mental wellbeing clinic design - the soke, london

The ‘Green & Healthy Places’ podcast series explores the role of sustainability, wellbeing and community in office real estate, residential property, hotels and healthcare facilities today.

Episode 27 is with Dr Chi-Chi Obuaya of The Soke in London, UK a private mental health clinic that has re-defined the mental wellbeing clinic for an upmarket clientele, setting a new benchmark in the process.

We discuss the cultural differences between UK and US in openness around mental wellbeing, the impact of Covid on our relationships at home and in the office, mental health champions in the workplace, why having an off-site venue for discussions around mental health is preferable to an in-office solution, designing an interior for mental wellbeing, the parallel with boutique gyms and private clinics in terms of aspirational positioning and how working on your inner game can make you a more effective manager through empathy.

An indoor environment shouldn't reinforce the fact that you feel unwell, that you're a “patient”. We wanted to create a space that really made people feel nourished, and the design features I think tick the boxes in that respect, but also to be aspirational. 

Dr Chi-Chi Obuaya

GUEST / DR. CHI-CHI OBUAYA OF THE SOKE, LONDON, UK

• https://www.thesoke.uk/

• https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-soke/

• https://twitter.com/TheSokeUK

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

HOST / MATT MORLEY

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattmorleylux/

• https://www.instagram.com/matt.aspiotis.morley/

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

Matt Morley

Chi-Chi, welcome to the show. I'd really like to dig into your role as Head of the Clinical Board for The Soke so could you talk to us about what that has involved for you so far and how you see it evolving over time?

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

Really excited to be here, Matt, good to see you again, as well after all these years. I'm a Consultant Psychiatrist here, I trained as a medical doctor specialized in psychiatry, and I focus on adult psychiatry so I see anyone aged 18 and above, with a range of mental health difficulties, including depression, anxiety, problems related to birth, trauma related issues, addictions.

I'm the Clinical Lead at The Soke - a behavioral health center in the heart of London, we're coming up to our one year anniversary. And the whole premise of setting up The Soke was really that within the UK, there are plenty of mental health professionals that people can see. But we found that there's still massive stigma around mental health and accessing care. And we just wanted to ease that process for people by having a really high quality service that has a beautiful environment, encourages people to come forward and supporting that by offering them very good quality care in an environment that is conducive to promoting good mental wellbeing.

Matt Morley

I think that really comes across in terms of the space that you've created, and clearly that's one of the key attributes in the experience on offer. But in terms of the mix of resources on the team, and the range of services that you offer, presumably you each have specialisms, but there seems to be this interesting client service director role that is atypical, or less common let’s say. How is your mental wellbeing team structured?

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

Yes, so our clinical model is a multidisciplinary one, I think we recognize that in private practice, you can certainly access a whole range of mental wellbeing therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and it can be quite difficult for people to navigate through the system, and to really understand who they need to see and what skill set that person needs to have.

So most of us have a pretty broad range of people we would see with a vast range of conditions. But within that, there are areas of interest. So for me, I still work within the National Health System. And I see people with ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. We have therapists who have a particular interest in supporting people who have, for example, body image issues, who might have disordered eating, but maybe aren't quite meeting the threshold for eating disorder diagnosis.

I'd say generally, one of the themes is that we're trying to be quite proactive and preventative. So a lot of healthcare services are set up to treat illness, and that lends itself to seeing people when they're already really unwell. And there's certainly a role for that. But we're trying not to offer that acute care rather to catch people before they fall into major difficulties.

We have a broad range of child, adolescent and Family Services. So we're working with couples, parents, right across the age span. So really from from birth right through to old age. The multidisciplinary model is key in that we meet on a daily basis as a team, discuss potential referrals, discuss clients who might be seeing a range of us within the team. And it's then bringing our different bits of expertise together to think about how we can holistically support people from a mental wellbeing perspective.

As I said, we're just coming up to our one year anniversary. So there's still plenty of room for growth, and we want to be able to offer a wider range of services, such as nutritional advice. There are a vast array of therapies. So we're really at the starting point, and we want to add to the clinical team there.

Our client services manager is really the go-to person to help people navigate through the team, because it can be quite daunting and the reality is that when people are seeing therapists, they sometimes don't know how to benchmark that, or to get a sense of what progress they're making.

We're data driven, we have outcome measures and we try to be very goal oriented. The Client Services Manager is the person that can think about some of the services we maybe don't provide, but can signpost people externally for that, and where there are challenges where people do feel stuck therapeutically, which happens, it's not a sign of the therapy being of a poor standard, it just happens that sometimes you don't have the right fit with an individual therapist. We're really trying to think holistically, systemically, I think the multidisciplinary aspect is something that has often been missing within private healthcare.

Matt Morley

That really resonates with me having been through a period of about six months of therapy myself and feeling that it was very much as if we were operating in a complete bubble, there was no third party around to bounce ideas off or to sense-check how it was all going. What you've just described having another person, not in the room exactly but right outside would have been so helpful.

Having a beautiful space in which to physically connect with someone in person rather than online would have been good too!

To pick up on something you've alluded to that earlier, the idea that it's prevention rather than cure. And I wondered how you feel as a Londoner, if there is a change, that's already happened, or it's happening around acceptability of discussions around mental health, the idea of not waiting too long before you pick up the phone or walk through your front doors, for example, when you feel that something's reached a point where it's arguably not too late, it's already become critical.

In the US we'd we'd imagine in places like New York, it's far more common that one should engage with these things, almost on a regular basis, not just for six months, but perhaps semi permanently, how do you see culturally where London's at in terms of this dialogue now with around mental health?

UK-US cultural differences in talking about mental wellbeing

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

Yes, great question, we're on the journey, we're certainly not at the level of the US, in terms of it just being really ingrained in the culture and something that wouldn't make you bat an eyelid. If you and I were having a conversation and you said, I've just come from my therapy session, that would just be a perfectly normal thing.

The UK is still quite conservative, and we might feel a bit awkward. If somebody said that in the middle of a conversation, we are getting there, there have been massive public mental health campaigns, trying to de-stigmatize mental health, both within society and I think particularly within the workplace.

the impact of Covid on mental wellbeing

I would say that the the covid 19 pandemic has forced people to have these conversations because guess what, it's affected people in every way you can imagine. And I think it's made the language of mental health difficulties much more accessible to people, because they can understand when you start talking about grief, for example, which in British culture, we're not great at doing. People can understand it, because it's actually affecting people directly, or people that they know, given what's happening.

Work has been disrupted for a lot of people. People have lost jobs. They've been put on furlough schemes. They felt that their jobs are under threat. They've been working from home and that's equalled stress. They've been trying to homeschool children too, that's very difficult. So I think the conditions are ripe for that conversation to move forward. It is moving forward. I'd still say it's a little bit too much towards the the reactive end. I when people are experiencing difficulties, that's when they're accessing help. And our vision is that we'd like to support people who kind of think you know what, I don't see anything wrong with just having some exploratory therapy just to take stock of things. Even if there isn't Externally what we might regard as a major issue. And I think that's where people are in the state. So I think we'll get there. But it's going to be a process.

Matt Morley

You mentioned the the impact of what's happened over the last year and a half on mental health in the workplace, and the impact on corporates, large businesses, and how there is clearly a need for there to be a wider conversation in the office.

How do you as a company or yourself personally engage with the business end of mental health, because it does feel like that suddenly become such a critical piece now within our overall wellbeing strategy in the workplace. What does that look like for The Soke?

Workplace wellbeing and mental health

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

There's no one size fits all solution. I think that's the key thing to understand. And you use the word ‘conversation’’, I think the key aspect is to be a part of that conversation, and see where it goes. The reason I say that is that different sectors, different businesses within those sectors are at very different points in terms of their recognition of the scale of the problem when it comes to mental health challenges, and also what they really want to do about those problems.

To give an example, at the end of the scale is just dipping one's toe into the water. There are lots of mental health campaigns now across the calendar, we have mental health awareness week, which is often a focus for businesses. And those businesses may get in external speakers. And we've been part of those conversations. I think with any of these initiatives across a range of issues around social injustice and lots of challenges around the workplace, that really is the start. However it isn't enough on its own. All that really does is it raises awareness. And it gets people thinking and ultimately businesses need to decide what's best for them, we try to support that process.

At the other end of the scale, we've had really good engagement with companies that massively want to change their culture. And that could look like having mental health, first aid training, having champions across the organization, having a culture of supervision, which creates opportunities for conversations amongst peers and one's colleagues, through which discussions around mental health again, can just naturally flow. So those are some of the workshops that we offer to corporates. And it really just depends on on how much time, effort and resources they want to invest in.

One of the really interesting things has been to observe from the outside what different corporates do. I'd say that things have moved in a healthy direction over the last 5 to 10 years. A lot of corporates felt that the right solution was to bring a lot of these services in house, that might include offering GP services or psychological therapy services in the house. We have a fantastic space here. And what we find is that there can be reticence from employees about accessing services in house among senior leaders, they see it as too much of a reputational risk.

Amongst more junior colleagues, there's often a culture of competitiveness, and they find that they're worried about their job security if they're accessing the mental health suite, on on floor x within the building. So often, these initiatives are well meaning but they don't really quite cut it in terms of people really accessing them. Often people will even in very well resourced organizations seek external help, because they're more comfortable with that. So we want to get to the stage where Businesses really understand that and they're able to engage with us in that fashion, because often the employees want to do that way. It might be convenient for them to access us in this increasingly fluid working environment that people have at a time that suits them in an environment where they're more relaxed, and we've put in some features to really to bolster the client's experience, and that's probably going to work better for them, we feel.

Mental health officers in an ESG strategy

Matt Morley

You mentioned the mental health officer role. And it's come up on my radar, having done some work with a real estate developer in London, on their ESG strategy. - environmental, social and governance. Mental health is now part of that remit. So if you have a pension fund putting money into a project and a real estate developer the annual report on their ESG depends partly on their approach to mental health in the workplace.

I just thought that was an interesting combination, because the role of the mental health officer is purely to identify a problem and then get that person to pick up the phone, send an email, or make contact with a professional, passing on the issue to the experts in other words. Nothing more nothing less.

I remember thinking that makes total sense, not trying to resolve something themselves, but having the right person on the end of the line and just joining the dots so that that person feels comfortable in taking action.

Interior design for mental wellbeing

That leads us then into the idea of having a physical space that is not the office, but you might get there having been recommended via your corporate, your employer, you then rock up to the soak. And from what I've seen online, your private clinic’s interior space just does not look like anything I've seen in terms of mental health clinics, I think on some level rewriting the rulebook of what it should feel like and look like when you when you go for one of these sessions.

For those who haven't seen the website, can you describe the type of environment that you have there? I mean, there seems to be sort of Scandinavian influences, vintage furniture, it's like a it's like an interior design showroom. As much as anything, it looks beautiful!

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

Absolutely, I think you're spot on. And that is all by design. I certainly wish to take absolutely no credit for it. My role is to focus on the clinical work. But our founder, Maryam Meddin, had a vision. We've talked about the fact that we want people to be able to access care in a way that really feels normal. But the problem she identified was that the environment, and we've got some of the best clinicians in the world in London, I think, New York's up there, but London is about as good a place to practice psychiatry, psychology anywhere in the world.

The indoor environment shouldn't reinforce the fact that you feel unwell, that you're a “patient”. As you said, when you go around a lot of hospitals, which have fantastic clinicians, practitioners offering really high quality level of care, the environment just lags behind. We wanted to create a space that really made people feel nourished. And the design features I think, tick the boxes in that respect, but also to be aspirational.

Aspirational boutique gym designs compared with most private mental health clinics

Lots of people go to gyms now, we don't think anything of it, it's a pretty regular thing to do. And you just go maybe in your lunch break, and you go back to work, and it's not a big deal.

Boutique gyms have become a bigger part of our lives. When they first launched, there was something very aspirational about them. And so the aesthetics support about view that you went to a gym and you just had that wow factor. And that's exactly what we're trying to do here. So you come into reception, it doesn't feel clinical, the sofas are really comfortable. You feel relaxed, it's a bit like being in someone's living room, and a nice one at that.

One of the things about seeing a mental health practitioner in London is that people tend to be very busy. So you leave a session and then you're back out onto the main road and you get on with your day. But actually, we wanted to make people feel that they weren't being kicked out of the building, that they had that time to reflect, and just to not feel rushed, particularly when they're talking about some quite challenging issues.

So one of the key design features would be our pods - spaces next to the therapy rooms, where you can just sit back very comfortably, read a book, have some time in a darkened room to reflect on your session, we have some evidence base technology that supports people, one of these is alpha stem, a device that delivers a microcurrent to your ear lobes. It's a small device, you put it on for anywhere between 20 and 60 minutes. And it has evidence for supporting people in improving their sleep, and also in reducing anxiety levels. And it's going to be approved by nice the National Institute for care and excellence in the treatment of generalized anxiety disorder.

We see a lot of young people, and they have parents. And so we're able to give something to the parents when they're hanging around, So that's thinking about the family as a system. And we don't just talk the talk, we're able to do that by by linking the building to the therapy directly.

Matt Morley

That reminds me of some work I did in the past around with a hospitality client, we were looking at the guest journey and identified this pain point when you're checking out of a hotel or resort and you know the holidays over and guess what you get slapped with a huge bill and then you're sort of just spat out onto the street again. So how could we rewrite the script on that to turn it into a moment of delight?

After a therapy session you may well be feeling a little vulnerable. You might not want to go straight out into the into the hustle and bustle of London street again. So creating that third space between the outside world and the therapy room and allowing someone just to chill is very innovative, I think.

Create a wellbeing interior design that appeals to men as well as women

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

If we go back to your example. It's about recognizing who the client is. And we've done some work around that as well. So yes, the environment, broadly speaking, allows people to have a really great experience. But we also need to understand who our customers are. And so we wanted an environment that had these soft features. But to say very bluntly, one that isn't feminine, per se, because we have a lot of male clients, we know that men are not great at talking, generally speaking, there's been a lot of work in the public domain around getting men to talk about their mental health difficulties.

So they're a big target group in terms of this whole de-stigmatization process. Being in central London, we know that a lot of our our male clients are going to come from a corporate background. So we wanted to make sure the optics weren't suggesting that we're some sort of hippy or New Age service. So we wanted soft, but also very professional. And I think we strike the balance just right.

Matt Morley

So if we then follow that thread a little further, what would you say are typically the red flags that take place before someone .looks for help, for example, someone in a corporate environment? What should we be looking out for in terms of cues?

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

I think it's important to recognize that there are a broad range of mental health conditions and one of the traps we sometimes fall into as psychiatrists when we're asked this question, we think about the more severe end.

So I do see people with really severe depression. People who've experienced significant trauma, even people who might have a psychotic illness. And we tend to go for that, but there's so much in the middle that we miss. And I think your question speaks to the person that that might be undergoing significant stress over a period of time. It might be work related, it may have nothing to do with work. And it could be very much to do with their personal circumstances. And so it's a lot more ill defined. And we know that stress affects people in many different ways. But in keeping with the idea that we want to get people, maybe before they present with a severe depression, I think it's understanding some of those themes around stress and how it manifests for people.

So the sorts of concept I'd want to get across would be pretty high level. And we might talk about people who are thriving. And it's just as it sounds, it's when you've got that spring in your step, you're very outward focused, you feel energetic, you're paying pretty good attention, broadly speaking, to exercise, your your nutrition, you're engaged with friends, family colleagues, and you've got a I don't like to talk so much about work life balance, there are people who have very busy jobs and work long hours, but you're paying attention to the things that give them a sense of energy and enjoyment.

I think particularly in the current context, burnout is one of the key aspects people need to be looking out for. And that builds up over a period of time, where there's that loss of attention to the things that give one a sense of rejuvenation, and replenishment.

At the other end of the spectrum, we might think about the concept of languishing. And it's just as it sounds, you know, the energy levels are down, you start to become a bit withdrawn from colleagues, you're just not quite on top of things at work. And one experiences significant stress. And one of the things we're mindful of is that people can experience this cliff edge experience where they're functioning outwardly, for a period of time, but where stress is building up, it can hit you very quickly. And the cliff edge term comes from the fact that you can very quickly go from outwardly functioning to really not functioning very well at all. And that can have significant implications within the workplace. But of course beyond that, as well.

Matt Morley

Is it rather like an athlete having a strength and conditioning coach, they might have another one who's their mental coach? If we assume that a high performing executive or indeed any professional who's trying to be at the top of their game, do you think there's a case to argue for their having someone on their mental health team, such as a life coach?

a word on executive performance

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

Certainly it’s best not to wait until something goes wrong. I’m biased so you may guess that my answer is going to be yes, it will be a great idea. I think it's really important to be very clear about what the role of that individual or team would actually be. There are psychologists who work in corporate organizations, and may be termed ‘performance coaches’ or ‘psychologists’.

We've been quite clear about what our perceived role is, and that's why I said there are different conversations with different corporate clients. What we don't see our role in doing is saying we're going to come in, and by engaging with our intervention, you impact the bottom line. If that happens as a result of optimizing employees wellbeing, reducing sickness rates, people being happy at work and so on , then yes of course, we want that. But that's not a direct goal.

I think if I use the analogy of a sports person, and there have been a lot of sports people coming forward, people who've played at elite level, who talk about the fact that everything was geared towards winning and performance, and it wasn't actually looking at them as individuals. And there could be a lot of resentment that sets in for people who outwardly appear to have these amazing lives living the dream. And it's far from that. And I think that's relevant to the workplace as well.

We're not here to just help the organization, we actually want to focus on the individual. In the same way, with an elite athlete, you want to look at them holistically, and say, how do we support this person not to run faster, or to put in more minutes in whatever team sport they're in. But to really focus on their wellbeing, that will, of course, have the direct knock on effect, that they will be able to focus on the challenge that they have, be it in the sporting arena or in the workplace. So yes, we want to engage in those conversations. But we want to do it with real clarity about what we're actually trying to achieve. And I think businesses need to wake up to that aspect. It may sound counterintuitive but actually, this is the way forward.

mindfulness, empathy and the inner game

Matt Morley

Certainly from my personal experience in doing this work, it became very much complimentary to my mindfulness meditation, which by itself was getting me somewhere, but I felt perhaps not to where I wanted to be. Combining the two was a magic formula for my mental game.

I think the point I'd ask people to consider is that by loving ourselves, we're able to give more love back out to the world. And if you're managing people in an organization, if you're managing a team of 10-20, however many people, empathy is critical.

So much of that can come from being able to love and respect yourself first. And knowing what your own triggers are and why you react in a certain way, or why you struggle to get into someone's head, the way a particular person rubs you up the wrong way, that's a real problem, because they're on your team yet somehow you still have to handle them every day and get the best out of them and nurture them.

It's not about friendship, it's a professional relationship. But still, I think, this type of work that we do on ourselves, has so much benefit, not just for us, the individual. but for those around us. I think for me, that was almost this unexpected benefit, a knock on effect that I felt able to connect more easily and in a more honest way with those around me, and particularly people I was managing at that time.

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

That's the point I was alluding to, when I said at the starting level, it's get a speaker in to give a half hour talk for Mental Health Awareness Week, what you described, actually enables cultural change, but it requires a conversation. We don't just have an off the shelf package for organizations. But what you have articulated there is where we want to get to with organisations, but we fully understand that it requires leadership, it requires a bit of knowledge about the mental health landscape, what different providers can offer.

Where you want to get to as an organization that absolutely is on the money in terms of where we want to go. And in our workshops. That is what we try to do we go through that journey with people in understanding a bit about their own mental well being. And the key word is empathy, and just being able to understand what's going on for other people. But yes, the journey starts from within, absolutely spot on.

Matt Morley

Thank you so much for your time. It's been great Chi-Chi!

talking wellbeing interiors with design well studios

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

In this episode we’re in Portland, Oregon in the US with Michelle Ifversen of Design Well Studios - optimizing built environments for wellbeing.

We discuss a term that is more common in the US than in Europe, namely ‘building biology’ - a combination of healthy building strategies and Biophilia or nature-connectedness.  

Her in-person and virtual assessments of residential environments address issues affecting the health of occupiers, the risks of off-gassing from flooring and wall paint, how to mitigate the risk of Electro-Magnetic Fields (EMFs) in homes and how to safely manage your smart home technology. 

Michelle has a lot of strings to her bow, having co-developed a lab test for indoor air quality, launched her own collection of biophilic nature-inspired artworks and delivering landscape design services for clients as well to bring the outside world indoors. 

She’s devoted to all things natural and healthy in the home environment, so we had lots to talk about!

EPISODE NOTES 

GUEST / MICHELLE IFVERSEN / DESIGN WELL STUDIOS

• https://www.designwellstudios.com/

• Indoor air quality testing

• Botaniculture artworks

FULL TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS COURTESY OF OTTER.AI - EXCUSE TYPOS

Matt Morley

Welcome, Michelle, thanks for joining us. Really nice to have you on board all the way from Portland, Oregon. I wanted to kick things off just with an overview from your side onwhat you do with design well studios and how you got to where you are today.

michelle ifversen

Thanks for having me, Matt. I've been inspired by biophilic design and healthy living spaces for quite some time now. I grew up in Santa Barbara, California, beautiful place, but everything grew there. And we lived in an area where it was a little bit more damp. And so I developed a lot of allergies and suffered with that. And everybody's like, oh, you're allergic to mold? Well, mold is an allergy, but it's not supposed to be inside of you...

michelle ifversen

I love science, I grew up watching surgeries, believe it or not. But My mother is a renowned landscape architect. And my father was a builder. My birth father was a sculptor. So I love art and design as well. So the the science part and the design part, really, you know, I love I've always loved that. I wanted to become a doctor. And I was taking my anatomy classes. And long story short, I walked in to do my cadaver labs and the formaldehyde was so overwhelming that I couldn't complete it. So I went to art school in Europe.

Matt Morley

It sounds like an interesting combination between art and science and an element of medicine and perhaps some influences from landscaping. And some point that leads you towards biophilic design and wellbeing design then?

michelle ifversen

Exactly, it was infused in my environment. And whether I liked it or not, it was happening, when I was designing my son's room 20 years ago, it was very difficult to find healthy building materials or healthy material furnishings. And so I researched heavily, and took a while to find one place in Oregon, actually Pacific Rim furniture with no toxins, no, no adhesives that were, you know, bad for you. And so I started that path while I was a designer and doing information architecture for high tech companies.

michelle ifversen

I moved back to Santa Barbara after living in a couple of different places on the west coast. And met a naturopathic doctor. And so we got to chatting. And she had a house call and noticed how gnarly their environment was, how it was damp, it was off gassing. And we got together and we created a company that that did these house calls these environmental assessments and then later on, I got into building biology and studied all about building science healthy building and remodeling and electromagnetic field testing EMF and really dove deeper into VOC is an indoor air quality. Okay,

Matt Morley

so there's lots in that. So we're let's loop back around to the building biology piece because I think that's it's really valuable information. But you mentioned the scene in Portland, Oregon 20 years ago. And if you like struggling to find anywhere that was delivering on this concept of sort of healthy materials and healthy furniture, how are things today and how does it compare, for example, with what you see, for example, down in California, in terms of the rest of the US, there are certain parts of the world that seem to be really pushing ahead and with availability Now for these things or leading from the path, or leading the market, how is your local scene?

michelle ifversen

Well, I'm not shopping for cribs anymore. But for healthy fabrics and furnishings, it's not fabulous. I mean, you definitely still have to source and a lot of this stuff comes from Europe. And it comes from California. So we do have a mattress manufacturer here that gets natural latex material and he makes beds and so I source a lot of those for my clients. You know, I do a lot of used furniture have you and repre upholstery, it. There's a real upholstery company here that does all sustainable upholstery, and natural latex and wool and things like that, too. It's there are some places, but especially furnishings. Really, really tough. really tough. There are some places that do I work with a lot of artists that will create furniture for me, right, so we'll design furniture together and for jobs, and so will source you know, really nice sustainable wood and I, I coached them on healthy finishings and adhesives and things like that to, to make that. So it's still in that creative stage. But it's not readily available, where you just go walk down the street, and here's an eco store, like in London, you know, they have a lot more to offer.

Matt Morley

Yeah, I think I think probably the reality is that, in most even major cities, still, there's a sense that it's a it's a niche market, but it's it's then about availability. And you're right that the European market is now pretty strong on that. But that, yeah, it doesn't necessarily mean we have direct access at retail, but we can get to things pretty quickly within the European market. And there's some, there's someone out there doing everything that we need. And I think that's, that's a real sign of the times. And I think it'll just carry on, we don't know how far it'll go in terms of becoming mainstream, but I think it'll become increasingly accepted. So let's look back round then. Because you mentioned building biology. And I think, you know, those are perhaps two words that don't necessarily go together or that Oh, yeah, for sure. Give us the give us a 32nd intro into building biology from your perspective.

michelle ifversen

Building Biology is about building science and and creating built environments that simulate nature. So breathable walls, you know, healthy indoor air space, air quality. You know, you know, great flooring without adhesives, and it really trying to mimic outdoors to indoors. And you know, I love technology but we have to put a limit on it, there's a right way to use it safely. And we can talk more about EMF later. But building biology is just that it's breathable, livable spaces that support humans. So I call it human code, rather than building code.

Matt Morley

That's an interesting take on things. And then so when you do your environmental wellness assessments, then I'm guessing 99% of the time you're going into spaces that are not built along those principles. So they're not buildings that have a builder nology concept behind them. So in fact, probably the opposite, right, you're going in, there's some kind of a problem that's been identified, whether it's visually something that's appearing on the walls, or there's a health issue for residents of the home, would that be correct?

michelle ifversen

Absolutely. Yeah. Most people get to me from their wellness providers, that they recommend having them check out their home, or they are they're like, I've gone down all this health, these, this this road to you know, having their health being compromised, and they think that there's something is cut stemming from their environment, right? So they're, it's kind of a detective work, they want to figure out where the source is coming from. And that's a lot of our business. It's, it's not as sexy as his biophilic design. But it is a supportive work, and I really enjoy it. And I've helped a lot of people over the years determine what's going on in their environment, because it's so they're so used to their environment. They're so used to their home and they're, they're not objective, right. They're like they think that's normal things are normal that off gassing of the paint of the of the flooring is normal.

michelle ifversen

You know, I've got so many cases where people will build brand new homes or their remodel and they'll put luxury vinyl tile. I don't know if you have that in Europe, but it's Yeah, yep. It looks great. It's beautiful, easy to clean, whatnot. But it a lot of them have adhesives in it that with formaldehyde, formaldehyde and metal off gas up to 15 years, especially if they don't have a system, an air system that will purify it and filter that out. So I do on site assessments here locally in Portland. And then now since pandemic, I've had to there's to do more virtual assessments. So I've been doing virtual assessments for people all over the country, and I work together, don't assume they work together. But I've connected with a toxicologist and immunologist that works with people all over the world. There. There are situations where they test their blood for mycotoxins, mold, and they want to know what to do about their environment. And so I come in and consult with them and do a virtual assessment through, you know, laptop or FaceTime, and take a look at their environment. And we have a really lengthy questionnaire to determine. And I've been able to help a lot of people that way, this feels really good.

Matt Morley

And so if you were to do an in person assessment, which presumably in a local context, post COVID, will become the norm again, for you or the preference.

michelle ifversen

I found myself getting exposed to mold and to chemicals. And so I know how to, I know how to what supplements to take, I know I sauna, and I know how to do that. And we're the gear, but it's not something that I, I want to do so much anymore. comes with a health risk rate.

Matt Morley

Right. And he mentioned EMF stem. So for those that perhaps aren't aware of what it involves, why you would need to test for it, and how you identify it, what's your process there.

michelle ifversen

So a lot of people come to me when they are looking to purchase a property, right? Like yesterday, I just did a property that was right next to a corridor where it's people run up and down it and above it, there's transmission power lines. So they wanted to know there, this person is very active, they're very healthy, they want to know what's going on. And so they think that, hey, there might be a connection, I want to check it out. So I go and I do an assessment where I check first gives me electric and magnetic fields. And we adhere to the precautionary principle, from building biology standards between you know, what's, what's low to high, and the health risks that could be coming from that now. There are a lot of studies, studies are still happening. But like with 5g, it's so very new. So there's not a lot of studies out there. There's studies with 2g and 3g. But 5g is completely a different animal, a different beast, it's small cell microwave radiation, and it has to be close not for the way. But when you're close to it, it's definitely it's definitely more harmful. I shouldn't say I don't want to go down that road too much.

michelle ifversen

When it comes to EMF, like I have a cell phone, but I use a case that has that shields it I'm hardwired with Ethernet and my computer, we don't have Wi Fi here, we have our Roku, which is a television. It's kind of like a Apple TV. And it's hardwired. So we still have the benefit. We have a outdoor speaker auto stereo, we plug our, our stereo into it. So it's all connected and it still sounds fabulous. So there's ways to do it. You know, I've been doing a lot of these smart homes and they're very savvy. They're very cool. I mean, you can talk to your your or not talk to you but find out how many eggs are in your frigerator I love the site. I love technology. I love it. But is it necessary and how much do we need? Right? And so

Matt Morley

It's a fascinating moment in history with two things going on in parallel - a return to nature on the one hand and a massive technological explosion on the other. Reconnecting with nature via biophilia isn’t about going backwards but nor do we want to neglect our evolutionary history completely, that’s the risk. So we end up with this dichotomy between the two tendencies, it can be hard to bridge the two sometimes I feel.

michelle ifversen

Just around air quality, then because I am conscious that that's going to be one of these think like hot hot topics for a few years to come for obvious reasons. So yeah, how do you work with indoor air quality? And what sort of techniques are you thinking about in terms of measuring and also improving indoor air quality?

michelle ifversen

So I was thinking of what you're saying about technology, they have the, the white the apps on your phone that can check your air and things like that. So that's that dichotomy you were talking about, like, yes, it's great that you're checking your vo C's and your your air and whatnot and your health of your home. But then you're using Wi Fi, right all over to us that purpose. So we don't do that.

michelle ifversen

We have a developed a kit with, with the lab here in the US, that tests for over 500 different voc volatile organic compounds, or chemicals. And it's a tube that you put on the test to the pump. And it's about an hour and a half test, and it just takes in the data, holds it in the tube, and then we send it off to the lab, and then we get a very professional lab report back that I go over with my clients. And it goes to the source where the where it's coming from. And so it's very, it's a great tool to analyze your air what's going on, if you did sit or remodel, if there's something going on in your environment, you think you don't know what that odor is or what's happening, we were able to determine what you know, where the source is coming from, and then to help to consult with them to remediate it.

Matt Morley

So it's like a deep dive analysis of the indoor air quality at a specific point in time,

michelle ifversen

right is a blood test. Yes, like a blood test for your body, right. And so it's a, it's a great way to know what's going on there. And we test for mold, vo C's as well. So if there's something going on that way, and then we have a isolated formaldehyde test, which is fantastic, because you don't have to strip away the other chemicals to get to that particular chemical. It just is a pure appear to us. So we can ship these. And people can buy these pumps, and they hope they have them for tool in their home. And they can use them in their office or car, their van build, they're there, they're there, kids dorm, or their, their their parents assisted living place and they can use it in or they can use it again after they remediate. To have that it's it's it's, it's a great tool.

Matt Morley

I think the the the underlying concept there is that there is there are now just a plethora of low grade and not that effective air quality monitors out there. And this Dyson fan in the corner of my home office here would it would be included in that it just can't work it out. If it's not, it's not the standard that we need in order to get a really decent look. And most of what's happening sort of desktop monitors are not going to get there. So I think the idea of having what you're describing as a, like a blood test for your and then perhaps, you know, slightly more slightly more not medical grade better than an upgraded air quality monitor doing a sort of continuous analysis such as that aware and companies like that. And doing that, to me starts to feel pretty comprehensive

michelle ifversen

it's good to have the constant monitoring, it's great to do that. But it's also, you know, important to note that we don't want people living in fear, right? We want them to be able to be go come home to their space to go to their workspace to feel inspired and not worried that there's something in their environment that's going to harm them. So it's really good. I feel like I give people a lot of peace of mind, especially with EMF testing. Like for instance, some people's dishwashers are very hot, right? And so a lot of people prep around their dishwasher. And if you're trying to conceive a baby, that's probably not a good thing. Right? So it's just good to know where, what your what's the pulse of your home, and how to operate and function. And then when you move to a new place, you know, figure that out again and then you're like you know how to navigate and and shield or just know, to not hang out in that particular area like a lot of people put their electrical panels or theirs Aren't leaders, your bedrooms or spaces where you spend a lot of time.

michelle ifversen

So that's that's a constant radio frequency coming at you all the time, preventing a lot of dirty electricity. And like I'm helping a woman on the coast who has a two acre property and she's building a home. She's got a she's got a two year old and she wants I'm consulting with her on placement of where the smart meters should be. And not near his bedroom, not near areas over there. You can opt out and not haven't had the radio frequency on there. She doesn't have any health issues, but it's just a preventative. You know, it's a it's a good, good way to know about that. So a lot of I do a lot of places that, you know, you'd be shocked where they there's no regulation here in the US that I just found now that the the newer homes are going to be more regulated where they put the gas meters, they have regular radio frequency as well. But what about all the existing homes? There's nothing about that there's no education, there's no shielding, there's no they don't try and opt out. So it's, it's, it's a hard fight sometimes to be able to reach a lot of people with this, but I prevail. I keep trying

Matt Morley

that you get into the study more strategically surround healthy interior design as a concept and almost sort of healthy healthy buildings and healthy real estate development or refurbishment projects. Right. Now, it's a term that I think we're seeing more and more of everybody has, I think their own interpretation of but when you talk about healthy interiors and healthy interior design, what do you interpret that to mean?

michelle ifversen

sourcing materials and furnishings and finishes that are non toxic, that are that are not going to off gas that are not going to give them trouble. I've had clients who just purchased a regular mattress and that given them sort of a thought body burden, toxic overload that's created them to be multiple chemical sensitive from one mattress. So it's just it's really good to and who knows their story before Do you not I mean, they could have had other past exposures but just a healthy interior really is about quality air. That's that's more than most important healthy building materials insulation is a huge one. And making sure that your your crawlspace your attic is is clean, and not not too not too damp, not too humid. And just really shoring it up in in, you know, the healthy design too. It's not just about the building material furnishings and things like that. It's it's space planning, right? It's bringing in greenery, it's its views, it's it's where you function and operate in your home.

michelle ifversen

I'm in my office which was a spare bedroom that we created. And there was no window towards the backyard of a lovely backyard with the with with a garden and beautiful vegetation that I had no access to in here when I moved in here. And so my husband built or made a window. So I could see it. And so it just it makes me want to come in here. And since I'm not in the field so much I'm I'm more inspired to be on the computer and have these podcasts and these meetings and work with my clients. They're so having a view of nature is is the landscape design, outside in inside out. So that's that's a really big piece of the way I design and I work with people on their landscape and their yards to their gardens. So they can be where they're sitting have a beautiful view, or there's a fountain there or a special plant that they like or a tree or something like that. So it's not it's sort of Yeah, it's it's a nice way to design and people seem to really appreciate that.

Matt Morley

That then you get into the concepts of biophilic design & biophilia. And I think what you're describing is really sort of direct forms of biophilia where it's it's live plants, but I know you're also so I indoor landscaping or indoor outdoor landscaping. But I know you've also done a project whereby you've co created it seems a collection of biophilic artworks, which to me would look like indirect forms of biophilia a way to connect with nature but through a print so the original artworks How did you go about that? What was the story behind that?

michelle ifversen

Yes, so very cool story. And it's, it's a It feels like the most wonderful project because it's My mother. My mother is a very renowned landscape architect who has done so many projects all throughout California Santa Barbara, Montecito, Napa Valley, the Bay Area. And here in Portland, and she is retired now and a few years ago, I've been I've been trying to, and she went to art school. I mean, she's a she's an amazing artist and painter, but she has not painted since she was in college. And so I was very inspired to, I bought her canvases and, and paints and things like that. And she slowly started getting into it. But then what really took off is that I'm a photographer, I've been a photographer for years, I was I started out when I was in art school in Europe.

michelle ifversen

I love photographing nature. I love photographing wega I hike, I'm very active, and I go and I photograph the macro of a mushroom close of a mushroom open. Just having that perspective, deeper into that that lens. And I would bring my photos, I would send them to her on my phone, and she would just be inspired and just this light bulb hit with her and she started painting them. And then she started painting indoor plants during the pandemic where I wasn't going out so much. So we kind of went in, right. And so she started painting these beautiful monsters and these palms and ferns and I put them all in my my studio here and we put them in the house and it's just really invoked such a positive mood. And so that was that sort of the start of our biophilic prints and we're opening up a store on Etsy and going to be selling them on the on the site as well and and just been just really have fun with it.

Matt Morley

Like it your husband making windows out into the back garden for you got your mom making up works. Seeing things now as we're looking ahead as we're sort of, I think there's this feeling of cautious optimism for the next six months. But how are you seeing things I know, it's been a tough hustle over the last 18 months for most of us working in this game. But it does feel like there's perhaps just this opportunity now, right? When what the themes we've been talking about for a while, uh, suddenly becoming a little bit more understood and appreciated. Are you picking up on that? Are you feeling optimistic for the next six months? How do you see it,

michelle ifversen

definitely, definitely, I feel like this is that it's a breath of fresh air and people are tired, they're hungry for it. You know, they are they've also spent a lot of time in their home environment, right, they've been like, and they realize that they can do better, and they want to do better, and they're still working, they're still working from home, they so they have income, a lot of people and so they want to dial in their homes, and then a lot of people have gone out into their gardens and gardening. So they really are taking pride and ownership into their own environment, which is feels really good. So it's for me as a environmental designer, I feel like it's just opened up this avenue of, of awareness and also desire to dial things in a little bit deeper and to and to realize that that's good money well spent, rather than, you know, an option of kind of a luxury, I should say it's looking more like they want to take care of their health, they want to take care of their their place. And they want to they want to source better materials. So it's the residential piece that I that we've talked about you and I is that, you know, having people you know, showing them how to do that and offering that service to be able to dive in deeper. So they're actually applying these things on a purchase just

Matt Morley

to give someone like a really top line in a few a few tips. Just the sort of the basics. We're talking someone who's perhaps not necessarily thinking today about creating a healthy home but right they have, as you say, over the last 18 months become more aware that actually yeah, it's important to think about that and perhaps they're not doing enough and therefore Okay, what are the what are the first few things that everyone should be thinking about?

michelle ifversen

indoor air quality, obviously, number one, test your air first. Find out what's really going on in your environment just to get a baseline, and then work with us on on going over the report and and really that's just like if you want to start somewhere and then if you know dial it in with an air purifier, you know and to reduce those vo C's and then figure out where the sources coming in, bring in more plants, definitely bringing more plants, you know put in a little humidor. It's called a monitor humidity monitor, and and check to see you know, how's your house functioning, you know, if you're living in Florida, it's going to be very high. So stick a dehumidifier in there. So just really kind of be one with your space. And then also notice where you spend your most of your time

michelle ifversen

For example, in your bedroom. When you wake up. What do you look at first thing I say it's a fantastic trick or tip I should say is put a photograph or put something inspiring are a beautiful plant or your you know your meditation station or something inspiring to look at when you wake up every morning. also pay attention to where you put your electronics. Try not to have them next to your bed. Turn your plate or your phone and your wireless router off at night. That's a good that's a good easy tip. Nice.

Matt Morley

Yeah. And the route is found the best way at least with that was finding these multi plug multi plugs with timers on so I set the timer so that just goes off at midnight. Totally goes back on if you do have Wi Fi Yeah, for sure. Like lots of great tips and information in there. Really cool. We'll link to everything on the show notes. And thank you so much again for your time. It's been awesome.

michelle ifversen

Thank you Matt. Really appreciate it. Love chatting with you. Thank you so much.

Wellbeing interior design and biophilia at Can Ikigai, Barcelona

Our wellbeing interior design for “Can Ikigai” is a haven of tranquillity and biophilia in Barcelona’s Gracia neighborhood

Wellbeing interiors and biophilia

In this project we combine elements of wellbeing interiors and biophilic design in response to the existing Japanese influences present in the apartment in its unfurnished state.

The use of solid oak sliding panels and flooring, combined with an abundance of natural light and an over-sized wrap-around terrace meant that we could keep the majority of the plants outside, leaving the interior space for a more minimalist, neutral palette of beige, white and grey-black.

Healthy home design

A living area has a Japanese futon paired with a quality mattress covered in a beige linen fabric cover sourced from our friends at La Maison in Barcelona. We then added a Libeco throw and some tonal cushions to ‘disguise’ the guest bed as a day bed / sofa, layering natural fabric over natural fabric.

Wabi-sabi design

An entire wall of bespoke shelving was decorated with objets d’art and tribal artifacts collected from around the world in particular Spain and the African continent, each one ‘imperfect’ in its own way and thereby creating a degree of visual consistency through materials and finishes. A reading lamp from Artemide then makes this a comfortable corner for reading, especially during winter months.

Biophilic kitchen

The kitchen is more of an architectural statement so required nothing more than some carefully displayed wooden chopping boards and designer kitchen goods for a keen chef to enjoy the cooking experience, such as a Vitamix blender and a classic Pavoni espresso machine. Plants, leaves and indeed fruit and vegetables themselves plat a decorative role off-set against the backdrop of a dark grey, rough ceramic wall finish.

Biophilia in a home office

A healthy home office set-up features a standing desk and stool combined with a floor pad for added comfort under-foot, a biophilic art installation on the wall by Flowers By Bornay, vintage Scandinavian side table in solid teak and a biophilic art print sourced from an at fair in South Africa.

Eco-friendly bathroom

Linen towels, reusable bottles for natural soap and shampoo, a plastic-free set of bathroom accessories and a smart lighting system for those dark evenings all ensure that this is a healthy bathroom experience that also does no harm to the planet as we removed all plastic completely. This requires proximity to a good eco-friendly store selling soaps and so on, in this case Barcelona had plenty to offer nearby!

Home gym design

Making use of the large outdoor space, we brought in a set of kettlebells, sandbags, dumbbells, medicine balls, bands and exercise mats to create a functional fitness training area with all the essentials, and just the right amount of design influence to ensure continuity with the rest of the property. A row of succulents lines the whitewashed balcony wall, keeping the connection to nature whilst working out.

TO ENQUIRE ABOUT OUR WELLBEING INTERIOR AND HEALTHY HOME CONSULTANCY SERVICES CONTACT US HERE

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!

CONTACT US TO DISCUSS YOUR NEXT BIOPHILIC DESIGN PROJECT

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/

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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.