Maximizing Value with Interior Glass Door Solutions

Interior glass walls and doors gain traction in workplaces and multiunit studios and lofts
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Sponsored by The Sliding Door Company
By Barbara Horwitz-Bennett
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Light It Up

As noted, solutions like glass dividers, enclosures, partitions, and doors blend well into daylighting designs. And while the benefits of daylighting are well known and documented, highlighting a few noted studies and expert insights can be useful.

Take a 2014 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Lighting Research Center (LRC) study of the impact of personal light exposures on sleep and mood. Here the researchers found that while artificial lighting was supporting work tasks at hand, employees still suffered from lower moods and less restful sleep in winter when the windows provided less natural light.

Additionally, other LRC studies have identified a direct correlation between daylit environments and occupant productivity and comfort, and that daylighting supports the mental and visual stimulation necessary to regulate human circadian rhythms.

Another study done by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology found that employees working in naturally lit environments had higher levels of energy than those in artificially lit workplaces.

“According to several studies, access to natural light may be the most sought-after amenity for employees,” explains Dyer Brown’s Zeigler. “It is easy to see how this will affect the leasing of commercial office space as increased availability of daylight deeper into the floor plate drives up overall value to tenant firms.”

Naturally, daylighting—in addition to acoustics, ergonomics, and indoor air quality—factors into an increased focus on health and wellness in the way that buildings are being designed today.

With direction and guidance from initiatives like the International WELL Building Institute’s WELL Certification and the Center for Active Design’s Fitwel program, designers and building owners are paying more attention to how their buildings affect the physical and emotional states of their occupants.

Compounding the issue is another challenge affecting a noted percentage of workers: burnout syndrome. Officially identified by the World Health Organization as an occupational phenomenon in the international classification of diseases, burnout syndrome is described as feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion and a lack of vocational engagement. This, in turn, causes reduced productivity and a decreased feeling of accomplishment.

Because stress levels contribute to this issue, Eppstein Uhen Architects recently conducted a third-party survey of 500 workers across the country to gather data on employee satisfaction levels in relation to their work environment in addition to how they viewed their work-related stress levels.

Surprisingly, the survey found that 75 percent of respondents reported moderate to high work-related stress levels. And from this subset, 30 percent identified a lack of distraction-free spaces in their work environment as contributing to their stress.

In a recent Work Design Magazine article, “Move Over Stress: An Engaged Workplace is Set to Perform,” Eppstein Uhen Architects Workplace Strategy Leader Heather Turner Loth proposes that the three main factors that could help drive down stress levels in the workplace are safety and security, knowledge sharing, and well-being.

Addressing the latter issue, DMAC’s MacEwen relates, “Wellness comes in many forms. From the spaces we design to the materials we choose, it all has an impact on the bottom line. Wellness is about creating spaces we want to be in, that engage the senses and support our everyday lives in a sustainable way. That is our responsibility as designers.”

 

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Originally published in Architectural Record
Originally published in January 2020

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