NEWH - Spring 2017 - 28

SUSTAINABILITY | POINT OF VIEW

Beyond Sustainability: Green Voice Explores
A Healthier Built Environment
Lorraine Francis, director of the NEWH Sustainable Hospitality Committee and regional director of hospitality
interiors for Gensler, explored design strategies for healthier spaces with Delos Solutions executive vice
president and director of sustainability, Jessica Cooper, as part of NEWH Green Voice Conversations at BDNY.
NEWH Sustainable Hospitality Committee launched Green Voice Conversations in 2012 as the sustainable
educational brand for NEWH, attracting experts and diverse viewpoints. NEWH Sustainable Hospitality
produces the series at global, high-profile conferences and events, most recently at BDNY in New York City.
Since we now spend an average of 21 hours per day indoors, healthy building environments took center stage.

What is Delos?

How is it administered?

Delos' mission is focused on improving human wellness through
the built environment. Delos provides solutions for interior
environments that can enhance the health, well-being, and
productivity of occupants.
Informed by research and analysis of environmental health
impacts on people, Delos is breaking new ground and defining the
conditions required for enhancing wellness in all sectors of the built
environment. Delos has fostered research collaborations with the
Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic, a board of doctors from the Columbia
University Medical Center, and leading architects, scientists, and
wellness thought leaders to introduce wellness standards, programs,
and solutions into the built environment.

Today the WELL Building Standard is administered by the
International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), a public benefit
corporation whose mission is to improve human health and wellbeing through the built environment.
WELL is third-party certified by Green Business Certification Inc.
(GBCI), which administers the LEED certification program and the
LEED professional credentialing program.

How does this affect design?
Delos envisions a future where our environments, the places where
we live, work, and play, contribute actively to our health and wellbeing. With this vision, Delos pioneered the concept of Wellness Real
Estate, merging medicine and science with design and construction
to reinvent the role of the built environment on our health.
Delos conducted rigorous analysis and discovery to
uncover the complex and largely unstudied impact of the built
environment on health. The principles of Wellness Real Estate
evolved to become the founding concepts and building blocks of
the WELL Building Standard.

Let's start with that standard.
The WELL Building Standard is an evidence-based system for
measuring, certifying, and monitoring the performance of building
features that impact health and well-being.
WELL sets performance requirements in seven concepts relevant
to occupant health in the built environment-air, water, nourishment,
light, fitness, comfort, and mind. WELL Certified spaces can help
create a built environment that improves the nutrition, fitness, mood,
sleep patterns, and performance of its occupants.
WELL Certification is based on performance and requires a
passing score in each of the seven concepts. WELL Certification is
awarded at one of three levels: Silver, Gold, and Platinum.
28 www.newh.org

Which sectors and markets are embracing wellness?
Corporate is the largest sector at the moment to embrace WELL,
followed by multifamily residential. We are seeing a cultural shift,
with wellness being introduced into the live-work balance.
In hospitality, we're seeing a lot of interest in our Stay Well
program for hotels.

Take us through the science and research behind these
concepts.
Americans spend more than 90 percent of their time indoors, which
means exposure to indoor environments is at an all-time high. But
what many people don't realize is that buildings, and everything in
them, can affect human health and well-being.
The purpose of the Well Living Lab, a Delos-Mayo Clinic
collaboration in Rochester, Minnesota, is to study these indoor
environments and create healthier indoor spaces in which to
live, work, and play. The lab is the first scientific research center
that uses exclusively human-centered research to understand
the interaction between health and well-being and indoor
environments.
Our research facility is completely reconfigurable and features
advanced sensor technology and remote monitoring that allows
people who participate in our studies to move about as they
normally would-unencumbered by wires, devices, and monitors.
But research is not limited to the lab environment: Our remote
monitoring control center allows us to observe and track study
participants outside the lab, at home, work, or play. ❙❘❚

http://www.newh.org

NEWH - Spring 2017

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