yachting, including yacht interiors., see here for more detail or read on if your interest is in wellness real estate and healthy interiors.

NATURE’S WELLNESS BENEFITS

Modern technology combined with a renewed appreciation for the genius of nature mean that we now understand far more than ever before about the air-purifying, anti-viral, anti-bacterial, anti-odour, self-cleaning and sound-absorbing qualities of certain materials.

By selecting each one for its unique characteristics we create sustainable interiors with added wellness benefits for occupants.

ORGANIC PLANT-BASED MATERIALS

We work with Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) wood, organic cotton bed sheets, coconut fibre mattresses (see image above!), cork tiles, palm leaf wallpapers, eco-rubber gym flooring, acoustic wool and corn husk wall vinyls, amongst other things!

MARINE BIO MATERIALS

From spirulina health supplements to Thalassotherapy sea sessions , the eco-friendly health benefits of seaweed, algae and kelp are by now well established. Today they can be found in high-end mattresses, hydrating facial serums and even compostable food containers. Sustainably sourced seashells can also be used as inlays in wall panels or table tops for a distinctive bio aesthetic.

TEXTILES FROM OCEAN PLASTIC

When replacing indoor or outdoor furniture fabrics, we advocate for the use of high-quality Circular Economy textiles derived from upcyled ocean-plastic. A number of big players exist in the market already, from Repreve to Seaqual, OceanWorks and OceanBalance.

SOURCING & RECYCLING METALS

Aluminium can be endlessly recycled in an energy-efficient manner. Stainless steel is fully recyclable, highly durable and retains value at the end of each life cycle. Materials with a closed-loop like these require no further natural resources from the earth provided care is taken to ensure they are suitably recycled.

vertical farming for the workplace

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.

This episode is with Square Mile Farms - providing biophilia in the shape of vertical farming for the workplace.

In this episode we talk to Johnathan Ransom, Co-Founder and CEO of Square Mile Farms, a business bringing vertical farming to the home and workplace with the aim of promoting healthier, more sustainable lifestyles. I first came across them a couple of years ago and have kept an eye on their steady progress.

Biophilia with vertical farming

In this episode we talk to Johnathan Ransom, Co-Founder and CEO of Square Mile Farms, a business bringing vertical farming to the home and workplace with the aim of promoting healthier, more sustainable lifestyles. I first came across them a couple of years ago and have kept an eye on their steady progress.

These mini vertical gardens are about more than just quirky wall decor, they represent a tangible connection with nature in urban environments, have a practical function in terms of producing a respectable quantity of edible leaves each month and go one better than a largely passive garden wall in a corporate office reception.

An indoor office garden, or vertical farm, like these help promote engagement amongst staff, adding intrigue and even a little fun into the office experience, right when it needs it most post-Covid.

GUEST: JOHNATHAN RANSOM, SQUARE MILE FARMS

• https://www.squaremilefarms.com/

• https://www.instagram.com/squaremilefarms/

• https://www.facebook.com/squaremilefarms

• https://www.linkedin.com/company/square-mile-farms/

• https://twitter.com/SM_Farms

FULL Transcript follows courtesy of Otter.ai

Matt Morley 0:14

Welcome to Episode 12 of the Green and Healthy Places podcast, in which we take a deep dive into the world of sustainability, wellness and community in the real estate and hospitality sectors. I'm your host, Matt Morley, founder of BioBlu yacht sustainability, Biofilico wellness interiors, and Biofit nature gyms. If you see value in this type of content, please hit LIKE, SHARE, or consider subscribing.

In this episode, we talk to Jonathan Ransom, Co-founder and CEO of Square Mile Farms in London, UK, a business that's bringing vertical farming to the home and workplace with the aim of promoting healthier, more sustainable lifestyles.

Healthy Buildings and ESG

I first came across Jonathan and square mile farms a couple of years ago, and I've kept an eye on their steady progress since then, as I look after the ESG and placemaking for a commercial real estate development fund in London, I'm aware that their product aligns neatly with both LEED, BREEAM green building certifications on one side, and WELL + FITWEL healthy building certifications on the other, which in turn has the knock on effect of helping with the property funds annual ESG assessment score means you get two or even three hits for the price of one.

Beyond the box ticking though these mini vertical gardens are genuinely about more than just quirky wall decorations. They represent a tangible connection with nature in urban environments, they have a practical function in terms of producing a respectable quantity of edible leaves and hubs each month, and frankly, just go one better than what is often a largely passive, vertical plant wall in a corporate office reception. A garden like this helps promote engagement among staff. It adds intrigue, and even why not a little fun into the office experience. Right when offices need it most in the post COVID era….

Jonathan, thanks for joining us. Great to have you here on the green and Healthy Places podcast. Perhaps you could give a quick introduction to who you are and what you do as co founder and CEO of square mile farms in London.

Jonathan Ransom 2:40

Yeah, okay. So my professional backgrounds in in property. I'm a chartered surveyor by training. I spent a lot of my career working in financial services, though, but with a with a property slant to it most recently was the CIO or the FinTech business in the UK called lend invest. And I think, what what what got me into doing what I'm doing today, and we'll come on to perhaps a bit more description of what that is, but is that I got a little bit disenfranchised by the world of finance, and I guess, you know, you you, there's an obvious career route in in financial services. But ultimately, it can be a little bit unsatisfying, and I was looking for a career in in a sector that is more personally rewarding and fulfilling. And my now business partner, Patrick, and I got talking about this prospect of growing fresh, healthy vegetables in the built environment, which played nicely to my professional experience with the built environment. And I guess the backdrop to all of that is a both of us having a pretty, you know, they say be being a little bit conscious or even worried about the state of our agri food sector and the impact that that has on our on the environment, but also on our personal health.

Matt Morley 4:13

And so the name square mile farms for anyone who's not familiar with it, square mile is London's financial district of CBD. And so essentially you're you're proposing or you're proposing you deliver urban vertical farms specifically to London but what's your geographic focus now?

Jonathan Ransom 4:36

Yeah, at the moment with we're focused on London and the the genesis of that that name was really that the original business model was to look at putting controlled environment farms within a square mile of the end consumer which naturally then cuts down on food miles but also re engages the, the consumer with the with the food system and the food they eat also has benefits on the nutritional content of Food as well, because food tends to lose some of its nutritional qualities, the further it travels. So that was really the genesis of square mile farms, obviously also because we're based in London and it was going to be a very urban model. So you know, that's that's why that name came about

Matt Morley 5:20

and the business model then focusing specifically on homes and offices, you're not in the game as yet of, of sort of agriculture itself a growing food for for sale and distribution. It's more about a provision of the this piece of, of hardware effectively, that produces greenery in a home or in an office environment.

Jonathan Ransom 5:42

Yeah, well, maybe I'll just take a quick moment to take you back over some of the history of the business. So we've been around for a couple of years now. And the original model was a grow to sell model. And we set up our first self built control environment farm in in Bermondsey back in towards the beginning, beginning of 2019. And we tested that market, you know, growing within the built environment to sell to local restaurants, and local chefs and local consumers ultimately, as well. And so we build what we call a flat pack farm, which and the idea was that it's something that can easily be easily assembled or disassembled within tight urban spaces. And it became quite apparent quite quickly that that model of growing to sell is very hard to make work economically, particularly if you're not doing it at large scale. And most of the controller work environment farms that you see are doing it on massive scale, but even even they I think, would be struggling to kind of turn a profit based on their operational overheads as of today. But what that meant was the we we quickly turned to what we knew a bit more and that what we knew was more about corporate big corporates and, and the built environment and go talking to big property company called British land over here in the UK, and they invited us to build one of our flatpak Farms on the roof of their a building in Paddington Central, and actually just so happens that Microsoft occupy the building that that we have that farm and the roof off. But whilst we were there, we were then able to, you know, talk to a lot of the big local occupiers such as Vodafone, these, you know, Microsoft Richland, and it became quite apparent that what they really wanted was something that helped them engage with their employees to create an experience for their employees, but also help to address some of their kind of sustainability and, and, say, community responsibilities. And so we came up with this idea of office farming. And the idea with Office farming is that we put a hydroponic farm up inside the office and run, basically an engagement model around it. So we get the employees involved in the running of the farms, they get to take home the fresh produce, but we also educate them on sustainability and, and personal health, both physical and mental health with a focus on the food you eat, where it's coming from, how it's been produced, how you consume it, what it does to body, those sorts of things. So it's going beyond the kind of this the sustainability of the building that we're located on has some benefits for that also, but also helps a company say educate their workforce and how they can live healthier, low impact lifestyles.

Matt Morley 8:58

So I was going to ask you for a clarification on the or distinction between what's commonly referred to as say, like a vertical garden wall, or a green, a green wall, which obviously in one sense plays to biophilia, a place to reconnect with nature in an urban environment, possibly it can play into productivity and potentially an air purifying benefit. But clearly, once you open the door to this being in a consumable natural leaves you open a whole discussion around the food system and relationship to food and urban farming, which is clearly where you sort of make a big right turn away from just being a decorative object right?

Jonathan Ransom 9:45

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, there's there's a lot of benefits of having plants in buildings as he touched on and and there's this this phrase or word by failures is bandied around quite a lot of them. But ultimately, what it boils down to two things, one is, how does it improve the environment in which you are. So whether that's within the Office or at home, and that environment is both about, you know, air quality. Air Quality can be around acoustics, it can be around, you know, just having greenery in the office as an on may benefit to the office. But it but on the on the flip side, this is biophilia benefit, which is that that kind of goodness that humanity gets from being with nature and interacting with nature, and that's a very, can be can be a psychological thing, but it's also a physiological thing. So it's, you feel better for reason for, for reasons of, you know, 1000s of years of evolution alongside nature, the benefit of having edible plants in the office is that that interaction becomes enhanced. So if you've just got a green wall, that looks great, you know, there's a novelty there, it does look great. And it does have some benefits in terms of the quality of the air etc, in the office, but you're not interacting with it, you don't, you don't have that same interaction that naturally we might have with with nature. Whereas if it's an edible farm wall, you do interact with it, you're you're harvesting it, you're eating the produce from it, you're you're helping to plant it up. So every time you walk past it, you see the fruits of your labour, and you get some satisfaction from that. So it goes further than just sort of urban greening that say it brings in that element of engagement and an experience and, you know, it's a physical activity as well. So it does, it has some fiscal benefits as well.

Matt Morley 11:49

So when you think about the problem that you're solving, or the the unmet need that you were trying to address when you when you got started on this, what what if you like would be your competitors in that sense, or what else is in is typically in an office or a corporate office environment, such as a Microsoft or wherever it may be that is doing something similar? Because, you know, obviously, the walls have more of a passive element, whereas you're talking much more about an experiential piece, right?

Jonathan Ransom 12:17

Yeah. So I guess, what might be worth just just dwelling quickly on who the buyers of the service that services are so so one of the buyers would be someone that's responsible for fitting out the office space and making it look good and making it work well, for the employees, the other buyer is, and sort of competitors and might fall into that space might be your typical kind of office, or interior, landscaping companies. On the on the other side, the buyers are the, you know, the HR team is responsible for employee wellbeing and engagement and even recruitment and retention. And they're more interested in the kind of engagement and the experience element of it. So on that side, the people that that I guess we might come across in terms of competition for budgets that say spoil it down to that would be your people like, you know, Nuffield health, for instance, the thing about the the, and they're providing a well being service around this focused on, let's say, fitness and exercise. The thing about someone like Nuffield health is, of course, they're taking you out of the office. to to to get that experience, what we're doing is keeping you in the office, which really plays to the kind of the future of the future vision of the people have or the office post COVID. We're keeping you in the office and creating an experience for you in the office, which can get you away from your desk, create some physical activity, create some mental activity takes you away from the kind of day to day thinking about, you know, what's on your computer screen. But then alongside that we do also provide other services, such as workshops might be, you know, nutritional consultations, and we do supper clubs and things like that, which is, again, some of those things you'd expect enough field health type business to offer alongside the gym membership. So there is some similarities that say, but but we feel that our model combined so many different of the different, let's say needs of a of a big corporate.

Matt Morley 14:28

I think the activation pieces is really strong component to what you're doing to the sort of overall service offer. You mentioned. COVID and how have things been? I'm guessing budgets are being reduced, offices are being closed, therefore it's had a direct impact on perhaps new orders, or perhaps, yeah, your your pipeline of potential clients, but how are you seeing the next 12 to 24 months in a in a post COVID world and how do you think you're Duck will, will emerge from the ashes of this current crisis that the workplace is going through.

Jonathan Ransom 15:08

So, I think that the world is looking for the type of services that we offer, fortunately, admittedly, the last say nine months have been challenging, mainly because the types of the people that hold the budgets for this, this type of service are really need to have some visibility on when people come back to the office. But they're also going through, you know, a pretty involved process of trying to think about what they want that office to be for in the future. And I think even before COVID, there was a shift towards, you know, more experiential office, places that are less about places where people come and sit behind the computer screen, like a battery and, and churn out work, because you can do that at home. Frankly, it's more about engaging and say, growing your workforce, and about experiences and about interactions. And so consequently, you know, the office, the Office of tomorrow will be full of things that help foster those type of activities. They won't they won't be crammed full of desks where people perch with their laptop cell belt, they'll be more loungy in, in, in appearance. And so, you know, one thing we've been working on with Vodafone in Paddington is this idea of a Zen Garden, which is, you know, their, their idea where they create create a kind of area for people to relax and chill out. And what better kind of place to put a allotment wall, then in a, in a Zen Garden, within when the off within the Office. So it's, you know, it's very, it's very topical. And a lot of a lot of companies that we talk to now have task forces put together that are tasked with making the office suitable for the post COVID world. And so so it seems that there's there's quite a lot of activity going on in terms of reconfiguring refitting spaces to make to make it appropriate for that post COVID world, and that's where we fit in, because they want something normal, you know, lots of offices of the past might have ping pong tables, or table football or computer consoles, or whatever. But you know, an office farming model brings both the experience but also the educational side. And, and, and it takes a lot of boxes from a kind of office sustainability perspective as well. Yep,

Matt Morley 17:59

I get it. I mean, it's fun, it's engaging, it's a talking point, it's, it's a water cooler moment, in a way. So just to dig into to that process, then the idea of, you might have HR on one side, perhaps sort of brand director or marketing guys on the other, perhaps the facilities manager, or management team, around the table, who else is is involved in that process, when you go from identifying a suitable location, and perhaps you might be able to comment on what would would make up a suitable location within an office environment. And and describe that process of going from initial introduction through to actually opening one of your, your vertical farms, presumably, a few months later.

Jonathan Ransom 18:45

Yeah, I mean, it varies depending on where the kind of entry point was to the conversation, but just take one, one example. So that say, the offices, the company is looking to refurbish their space, and in light of changes that are needed post COVID. They might they, the likelihood is, then we're talking to the person responsible for the fit out, so maybe a, you know, workplace strategy person or, you know, the, in the old world, we call them kind of corporate real estate managers or something along those lines. So they then obviously, we'll be engaging with their interior designers. And at some point, they, you know, once they've got an idea of the sorts of things that they can get from us, they then introduce us to the interior designers, and we have a chat about where it can go, whether whether we, we sort of integrate it into the building services such as the plumbing or whether we have it as a standalone unit that has its own water source. We find the location and we then talk to the contractor about, you know, what services, we do need and And, you know, often if it's a wall hung unit, then we might need a some reinforcing on the wall. And then just sort of bet into that project management as the fitout goes along. And normally where they're kind of lost people in and just mounted on the wall at the end. And off it goes planted up, and people can then start engaging with it.

Matt Morley 20:23

So irrigation, the load that goes on to the wall, if it is a wall loaded piece of preferably sort of a structural wall, and some component of light, I'm guessing, or does the vertical farm come with its own lighting system integrated into the hardware?

Jonathan Ransom 20:43

Yeah, so actually, the loading isn't isn't so much of an issue, we've just mounted one in sort of double thickness plaster board. So I it's a consideration, but isn't, often doesn't become a limitation. But what it needs is a either a water source that we can plummet into for the irrigation, or relatively near to a water source so that it's quite easy to get water to the to the wall itself. But it but it's recirculating, so it doesn't need to be continually topped up. And yes, it does need a light source. But because we're talking about edible plants, they require higher intensity light than then some of the kind of conventional office plants would need. Because it you know, the light intensity does affect the growth rate, and also the flavour of the plants as well. The system has a integrate integrated lighting, which needs a little bit of thought because it does come off the face of the wall. We also use what we call hydroponic towers, which are sort of standalone units, which is literally a tower with plants growing out the side of it which have lights integrated again in like a halo effect, which we can put anywhere in the office. It doesn't doesn't need to be mounted on the wall.

Matt Morley 22:15

What are the options that in terms of the actual type of foliage that the farm is producing? And the sort of nuts and bolts of all of this at the end of the day? Is it a bag of lettuce leaves the flowers woody would typically you do? Or would you recommend growing for sort of maximum productivity and limited amount of maintenance required and so on?

Jonathan Ransom 22:38

Yeah, so you touched on a couple of good points. I wanted one. Yep. productivity is important. plants that are the kind of give you the opportunity for engagement are important. But also from an operational perspective. We don't want to be going there too frequently to replant things that you know, in the case of a lettuce, for instance, you read the entire lettuce head, so you end up having to replant the entire plant. So we do focus on leafy greens and Herbes. You can grow fruiting crops, so tomatoes, strawberries, that sort of thing in in these types of systems, but they do require a higher intensity of light. So if for instance, we're putting we have some outside space, we might use outside space to to put up put up a farm wall, an exterior farm wall or one of our hydroponic towers outside and in the summer, you could then grow things like strawberries and tomatoes, but in the office, we're growing things like lettuce, but that also like kale, chard, both of which you cut the leaves and you can leave the plant and they they grow back so you can get multiple harvests of them. And they look great as well. So you know, Rainbow rainbow chard, lots of different colours on your wall so they look fantastic and they're relatively quick growing as well. We also then Basil's as a is a very popular one. And again, you can cut the leaves and come back and it smells fantastic. So particularly when you're harvesting it creates a lovely fragrance around the office, you know, rosemary, thyme, all the all the stuff that you might grow in a English garden, the difference being that you're growing in the office, and you can do it all year round, because the office environments a lot more stable than, you know, the seasonal environment outside in the UK. So yeah, in a in a kind of nutshell. It's leafy greens and Herbes.

Matt Morley 24:38

But then you do also have now a home farm alternative, which would be presumably on a smaller scale that's more manageable. That would be more of a residential product.

Jonathan Ransom 24:50

Yeah, correct. Yeah. And, and it's worth saying that one of the main challenges with growing indoors is the lighting And, and so with with the home farms that there is much about, you know, making the most of limited outdoor space that you have as they are about indoor space. So in some homes where you have a lot of light, you can, you know, put put one indoors, and we have a lighting solution that supplements the light, which means that you're not relying on natural light. But if you're growing outdoors on a terrorist for instance, then, you know, the world's your oyster really, and it doesn't, you know, if you're growing outdoors, you might be just as inclined to grow flowers, flat flowering plants as you are edible plants. And if it's sort of overwinter, then you might put some evergreens in and our systems modular, which means that the plants each have an individual pot that you hang on to a frame that sits behind it, but it means that you can easily take that port out and replant it with different plants, or indeed create patterns on the wall of different colours. So whatever takes your fancy, really, and I think I think just touching on the this concept of a pollinator pod and a productive productive pod and those sort of things. What we're trying to do there is just in simple terms, demonstrate that, you know, each plant plants have different functions. And both in the environment, but also in terms of what you humans get out of them. Some of them are about, they look great, which are the flowering ones, and also they produce flowers. So they're great for insects as well. So the pollinator pods are great for attracting insects into your garden, which has the knock on effect of pollinating other plants that you have in the garden, so you can start creating, you know, fantastic biodiversity. And then the producer pods are, you know, edible plants. So stuff that that you can cut and eat in your kitchen and replant and off you go again. So that's that's the idea really there. We just thought that was quite a fun a fun idea of bringing bringing to life though different sort of plants that you can, you can grow.

Matt Morley 27:17

Yeah, it's exciting. It is really, yeah, sort of makes you want to grab one and get started. And there's no excuses. Once you've sorted the lightest you rent man, one can always complain about how hard it is to grow plants or wants to terrorist. But in a way, this is a different approach. You've also gone through a crowdfunding process recently. So you've raised some capital, what are your What are your plans in terms of rollout expansion or growing over the next few years?

Jonathan Ransom 27:42

So yeah, we did the crowdfunding last year, which was a fantastic success. And I think it was well timed in that a lot of the people that get involved in a lot of the investors or get involved in crowdfunding campaigns were, you know, spending a lot of time at home during lockdown, but also we're reflecting on the sorts of things that are important. And obviously, health and well being. are, you know, they're they're important, increasingly important to people. And I think our model resonated with with the crown. So we we raise half a million pounds through that process and can had nearly 900 in investors contribute, which was a fantastic, fantastic to see. So the idea is that now what we want to do is really focus on getting these farms into offices, but also into we've got a new push recently into getting farms into co living spaces. So working with the operators of the sort of apartment buildings, and putting farms here, sort of communal farms in apartment buildings and helping people then also get some production going within their apartments themselves. So we're the this year is all about kind of rolling that out, and really demonstrating how it can work and then sort of scaling off off the back of that. So I think we'll have you know, we're optimistic about getting about 15 Farms in over the next nine months or so. And you know, that that for us would be a good achievement start with,

Matt Morley 29:20

it does feel like the whole sort of biophilia movement biophilic design, made its name with with office environments, and now does seem to be being adopted, probably, I'd say both at the very, very high end of the residential market, but also with the sort of more millennial focused co living spaces. So I think I think you're onto something there. I think we really interesting to see how you, you get on with the with the CO living new business strategy. One final question, if I may, if you were to send one message out to the real estate hospitality sector in a post COVID world if you could see one change in this industry of ours over the next few years. What would you ask for?

Jonathan Ransom 30:04

I guess I'd encourage them to listen to their customers, particularly in in the sort of residential space because the the sort of types of accommodation that that people have been living in, up to now it can be pretty, you know that the urban world is a pretty cramped world, and in a world where we're spending a lot more time at home, we have to be a little more focused on people's, you know, what they need to live healthy lifestyles. And, you know, it doesn't mean you have to give them huge amounts of space, but it does mean you need to give them amenities. And and those amenities have to be beyond the kind of normal stuff of maybe having a gym in the basement, or, or what have you, it needs to be broader than that. And from from kind of combining those two, you know, the residential space and the office spaces, it shouldn't really be thinking about them independently. Because as we're seeing now, the concept of an office isn't so much about the the kind of physical manifestation of a building that you go and work it's about. It's about where you work and the the kind of immediate amenities that are provided to to be able to work in that environment. So is joining those, the kind of living environment and the working environment together and how we balance those, those two things. So I'd just encourage some kind of novel thinking around that space.

Matt Morley 31:32

Very cool. I think you are uniquely positioned to have to make your contribution to that whole process over the next few years. Good on you. So if people want to connect, what's the best way for them to reach out square mile farms?

Jonathan Ransom 31:46

The numbers on phone numbers on the website, there's an email address on there as well. We're also very active on social so if your thing is his Instagram, then follow us there you can see see what we're doing. We tend to put videos and pictures of what we're up to on there. And by all means, ping us a message. And we'll get back to you ASAP.

Wellness Eco-Luxury Resorts with Revivo

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.

This episode is with Laurie Mias, CEO of Revivo Wellness Resorts

Revivo Eco-Luxury Wellness Resorts

In this episode we are in Hong Kong to talk to French-born Laurie Mias, CEO of Revivo Eco-Luxury Wellness Resorts. They have a successful property already up and running in Bali, a second resort opening this year  in a historic chateau near Toulouse in the south of France with others in the pipeline in Malaysia, Barcelona and Sri Lanka. 

Health & Wellness in the Revivo brand DNA

Our conversation covers Revivo’s sustainable resort development strategy, how Laurie juggles her role as Revivo CEO while leading the development of sister brand Pavillion Hotel’s residential project in Niseko, Japan;  ultra local procurement policies, the benefits of on-site farms for the restaurant menu, mindful movement for neuro-plasticity and slow-aging, their deliberately soulful version of a hotel workout sessions, integrating local healing traditions, the benefits of artistic therapy sessions, plant-bars for guests to blend their own tinctures, teas and bath salts; nighttime sleep rituals and even a 16th century salt cave for underground halotherapy. 

GUEST / LAURIE MIAS

https://www.revivoresorts.com/ 

https://www.pavilionshotels.com/niseko/

In this episode we are in Hong Kong to talk to French-born Laurie Mias, CEO of Revivo Eco-Luxury Wellness Resorts. They have a successful property already up and running in Bali, a second resort opening this year in a historic chateau near Toulouse in the south of France with others in the pipeline in Malaysia, Barcelona and Sri Lanka.

FULL TRANSCRIPT TO FOLLOW COURTESY OF OTTER.AI - excuse the typos

Matt Morley 0:13

Welcome to Episode 13 of the Green and Healthy Places podcast, in which we take a deep dive into the world of sustainability and wellness in real estate and hospitality today. I'm your host, Matt Morley, founder of BioBlu eco yachting, Biofit nature gyms and Biofilico wellness interiors.

In this episode, we're in Hong Kong to talk to French born Laurie Mias, CEO of Revivo eco luxury wellness resorts. They have a successful property already up and running in Bali, a second resort opening this year in a historic Chateau near Toulouse in the south of France, with others in the pipeline in Malaysia, Barcelona and Sri Lanka. My conversation with Laurie covers the Revivo sustainable resort development strategy, how she juggles her role as CEO or for Revivo on one side, while also leading the development of sister brand Pavilion Hotels residential project in Osaka, Japan; ultra local, or hyperlocal procurement policies; the benefits of onsite farms for a restaurant menu; mindful movement for neuroplasticity and slow aging; their deliberately soulful version of a typical hotel workout; how to integrate local healing traditions into the guest experience; the benefits of artistic therapy sessions; their 'plant bar' concept for guests to blend their own tinctures, teas and bath salts; nighttime rituals, and even a 16th century salt cave for underground halotherapy!

Laurie, thanks so much for joining us today. Perhaps you could give us a quick introduction to your role because I know you're working both on the Revivo wellness resorts and with Pavilion on the other side?

Laurie 2:18

Yeah, that's correct. Revivo Bali we started from scratch. So it's my, my DNA if you like, and it's all about wellness, and it's more luxury positioning. So my job is pretty much CEO supervising everything. However, for Pavilion Hotels and resorts, my role is just supervising the constructions of houses in Japan in in Niseko so I've been busy doing that for the past three years, we built four houses. And originally it was a huge land. So it was really interesting because we had to bring electricity and drill the onsen. And yeah, just just you know, make it make the road. So yeah, and lots of constraints that I never I never had to figure out before such as the snow everything is ruled by by the snow with a snowing in Niseko in this area because you can snow up to 10 meters in one night. So it's kind of crazy. And and then you have to do everything around the snow clearing issues.

Matt Morley 3:38

So that's a development role getting new dots on the map, new hotels open for the Pavilion, but then on the Revivo side what was the process in terms of creating and defining the DNA, presumably identifying a gap in the market and creating a concept or effectively a new resort brand to fill that gap?

Laurie 4:11

So yeah, I was pitching the main investor of Revivo wellness resorts to invest into my own business back then, which was a green juicery I had launched in Hong Kong and I needed money to expand the capacity of production. And he told me - no not interested but what are you doing next weekend? Do you want to go to Bali? I have houses in south of Bali. It's called Aman hotels. I'm sure everybody's familiar and yeah, I have those houses and now they're going to lose the lease, so we need to find a new operator. So why don't you go there next weekend? And just tell me what you think? Sure. So that's what I did. And then it came back. And I said, Yeah, it's an amazing properties. Okay, can you make for me a spa resort out of the four villas that I have? And I was like, yeah, sure, I'm sure I can do that. But you know, spa is a bit competitive, everybody has a spa nowadays. So eventually, I convinced him to make something much more comprehensive than just a luxury Spa Resort. And that's how Revivo was born basically, around that idea. And that was a very lucky encounter, obviously, because I mean, Hong Kong is a type of city that is really rewarding. And people don't really look at your resume, or how old are you?

Matt Morley 5:59

So you had that amazing opportunity, then you get dropped into this project in in Bali? what were the next steps from there? were you running feasibility studies? How did you recruit? What was the the team that you built around you in those early days?

Laurie 6:17

Yes. So eventually, I recruited the team of Aman that was already there, that was the easiest, because they've been building houses for the past 10 years. So I was in contact with the architect. And yeah, looking a lot, they wanted to continue because they had started this project. And so they wanted to continue. And then I, I asked them, you know, what, the properties so pretty, and I'm not an architect myself, I don't want to change anything, I just want to expand and create the spa, turns on rooms into treatment rooms, turn the main library into the bar area, you know, some small ish modifications like that. So it was quite easy. But then in terms of customers flow, you needed to think also, because the property is huge. So you didn't want people to have the change room 50 meters from the sauna, or the you know, so it was just this type of, of problematics that we're thinking about, and the rain as well, because you can rain a lot in Valley. So again, you don't want people to to be under the rain for too long. And the property is three hectares and only 16 villas. So yeah, we were thinking like that in terms of customers flow, and service.

Matt Morley 7:44

And a big piece of what you do then is clearly around sustainability. We can get on to the wellness section in a minute. What I've found interesting is you have this combination of the green and healthy, not just one or the other. And it's a big part of how you communicate online. So this idea of sustainable resort or sustainable development strategy, where you're reducing plastics, could you talk to us a bit about what that equates to?

Laurie 8:23

For me you don't see it, because you are in a luxury five star hotel. And it has to be normal at some point that for the price you pay you expect that you don't find a plastic bottle on your bedside table. For instance, I mean, to me, at least that's the definition of luxury nowadays. Because if we don't do it, if a five star hotel don't change a plastic bottle for a glass or refillable one, then who is going to do it, you know what I mean? Because, see, I mean goes without saying glass cost five, five times more than plastic. But everybody knows that. And it's convenient. Of course, when you look at the p&l, or the pre opening costs just to make the switch again, what drove this and we will think about about it later, but that's what I wanted to avoid to me. every single detail matters and and yeah, we have to show the example I feel like when you in the luxury, hospitality and especially I got so lucky to learn from the Armani hospitality that is really really, really ultra luxury. And they they've they don't get any any corners, you know, so I was like, Okay, I'm just gonna continue what they started to do and every single stone has been sourced in in Bali to build this project. And it was 25 years ago. You know that the first. The first house is the first hotel they built. Part of this project. Everything was sourced locally, the wood, the hats, the way they you know, the way they build. And yeah, every single sarong, every single hat was made in in Bali. It's also quite easy in Bali, because there is a really high tax on every single product that is imported. So to be honest, you don't really want to import anything, but But yeah, I think it's beautiful. Also, when people travel all around, I mean so far, and they arrive in Bali. And they I think they really appreciate that. Whatever they could find in our bedroom, let's say, we furnish yoga where because people come most of the time for yoga retreat, and our yoga were all made in eboard, in north of Bali with an organic cotton. And so you can go and visit a factory, same for our ceramics. Same for our soap. All our soaps are natural, and made in eboard. So again, people can go visit the factory, and I don't know, you really adds up, you know, we all those small details they add up. And that's what creates a luxurious, memorable experience. I think.

Matt Morley 11:19

Hotel brands have been talking about this concept of 'a sense of place' for so long. But it feels like only now, are they really delivering on that promise and doing exactly what you described, which is, every detail, not just in terms of the aesthetics, but in terms of where things are sourced and procured and actually made at a local level. So there's, there's so many layers to that sense of place. Now. Presumably, it's it's sort of embedded right into the DNA of each particular person. Yeah. And how do you how do you then move that forward, then into the idea of even producing your own food or ingredients for the kitchen? I know that you have hydroponic gardens on site in Bali? Is that a again, is that a? Is that a financial decision? Is it is it a huge capex investment? Has it proved to be a good decision?

Laurie 12:07

100%, I will do it again. Because, again, it adds a lot to the customer experience and those type of ideas, you also get them when you surround yourself with like minded people, and especially the nutritionist chef, who had put together our our menu. Her name is Ali walu. And she is Spanish also and for her. Yeah, it goes without saying that all the products that we use in our kitchen, they are 100% natural, they're 100% made in this kitchen, we don't buy any seasoning or any anything that is a premade kind of except the wine I would say or the alcohol, you know, but otherwise, everything is made in our own kitchen. So she was beautiful like that. And she really pushed me to, to really do everything with with our own product and locally sourced. And she was amazing in the in the procurement phase. And she only wanted to work with and cook with seasonal as well products. And she found for instance, I don't know, a fruit supplier, who is only picking up the fruit that he that he found on the floor, you know what I mean? So they arrived by themselves. So yeah, this type of of stories that I was so grateful for her to bring this, this content if you'd like to join us and yeah, thanks to people that you surround yourself with, when you have a good intention. And you know, all the dots kind of align, because you find people with similar intentions.

Matt Morley 13:55

Yeah, it's beautiful, it makes complete sense. So that in a way it gives you that neutral concept. And then I know you also have the movie or concept around movement and particularly I'm interested in the idea of combining the movement and mindfulness You know, a lot of every every hotel resort has some kind of a gym that usually not that exciting but very few of them do anything a bit more interesting with the gym and even fewer resorts. Think also about how movement and mindfulness can both be practiced. So how did you how did you go about creating that movie of fitness or wellness?

Laurie 14:28

So it was important for me, I'm not a gym person. I've never was but I knew we needed to have a resort gym design, so men, they like the high intensity workout. And so I tried to infuse mindfulness into even the gym that to me sounded without soul. And so for instance, if you come to to our Resort, which I hope you will one day, You will find that the teacher is starting the personal training class with breath work. And sometimes, maybe it's ending also the the class with the sound, the Tibetan bowl sound. just to connect because you are activating all your your body and it's already an amazing thing that you can do for for your body and for it for your mental health. But if on top of that, you you managed to integrate mindfulness I would say the benefits are 10 times better because you would be 100% aware and when you when you are aware and when you do things with mindfulness, basically your brain and your your connections, your your we call it neuroplasticity, the plasticity of your brain is much, much better. And like that you you can reduce the risk of having a neurodegenerative disease. So it's it's a bit complicated, but not really. But if you want to Google it, there is a lot of research that has proven that mindfulness, increases your neuroplasticity and reduce the risk of contracting a neurodegenerative disease. So you live longer and healthier and happier.

Matt Morley 16:24

reminds me a little bit of, I guess of two things - yoga And then also from my perspective on martial arts, you know, there's a moment before you, you step onto the mats when you practice, most martial arts where you take a breath, kind of you bow to the, to the studio to the to the gym, where you're training, and you have a mindful moment before you start practicing. And obviously Yoga is that sort of Mind Body connection. So there's integrating that into the fitness side is is fascinating. It also raises the question of how the Asian influence is part of the brand, as a whole, or whether it was more to do with your first location in Bali. So when you go to open your next resort coming soon, this year, I believe in France, how are you translating that brand concept? Is it is it still a essentially an Asian brand that's coming to Europe? Or are you adapting and finding that local inspiration for each new property?

Laurie 17:23

Yes, exactly. It was really important for me that in each place you feel the the sense of place, as we call it before, and that the treatments and the workouts are inspired by local healing traditions. So the food is an easy easier is the easier one, I would say because of course you work with local food. So that's kind of the adorn I would say. But more what we bring, for instance, to the Chateau. The shack that you won't find in Bali is the art therapies. I mean, it's not exactly it's not called out therapies, but it's therapies around the the art activities, such as painting, or pottery or writing, we have dense, dense classes as well. Because again, it's working around the idea of mindfulness. And when you do something with your both hands, you are obliged to be mindful more than when you you type on one hand, and on the other hand, you're cooking something that's when you make your toast. Burnt basically, because you're really concentrated doing anything, right. So yeah, we hope that when you're painting this, you're 100% to your your painting. So we have that we have art pavilions and we will animate every day workshops around around art. And there is also a Phyto bar which is a plant bar if you like where you will go and you will do your own tea blend or your basalts assortment, and you can also do your tincture. You will do some inhalation for a better respiratory system. And yeah, that's also a mindful place where people will do on their own but in a in a mindful way because you need to think when I'm going to put in my tea, a little bit of common mileage will have lavenders you know, you just have yourself and so that's also inspired by local French culture because everything around perfumes, a lot of lot of aromatherapy workshops, I would say that are specific to the Chateau de sciacca property. And another thing as well that is quite unique in the in the Chateau is the Have a salt cave. So we found a cave that that has been dig six meters above the floor underneath right underneath the floor. And that has been built way before the castle was built. The castle was built in the 18th century. And this cave was built probably in the 16th century. So yeah, people can go there and there will be some salt on the floor. So it will be Hallo. Hallo therapy, you just lie down in this cave for half an hour, one hour in. Yeah, that will be feel very unique, I think. So even without the salt is already very, very unique. Yeah, and then something quite specific also about shadow the shark is that I really wanted to push the the mindfulness side, of course, it will be in all our reviewable properties, but especially the slow aging and slow aging through the plasticity of your brain that I was just talking about. So there will be every night brain games. So brain games can be puzzles, or can be Mikado, I don't know. Like, it can be very simple things but just dedicated sometimes, everyday to that. And also, if you come by yourself, that can be an opportunity to mingle with other guests around because I realize in Valley, people often come on their own. And it's nice to I mean, it's also necessary to, to find your own space, especially when you when you have done such a long trip and you arrive in a new place. But after two or three days, it's nice also to start to talk to your neighbors and realize they have been a bit in the same tree than you. They may be lonely, you're overwhelmed or overachieved and they needed a break. And yeah, you know, it's, it's quite nice and reassuring to talk to people that are like minded.

Matt Morley 22:04

It sounds to me almost I mean, there's certainly elements released from looking from outside almost of a kind of, you know, like a Buddhist retreat or mindfulness retreat, you're imagining people, or is the typical length of stay for three to seven nights. I mean, it's more than it's more resort than hotel, right? It's more somewhere, you come for a few days to sort of absorb all of these different experiences rather than somewhere you drop by for an overnight stay. It's more a resort holiday experience. Is that right?

Laurie 22:34

Yes, definitely. I mean, it's something that is very transformative in a way that I don't think people have never experienced anything like that before. Because very comprehensive. And we give you a lot of tools, if you like a lot of like, healthy takeaways that then you can apply on the daily basis. So you feel it's transformational. But you feel it even more after, once you have left the retreat, or other people are crying when they leave the resort in Bali. It's very strong, the kind of reviews we can have some people, lots of people, they say you don't know how much you change my life. You know, some people yeah, we were on the verge of a divorce with my husband. And since we discovered re vivo, you, you change so many things. re vivo from the Latin means I will live again, it's a bit. It's also the last Asana, the last pose when you do a yoga flow. And at the end after the Shavasana you turn on your right side and you're on the features pose and this pose this concept is called the reverse pose. So it's the feeling how you feel after a very good yoga class where you've been 100% into the into the flow, you know, for 60 minutes you were anywhere else you felt like you were at the right place at the right moment. And that's this feeling that I hope and I really wonder the river experience to procure to feel like now you are completely reset, and you are with with yourself and you have everything you need inside you to to be happy and you know, you feel like you're at the right place at the right moment.

Matt Morley 24:17

Because you can obviously reach that that state at the end of a 90 minute yoga class in a in a crazy urban environment like Hong Kong, or indeed somewhere like Barcelona, but then how do you translate the vivo concept into an urban environment? If you're looking at somewhere like Barcelona to set up a future resort is there do you have to adapt your your offer around that the idea of being in a city rather than being in a natural environment because obviously a lot of what you offer is that connection, the peace and quiet of being in a in a non urban environment surrounded by nature.

Laurie 24:53

Yeah, I would say it's easier if you're surrounded by nature because it's really relaxing as a I mean, as the opposite of office city, you know, sometimes you just finished a very peaceful and yoga class, and then you go out in the street, and it's noisy and smelly. And it's, yeah, very busy. And so all of a sudden, the relaxation is gone. If it's even more difficult, I mean, of course, it's achievable. But what is good? We've been approached, let's say, by some hotel, they're like, Oh, can you maybe do this bath for us? Can you do, and I'm a bit against, because if he works, he works in a comprehensive way. Any, any, if any change happens in people in the people people's mind is because they understand it and they have felt it you know, you need something to click in your new mind to for the change to begin. Otherwise, if it's just if it's can can be like a train passing in front of you, you know, when you stay on the, on the platform, you don't really feel like the train was passing, you felt like Oh, it was nice to watch this yoga class or I felt a bit like that. Sometimes I go to a resort or Thalassotherapy. And nobody explained to me really what is happening in my brain, in my soul in my body, and I do all the treatments, but then I'm like, Yeah, that's great. But okay, maybe I lost two kg, because we mentioned he only ate greens. But then when I'm back home, I rushed into the first step burger place, because I, they created the sense of probation, probation. And so for the change to last people need to understand So for us, it's very important that we guide them through and that we guide them through the four pillars that are the movement, the movement of the breath, the movement of your of your body, and also the movement of your neurons, the neuro bikes, we call it and the spa Of course, which is a Roma therapy, your environment, you know, like how you take care of yourself, how you pamper yourself to take some time for yourself, the supplies of food, there is no order of importance here, but it should be the first otherwise, but the food and the beverage of choice, of course, is very, very important part of the, the healthy lifestyle if you want. And the fourth is then the new trio that the three the do nocturno, which is all around the sleep, because you can be full of very good intention and wanting to change something in your in your life and wanting to have a better version of yourself. If you cannot sleep, you will find it very, very difficult to achieve that inner peace. So, yeah, all our retreats are based around those four pillars, I would say, whether you come for detox or weight loss or slow aging, it will always be built around those four pillars. And so to answer your question, it can be achieved in a in an urban environment, but it will be more difficult because you need a consistency. You know, it's not just like, you do it once and then you forget all about it. And as I said, Yeah, lost 2kg, but then eventually again, 5kg back because nothing changed really inside my brain. Nothing clicked. So for it to click, you need to practice a little bit every day. And for you to practice every day, you have to think learn. So yeah, it's easier if people they are in our in house, I would say and so we can better teach. I don't want to say teach but just show them and then they can do whatever they want with the knowledge. And

Matt Morley 29:05

how do you the sleep piece is really interesting. I think that's something that's now becoming more and more recognized as a key component in health and overall well being. How do you assist a guest in if not improving their sleep at least thinking about sleep as a form of nutrition and wellbeing how does that manifest itself in the guest experience?

Laurie 29:32

so what we call lock to noise, all the rituals, it's very important. So I was just saying that to create a pattern, you know, you have to work a little bit every day. Becoming mindful is a bit like when you learn a new instrument of music. If you want to play guitar, you try to play guitar for six hours in one day and then you don't touch the guitar for one month. You will never be able to play The guitar. However, if you practice a bit, 20 minutes every day, eventually in one month, maybe less, you will, you will know how to play the guitar. So, the same for mindfulness. So it is same for the for the sleeping ritual, you need to maybe do some aromatherapy ritual in your room, you know, have as sleep, they call it pillow pillow spray, that you spray on your pillow, you know, create some ritual like that, before you go to bed, maybe half an hour before you put your, your phone in airplane mode dim down the light, you leave, maybe it's I like to have a notebook on my bedside table where I write my thoughts. Because that's also what is keeping you awake, sometimes when you have thoughts in your mind, and you're like, I'm gonna get it, you know, tomorrow, I will wake up and I will have forgotten this idea. Or I forgot to answer this email. And you know, and so you can actually you keep thinking about stuff that that are keeping you awake. So I like to have a notebook and just to write your thoughts on it. So at least your mind is free of that. And then other tips is also to take a bath again, just to relax your your mind, relax your body, you know, create this type of ritual, this type of little routine, maybe give yourself a face massage, you know, And in repeat that every day.

Matt Morley 31:40

So looking ahead to the next 12 months, what happens next?

Laurie 31:42

Yes, so we have been quite lucky because even though we are quite young, we have already assigned at some franchising contract. So we will open in France this year. And we have also a beautiful project in Malaysia that is going to open in 2023. But it's a big one you would be at rooms. So yeah, we'll be very busy. And then we have also a property in Barcelona and land in Sri Lanka, that will be also built at some point. Yeah, depending on the situation, but maybe I hope within the next four years, some exciting pipeline.

Thank you, Matt.

building wellness & sustainability with evalore spain

Talking green buildings & healthy buildings with Pablo Munoz, CEO of Evalore, Building Wellness & Sustainability

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.

evalore building wellness & sustainability

In this episode we talk to Pablo Munoz, Co-Founder and CEO of Evalore, Building Wellness & Sustainability with offices in Barcelona and Madrid. Founded three years ago, it’s a team of engineers, architects and energy modelers with an entrepreneurial spirit that immediately caught my attention.

indoor air quality, wellness villas ands more

We discuss air quality strategies for indoor environments such as corporate offices, the integration of both green building and healthy building strategies in each project, their first timber office building in Spain called WittyWood that is currently under construction, active design strategies to promote movement in an office building, their healthy home strategies for a WELL Villa at PGA Catalunya residential golf resort in Spain, their own in-house Air First air purification certification and their Evalore Method intended to push the green & healthy building movement forward with a focus on Spain and accessible price points.

healthy & well become commoditized

We also look ahead to the next 12 months in our industry and Pablo highlights the risks of well-washing, whereby an increasing array of products and services are branded as being ‘healthy’, meaning a dose of skepticism is going to become increasingly important for those on the inside of the healthy building movement in order to protect its reputation.

air first rating system

One of the topics we touch on in the podcast is Evalore’s Air First air quality management system that sets out to offer a more accessible alternative to the more extensive and capital intensive certifications such as WELL and LEED.

For me, this looks like the first in what may be an entire new generation of such accreditation systems that adapt what works for corporate America to a more local context, in this case Spain and its commercial real estate sector.

The protocols cover Purification, Disinfection, Monitoring & Training tin protocols to enhance Indoor Air Quality.

GUEST / PABLO MUNOZ

• https://evalore.es/

• https://airfirst.es/

• https://www.facebook.com/EspaciosEvalore/

• https://twitter.com/Evalorewell

• https://www.linkedin.com/company/espaciosevalore/

In this episode we talk to Pablo Munoz, Co-Founder and CEO of Evalore, Building Wellness & Sustainability with offices in Barcelona and Madrid. Founded three years ago, it's a team of engineers, architects and energy modelers with an entrepreneurial spirit that immediately caught my attention.

Full transcript below…

===============

Matt Morley 0:14

Pablo, to get things going perhaps you could just give us a really quick introduction to who you are, and also to the business Evalore that you're CEO of here in Spain?

Pablo Munoz 3:05

Hi, Matt and thank you so much. It is a pleasure for me to be here with you today. My name is Paolo Munoz. I'm an architect. I was licensed here in Spain but I have worked for most of my career abroad. I first worked in London for a couple years where I worked for a small architecture company then I went in Europe for a Masters of Science in Sustainability in the urban environment. I worked for a pretty big consultancy firm in sustainability then at some point I had the opportunity to come back to Spain. I founded Evalore with two co-founders And this has been going on for three and a half years almost now.

Matt Morley 4:02

You've been up and running now with the business for about three years, as you mentioned, what does your team look like today? And I guess I have to ask this one - how how has your team had to adapt with your offices over the last 10 or 11 months during the COVID-19 crisis?

Pablo Munoz 4:36

Yes, we have a team made out of consultants, architects, engineers, and also energy modelers. For the type of services that we provide, we need to have to have a pretty diverse backgrounds for our company and for sure COVID has been a challenge for us, as well as for everyone. And we are right now working remotely for most of the time. But we also come to the office, there's a part of our work that's difficult to conduct when we are not connected. There's a piece of commitment that is renovated every time we see each other and we talk about our projects, so even though we're trying our best to not be at the office, there is part of our work that has to be conducted in person.

Matt Morley 5:57

Thinking about the indoor environment within the Office. Are you monitoring air quality For example? Have you had to install plastic privacy panels or desk dividers to break up your office space? What kind of changes have you applied using your knowledge of, for example, the WELL building standard and applying it to your own home office environment or your own corporate office environment?

Pablo Munoz 6:22

Right, so the first thing was the protocols. We had to set the way we use the office, and how often we go to the office, we try to not be all at the same time at the office. How's the schedule, and when people use the office, that was the first thing that we had to think about. But independently from that, we also adapted the office so that when we are using it, we are safe. The first part was ventilation. And this is all related to the importance of the air quality in the office. It is funny, we've been talking about it now for three or four years. That was the that that's sort of how about already started. And we started talking about the importance of taking care of the built environment we live in and the importance of the indoor spaces. And so one of the things that we do at the office is we measure the quality of the air we're breathing. So we try to ventilate and we have a system that ventilation is connected to sensors, we can make sure that ventilation is high, we also have space so that desks have separation from each other. The same thing happens in the main meeting room where we have physical barriers to separate from each other.

Matt Morley 8:34

Are your air purifiers integrated into the air conditioning HVAC system or are they standalone domestic air purifiers, like a Dyson system?

Pablo Munoz 8:49

So in our case, we have purifiers standalone on the floor, because the system we use for the air ventilation air system or a heating system did not allow for incorporating those systems.

Matt Morley 9:13

You mentioned the idea of there being more awareness now and if there is any positive change to come from what we've all been through over the last year it is an increasing awareness amongst a wider portion of the population about what indoor Environmental Quality is. Where are you seeing the growth or increase in interest for your products and services coming from?

Pablo Munoz 9:51

We have certainly seen growth in consultancy, we're seeing that people are finally more aware and more interested in the impact that spending time in buildings has, right, like, over the last year, we spent so many days, stuck in our apartments or in our homes, we all finally realized that it had an impact on our physical and emotional well being. And I think that's working in our favor in the way that finally not only clients that are people who want to buy a house or want to build their home for themselves, but also companies are integrating this thinking their projects. But also, I think we cannot forget that this is, at the end of the day, this is a sustainability crisis. In a way it is an environmental crisis. It's not very clear what the origin of the virus is. But most experts agree that it has to do with pushing too far the limit of where humans meet nature and getting to areas where we were not supposed to be. And so I think in a way, this is also helping us realize that we need to do something, we need to build in a better way, when it comes to my sector to architecture, okay, we need to be building a more efficient way for in a better way for the type for the environment.

Matt Morley 11:58

That relationship with nature can be positive, it can bring health benefits But clearly, as you say it can also bring huge risks if not treating or not respecting nature in the right way. Or we're taking it for granted that it will only bring good because clearly, you know there are certain situations such as certain animals and certain markets in China or wherever, where Yeah, we can put ourselves at risk. But to get into that the idea of of reconnecting with nature in in urban environments... I know that you'd be working on a timber built construction project in Barcelona, that's been getting quite a lot of press attention recently. Can you talk us through what that looks like and describe that project?

Pablo Munoz 12:53

Yes, for sure. This will be the Wittlewood building and it will be the first timber building of offices in Spain, a five storey building in the district of Poblenou where most new offices have been built. And it is a very cool project. We're very, very excited as it is not only going for LEED certification. )LEED is one of the most renowned green building standards in the world together with BREEAM the UK version, and USGBC is the US version). It looks into all aspects of sustainability and not only does it look into making sure that the building doesn't consume too much energy, we are using a district heating system And of course, solar panels for photovoltaic production will be available in the building. The building envelope is very sophisticated so that we can decrease the energy demand of the building for both the winter and the summer. We're looking at using sustainable materials. We're looking at using materials that do not come from very far away, and that are produced in a sustainable manner. And often we're looking into making sure that they are using the circular economy system for production. One of the really cool thing about this project is that there will be a water collection system, the water will be used for both irrigation and also for, for bathroom use. WELL is the most, in this case, the equivalent of LEED but in the health and wellness area, it is based on six years of medical and scientific research. And so the strategies that were proposed are not random, they are based on very, very specific parameters that have been proven to improve the health of the people that spend time in those buildings. And in this case, we're talking about the quality of the lighting, or making sure that the lighting doesn't interfere with the circadian needs of the people that spend time in the building. Once we've looked at in a very holistic way it also has to do with acoustic comfort, with thermal comfort, with biophilia, which is the strategy of integrating nature into the interior side of the building.

Matt Morley 16:57

How did you address the nutrition and fitness components of the WELL certification? There just might not be space for a fitness room or a gym facility or there might not be an on site restaurant facility, how have you have you addressed those chapters of the WELL certification process?

Pablo Munoz 17:23

That's, that's a challenge very often. But it is interesting, because people sometimes think that fitness has also has only to do with being able to integrate a gym facility into building, but sometimes it has to do with the way we move, for example, if we place the staircase, in an area where it can be seen then we are promoting the use of it, instead of using the elevators. Something that's appealing to people, let's say, with art pieces, or music, or with coral reefs, or even nature, we're helping people to be more active. And so that's one of the strategies that WELL addresses. Then the nutrition part is a little more challenging here as well, because there is no restaurant in this building. And in this case, one of the things that we are looking at is the vending machines, we're making sure that the food offered in the vending machine is only healthy food.

Matt Morley 18:59

Then when you're focusing on something like a single family home clearly there are even more restrictions there. However, you do both the commercial and the residential side. So if you when you're applying those WELL building philosophy or design concepts to a residential project that's maybe just made for a family such as the one you did, at the PGA Catalunya resort, what does the process of transferring that same knowledge to a completely different context where it's really more about one one family living together rather than lots of co workers spending eight hours in an office each day.

Pablo Munoz 19:49

Right, I mean the principles are the same. We need to take care of the people who work for us and that makes them more productive. And that's pretty much the main reason companies are integrating WELL into their daily lives, because they know it is profitable for them. But when it comes to us making decisions on where we decide to live, don't we want the same thing for our health? We want our family to live in a place that cannot really compromise their health. And so the same principles have been implemented in a pilot study that was the first time in the PGA Catalunya that the WELL standard was applied to a single family home. We need to make sure that the air quality is optimal, with air monitors, sensors, ventilation, high performance filters , optimal quality water We also looked at all the materials being used in the project and we were very careful to use materials that didn't have any ingredients that could be harmful for human health. People listening to us might be surprised like, oh, are there products that are allowed in our homes or in our interior that are bad for our health? Yes! I could talk for hours about that.

Matt Morley 22:45

One of the really interesting things about what you're doing is not just providing consultancy services, as architects and as experts in LEED and WELL but you seem to be taking quite an entrepreneurial approach to this whole scene. And in a way I think, genuinely making your own contribution to that. I was really interested to read about your Air First air purification certification, which seems to be inspired by the bigger players in the market, but perhaps adapting it for Spanish or local requirements. Where did you come up with that initial idea? And what was the the objective in presumably not just creating something to compete with existing certification systems, but perhaps something better adapted to the local market?

Pablo Munoz 23:51

Yes, we actually realized that there was a hidden demand that was not being satisfied. We know that there's a big demand for big health and wellness projects in Spain, in Europe in general, especially in the office building sector, but what about those smaller projects that cannot really implement those measures, because simply don't have the budget to do so? We thought, okay, how can we make it available to them too? How can we make it more simple for those smaller projects? Why can't we choose those strategies that make the most difference? And that's how Air First came about, it is a certification that looks at one of the things that nowadays is probably the most important topic - air quality. So yes it is based on WELL but while it's an open standard, that said, it has been proven to work. So let's make sure that those authorities are available to everyone right, it is a way to democratize those standards for everyone.

Matt Morley 26:08

So then a separate piece of intellectual property compared to what you describe, is your Evalore Method, is that just your process? Or is there more to it?

Pablo Munoz 26:31

It is a way of working, we have set a very clear way of first communicating with a client, making sure of understanding what would they need and what are the goals of the project. And then working together through the process to make sure they they reach those goals through the strategies that we propose. And then helping them communicate those strategies that they have implemented at the end of project, that's the method or first would sort of be one of the forms that the Evalore method can take. Imagine that could be an office project, or it could be a building project for for a residential project or it could be a school and also a co-working has been one of our projects.

Matt Morley 28:45

It really looks to be about democratizing that knowledge and the scientific backing behind this whole approach to creating healthy buildings. But in a sense, it's almost like the next generation coming through now where the parents will be LEED and WELL, now there's the new generation, taking that knowledge and moving it forward and adapting it to new markets and new demands. I know you mentioned before we started talking today that you're also working on a modular homes project, perhaps you could is that is that also a healthy home concept that you're developing?

Pablo Munoz 29:45

Yes, yes. What you said about the parents being LEED and Well, all those standards in fact, what we've seen over the last few years is that codes created by the administration are little by little catching up and getting closer to our standards. And the main purpose, in my opinion, the main value of those standards, is to set a very high standard for those codes to catch up to, and so this is very, very interesting to me. And those standards are not a goal in itself, they are a tool to take buildings to the next level. And so that's the way we like to work, we don't make projects just to reach those standards, we make projects to reach certain levels of excellence. Right?

Unknown Speaker 31:00

So what about the modular homes project?

Pablo Munoz 31:15

Yes, this is a new project we're working on at the moment, we're working with a partner that create modular homes made out of silver concrete, which is a very, very interesting product, because it has really high benefits, it is a high performance material, because it can be used as a structural material, but same time, it has very high insulation benefits, both on the acoustic side and also on the thermal side. And it allows us to work in a modular way. So this is sort of like a research project we have started recently, but it is one of the new things that we have started to work on and together with this company that usually builds concrete homes, we are integrating all those health and wellness and sustainability measures. We are very excited to see that come to light.

Matt Morley 32:48

It feels like there's just so many different small niche corners of the real estate market that have yet to be touched by this kind of sustainable and healthy building approach. Right? There's just still so much to do. It sounds like you guys are really innovating and pushing the boundaries and hustling hard, which is great to see. If you were to look a year down the line into the future, what do you see as being the key trends?

Pablo Munoz 33:36

Well, I think one of the main trends is that wellness in general is going to be much more integrated in projects all over the world. It happened with sustainability and green building. Actually we reached a point of greenwashing in which everyone and everything and every product was 'green'. And then that was when the standards took on greater importance. I think a similar thing is going to happen with wellness and we need to be careful not everything is going to be labelled 'healthy' in the future. Every product is not going to take care of your health, it's not going to kill Corona.

Matt Morley 34:27

Amazing. Well, best of luck with the next year and I'm sure you have a very bright future with the business! Where can people find you online?

Pablo Munoz 36:02

Well, they can find us in our website, which is Evalore.es and also on social media and on Twitter and LinkedIn. So thank you very much for the time Matt it's been a pleasure for me to be here with you.